New wave of glory for U.S. soccer

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By Bob Cohn

The effect of the big, eye-catching upset in sports is twofold. First is the immediate jolt, the unexpected shock of an underdog knocking off a heavily favored opponent in a prominent competition. Then comes the noisy aftermath - the reaction, the chatter and the attempt to put it into perspective and explain what it all means.

That scenario played out again when the U.S. men's national soccer team stunned Spain and the rest of the world with its 2-0 victory in the FIFA Confederations Cup semifinals Wednesday in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

As with every huge upset, no one saw it coming except those who pulled it off. And given the team's spotty performance in the buildup to the event, even the players' visionary status is less than certain. The Spaniards were supposed to win big, and the Americans were supposed to return home quietly, happy to have been there. What followed, said former U.S. soccer standout and ESPN commentator Alexi Lalas, was "the storm after the calm."

Amid Wimbledon, baseball's Manny Ramirez returning from his drug suspension and the NBA Draft (plenty of chatter there), soccer, of all things, has grabbed considerable media space and dominated much of the conversation. The U.S. still has one more game Sunday against mighty Brazil for the tournament championship.

"It's nice to see the traditional media and those who aren't necessarily that excited about soccer give it the proper respect," said Mr. Lalas, who has been getting some unexpected face time. "The underdog factor and the improbability certainly is on a par with some of the great upsets in sports history."

Sasho Cirovski, the coach of Maryland's NCAA champion men's soccer team, showed up for work Thursday morning at the Comcast Center, and "everybody was talking about it," he said. "It's such a great source of national pride."

Not to mention a source of debate. Where does the victory rank in the annals of notable soccer upsets or upsets period? Some observers went so far as to compare it to the "Miracle on Ice," the U.S. hockey team's upset of the Soviet Union on the way to beating Finland for the gold medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Not quite, Mr. Lalas said.

"To be fair, you have to put it in context and what the 1980 Games meant to the country and all the social and political implications," he said. "Had this happened at the World Cup, it would have been viewed very, very differently. It would have had much more impact."

But the impact still was enormous, likely superseded only by the improbable U.S. World Cup victories over England (1950), Colombia (1994) and Portugal and Mexico (2002). In non-World Cup competition, Cirovski said, the victory stands just behind the win over Trinidad and Tobago in 1989, which put the U.S. into World Cup play for the first time in almost 40 years.