World Cup Is Hard On The Nerves!

Watching the World Cup while drinking your morning coffee can be hazardous to your health. I realized this last Friday when the USA tied Slovenia 2-2 after trailing by two goals at the half. Watching the match at 8am PDT had my heart racing as I downed my usual get-me-going cups of java. I should have been drinking beer or anything else without caffeine because the tension kept building throughout the final minutes when the USA was robbed of the game-winning goal by a horrendous call. The match against Slovenia will be remembered for the Maurice Edu goal that referee Koman Coulibaly of Mali inexplicably waved off in the 85th minute. I was hollering at the TV (and so were others in my neighborhood) and I was still in bed! The game ended in a 2-2 draw.

In the following days the complaints of "we were robbed" were replaced by "we only need to beat lowly Algeria." A win by the USA in the final match of pool play would guarantee advancing to the sweet 16 of the World Cup, something the Americans have rarely done. In a delightful twist, the USA's main concern on Wednesday would not be Algeria but England! If England could beat Slovenia while the USA lost then England would advance and the Americans would go home. Of course, both matches would be played on the same day at the same time: 7am PDT.

If it was the weekend I would have started out with screwdrivers instead of coffee, but since it was a workday I drank my coffee with extra cream to try and cut the caffeine buzz. I switched back and forth between the two games, keeping an eye on Steven Gerrard of England, my favorite soccer player. When his Three Lions scored an early goal I went back to the USA game, and once again found myself yelling at the TV set. American Herculez Gomez got off two shots, the second of which rebounded to an unmarked Clint Dempsey at the far post, who knocked the ball into the empty net.

But the play was ruled offside, the USA once again appearing to lose a goal to an official's decision. "What next?" I barked. By half-time I knew I was done with the coffee. The tension was unbearable so I switched to a diet 7-up. Better for the stomach and my nerves. Eating was out of the question, not for another 45 minutes at least. That's my favorite thing about soccer: it doesn't take two hours to play 45 minutes. The clock never stops and neither does the action. Even if its a boring game, in the end it takes two hours to play 90 minutes and there's no commercials during play. 60 minutes of NFL football takes three hours to play yet there's only an average of eleven minutes of actual playing time!

Again and again the Americans came close to scoring but it was still a 0-0 tie with a few minutes of stoppage time to play. Two minutes away from going home, Landon Donovan came out of nowhere to score the unbelievable winning goal for the USA and all hell broke loose. I heard a loud barrage of cheers emanating from the bar down the street. I saw Landon do a face-first victory slide before getting mobbed by his joyous teammates. I jumped out of bed and jumped around while my neighbors made their own noise. All of this at 9am! A great day for me since I was also rooting for England to move on and they did with a 1-0 victory.

The most amazing thing of all is I'm listening to the Jim Rome radio show right now and he's been talking about the match for two hours, calling it amazing and a "huge win" for the USA. He's interviewed two reporters from South Africa and taking calls from USA soccer fans. Now if you've ever listened to Rome you know HE HATES SOCCER! Bashes it every chance he gets but even the king of sports talk radio said he didn't want to be a "buzz kill." Believe me, after watching the USA beat Algeria 1-0, I was certainly buzzed, with or without the caffeine!