With folks back home tuned in to World Cup like never before, US blows its big chance

Loss shows US not ready for soccer’s big time yet

RUSTENBURG, South Africa — With a trip to the semifinals theirs for the taking, the Americans showed they’re still, at best, a second-tier team.

U.S. coach Bob Bradley and his players can bluster all they want about the progress they’ve made and how they can play with anybody at the World Cup. When they had a chance to move into soccer’s elite, against a Ghana team they should have handled easily, the Americans came out looking flat and uninspired.

Ghana, they seemed to say, no big deal. Well guess what? It was, and it is. You want soccer to be a major player in the U.S. sporting landscape, like the NBA, the NFL and Major League Baseball? Then you can’t sleepwalk through opportunities like Saturday night.

But that’s what they did and by doing so, sent a slap to every fan who turned on the TV and hoped for a win, if not a last-minute miracle.

“It’s not a failure if we don’t win Saturday, but there’s such a massive opportunity to do something so much more special,” Landon Donovan had said earlier this week. “And I really want to emphasize that to everybody, and make sure we understand that.”

Apparently his teammates didn’t get the memo, because it took Ghana all of five minutes to score its first goal. The United States tied it on Donovan’s second-half penalty kick and seemed to have momentum going into extra time. But sure enough, another early goal, another exit too soon.

Falling behind early is an ongoing problem for the U.S. team. It happened against England. It happened against Slovenia. It happened in World Cup qualifying. Time and again the Americans said they wouldn’t let it happen again, and time and again they did. It finally caught up with them, and now they have to answer to fans who put their faith in them believing that, this time, it really was different.