Football's Coming Home

I can say, defensively, that I didn't intend it as a prognostication last week when I said:

As of now, the USA is playing in the second round, Saturday morning at 7 am local time, with a real chance to compete against a so-far underwhelming Netherlands side that feels gettable

In retrospect, the only thing defensive that happened was up there in Sentence One because our boys got absolutely can-openered by a well drilled, on-form Dutch side completely oblivious to everything we did for them in World War II. I bet Daley Blind or Memphis Depay or whoever that third guy was couldn't even tell you how many Americans died in Operation Market Garden, but they could probably characterize it correctly: too much optimism after previous success resulting in overextension and stagnation.

But I'm not mad at the Dutch. It's hard to be. They're a confused, doomed people, living on borrowed time in what is essentially a once-and-future sea floor. They're making it look really nice in the meantime with a thousand years of evolving national culture accented by tulips and windmills and those adorable definitely-not-German accents, but as Greenland gets greener, yikes, that geological time clock is a-tickin'. Still, I wish them all the best. In fact I'm feeling so magnanimous, I'm not even going to make an obvious, hacky joke about dike-fingering.

Anyway, the joke's on my emotions, because now the World Cup just got about 600% less stressful to view. Oh, did Spain go out? Whatevs. Brazil curb-stomps South Korea? I FELT NOTHING. The only time nationalistic jingoism has ever worked for me is when it deadens me inside, like my feelings have been stunned by a fireworks-barge explosion right to the sternum. If America is out, I'm just in it for the soccer, which was going to happen either way. Look, they did a whole one of these four years ago and we weren't even allowed to come. I still watched that whole-ass thing, too, shoving the Popchips version of Fritos into my face by the furious fistful, pausing only long enough to let anyone around me know how Entirely Not Mad I was about it. I was fine. Just like now. Doesn't matter. Was fine, am fine, still, yeah... fine. Totally fine.

And I'll stay that way until activated by... let me check the schedule here... oh, huh, there's another World Cup next year, you say? Oh, and it's the REAL World Cup, where America is good. How invested should I be, let me check the schedule, the first game...

Oh that's funny, July 23, 2023, in Auckland, New Zealand, U.S.A. vs. Vietnam. It's hard to say exactly how I will feel when that day finally arrives. Probably, like, you know, regular. Normal. Just a regular and normal U.S. vs Vietnam thing. We'll be the overwhelming favorites then. I foresee no complications.