Is now the time?

It’s a beautiful day at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The two teams are lined up and ready to play. The best team in the world against the underdogs. Today, however, it isn’t the Superbowl or the World Series. In fact, today, it’s not called a field, it’s called a pitch. The current World Cup champions and the number one team in the world, the Spanish national team, versus the United States. Pause for the baseball, football and basketball fans to say that soccer is not a real sport.

9^th minute – Spain was robbed of a goal, a questionable offside call. The Spaniards have dominated play thus far controlling the ball while the Americans stand and watch

28^th minute – GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! Santiago Cazorla, 1-nil Spain. It was a beautiful sequence that led to a blast in the upper left hand corner of the net. In terms others can understand, Kobe fed Chris Paul who gave a cross court pass to LeBron for a 2 hand slam dunk.

I use that analogy because the equivalent of the Spanish soccer team in their country is the US men’s basketball team here in America. The difference is that while Spain’s basketball team gave our basketball team all we could handle in the gold medal game in 2008, it seems more of a dream than a goal for the US men’s soccer team to wind up in the World Cup final versus a team like Spain.

32^nd minute – 2-nil Spain, Alvaro Negredo. It’s hard to imagine that the US team defeated Spain 2-0 just two years ago. Ian Darke, the play-by-play man just added that the “Spaniards are toying with the Americans.”

40^th minute – The first shot of the match for the US, wide right, but a decent scoring opportunity nonetheless.

41^st minute – Its becoming a blow out, 3-nil Spain, Cazorla’s 2^nd of the match. Using a baseball analogy, A-Rod’s grand slam gives the US a commanding 10-0 lead in the World Baseball Classic.

Mercifully, halftime…

Let’s review where US soccer has gone in the past 20 years.

1990 – The US qualifies for the World Cup only to get embarrassed in round-robin play.

1994 – The US hosts the World Cup for the 1^st time. Thanks to Escobar’s own goal, the American’s advanced past Colombia and into the round of 16, only to fall 1-0 to the eventual champions, Brazil. Soccer in America is on the rise and popularity is at an all-time high. Names like Tony Meola, Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones are becoming favorite athletes of 9-year-olds across the country. But then…

1998 – The US team embarrasses themselves, finishing dead last in the Cup. To add more salt to the wound, they lose to Iran.

2002 – The US advances to the knockout round, upsetting Portugal along the way, although we needed South Korea to beat Portugal for us to advance. As fate would have it, we drew our rivals to the south and outlast Mexico to get to the quarterfinals, but lose to world power Germany. Names like McBride, Donovan and Ramos are popular around the country.

2006 – The US team embarrasses themselves again, scoring only 1 goal on their own in this Cup and fail to advance out of round robin play.

2010 – We know this story, Landon Donovan scores in stoppage time to beat Algeria and advance to the knock out round, only to lose to Ghana.

Do you see the pattern of inconsistency?

And finally, back to the game, 73^rd minute – 4-nil Spain, Fernando Torres knocks one off the right goal post and it trickles in. I’m sure goals 2, 3, and 4 were more of just workouts and practice than serious play, as if they were saying to each other, “Here you go pal, knock that in the back of the net, will ya?”

Final score, 4-nil

In a time where baseball has provided virtually no positive headlines in 2011, a time where the only thing you hear regarding the NFL is how there may not be a season in 2011, a time where the NBA Finals are of great interest but another work stoppage is lingering and hurting the chances of a 2011-12 season, this was a grand opportunity for American soccer to make a statement and give us a chance to say something like, “Well hey, at least there is soccer. I guess that Landon Donovan guy is ok.” Yet the US team fails to create any excitement. To make it more frustrating, the world has caught up to the United States in other sports. In both the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics, Japan has come away as the champion. In fact, the US was not even in the final game in either tournament. What’s worse, in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, our men’s basketball team was upset by Argentina, who eventually won the gold medal. ARGENTINA?!?!?!?! Aren’t they a soccer power? We had to settle for the bronze. With all the resources and finances our great country has, the only question to ask is, “Why aren’t we better?” The easy answer is we just don’t care as much about soccer as the other sports. True, but doesn’t Argentina care more about soccer than basketball? The US men’s soccer team is currently ranked 20^th in the world. That is embarrassing. Are we as good as Spain or Italy or Brazil or Argentina? Of course not, but we should play well enough to be ranked higher than 20th. We will never be the world power in soccer that they are, but we should consistently be in the top 10. It’s on you men’s soccer. If you want the public to follow, give us something more than one good run. Give us something more than one player to follow. Give us a chance to root for soccer. The United States is a land of winners. People like winners. People need winners. We don’t need soccer, but with American football and basketball struggling to have a next season, we need something to watch.