14-0

I'm still pretty new to being a sports fan, so I'm sure there are aspects of the game I still just don't understand, especially when it comes to Olypmic qualifying games and things like goal differentials. And I suspect that I should be excited to have watched (even online) a game that broke records. But honestly, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The US WNT built up a lot of goodwill with the World Cup, between snatching victory from the teeth of Brazil in the quarterfinal and their ultimate honorable loss to Japan in the final. Total domination of an up-and-coming team like the Dominican Republic by an American team already established as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in the world really takes away some of that goodwill, I feel. The whole game I felt like I was watching the big kids on the playground mopping up the field with the little kids.

Personally, I always tend to lose interest with a soccer game when the score gets to around 5-0. At that point, the teams are so obviously mismatched that it gets boring to me. The only reason this game held my interest is because they were so *appallingly* mismatched. 5-0 is a rarity in soccer, and I like it that way. The fewer goals that are scored, the more exciting it is when someone scores. 14-0 is so rare as to be virtually unheard of. 5-0 could be the result of one team being slightly stronger and having a really good day, and one team being slightly weaker and having a really bad day. 14-0 can only happen when one team is extremely strong and the other is so much weaker as to be essentially helpless in the face of their opponent. You could even see the power disparity in their uniforms: US with their crisp, properly fitted uniforms and the DR with their baggy, ill-fitting uniforms. I guess the US had their reasons for continuing to push for more and more goals even after it was painfully obvious that DR was not a fair match for them, but as an observer rather than a member of the team, it came across as needless bullying.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would rather watch 80 minutes of keep-away after it was obvious in the first 10 that there was no real contest than what actually ensued. I love Amy Rodriguez, but 5 goals in one half (your team having already scored 7 before you hit the field) just seems uncalled for. What I especially don't understand, more than continuing to score goals after it becomes obvious that it is unnecessary, is that we continued to celebrate. Maybe not as garishly as we would celebrate scoring against a stronger team, but still. It boggles my mind that you could hear fans groaning in dismay when we missed a scoring opportunity even in the second half. My girlfriend and I pretty quickly started cheering DR's saves rather than US's goals. It's not that we wanted the US to lose: we still love this team and desperately want to see them take home Olympic gold when the time comes. But if DR had been able to score a goal or two against our juggernaut, you'd better believe we would have cheered.

Honestly, I would rather watch our team lose in a fair fight (US v Japan) than watch them slaughter and demoralize a team that lacks the training and resources that our team has been so fortunate to have (US v DR). I felt much, much better about that loss than I do about this win. US v Japan was the cleanest, tightest game our team ever played, and although I was sad to see us lose, we lost with skill, heart, and class. It could hardly even be considered a loss. A win of this epic proportion is, in a way, a greater loss. It potentially loses us goodwill and respect by making us look like bullies, and it has the added risk of making our team potentially overconfident going into subsequent matches. When we played Japan, we saw their incredible skill level and stepped up our own to match it. And we came damn close. After totally dominating DR, our team has no real incentive to put on their best game moving forward.

And none of this is even the worst part. The worst part is that, in this totally lopsided game, we still sustained injuries. In the case of Ali Krieger, possibly a quite serious injury. Just to be clear, I IN NO WAY FEEL THAT KRIEGER'S INJURY WAS HER FAULT. I couldn't find a clip to review, but my memory of the incident is that she had possession and a DR player gave a bad tackle that missed the ball completely and hit Krieger's knee instead. If it were any other match, I probably would have screamed for a yellow card, but in this game it would have been pointless. Although the injury is not Krieger's fault, I do suspect that injury would have been less likely had US not continued to play with such intensity against an opponent that didn't require it. Not to mention, it seems tragic to suffer an injury in a game like this, where one really doesn't need to be playing with a high level of intensity because your team already won in the first few minutes and the rest of the game was essentially a formality, and to then have to miss out on however many games Krieger is now going to have to miss, games where she really might have made a huge difference. Again, I do not blame her for her injury; I just think it's a damn shame and a waste.

Which is pretty much how I feel about this game as a whole. I just hope that, moving forward, our team is sufficiently challenged (without being overwhelmed, at least not in a game that could keep them from playing in the Olympics) and gets back to playing with their hearts as well as their boots.