Totally Saw It Coming
¡Ay, caramba! The United States just beat Spain in the Confed Cup Semifinal – a game the USA barely sneaked into after pulling off an impossible six-goal swing against Italy and Egypt.
Having donned my special Magic Hindsight Sunglasses, allow me to reveal to you shocked masses that I am not at all shocked by this shock result. I recall, in my misty, watercoloured memories of 1993, that the same US of Underdogs beat England 2-0 in what was a not-at-all-shocking result. In hindsight. (Seriously, though, I was an England fan at the time and England were completely toilet. The mid-1990s were a hard time.)
And then in 2002, the States marched into the World Cup Quarterfinal against Germant, only to be robbed - robbed, I say! - by a blind Scottish referee (named, ironically, Hugh Dallas) who ignored a German blatantly hand-balling the ball behind the goalline. Had the US been awarded that penalty (or the goal; I'd have settled for the goal), they would have scored, equalised, then won, beaten South Korea in the Semifinal (OK, no, they'd have probably lost that one), and then beaten Brazil in the World Cup Final.
See? Blatant. The laws of Karma dictate that the United States should for ever more be able to overturn six-goal deficits and beat the world's Number 1-ranked team with only 10 men in a Fifa Semifinal. It's only fair.
(I've been carrying the rage about that 2002 game with me for the past seven years. Feels good to finally get it off my chest.)