Let's not do that again... USA-Germany

Oh my goodness gracious me, let's not do that again anytime soon...

First, lose. That did not feel good and even though we went through, that was not fun.

Second, leave it to another team to do our dirty work for us.

Seriously, after that bang-bang set of goals from Germany and Ghana in the second half, the reality that we were a goal by Ghana away from going out was all too real.  Next time, let's just finish of the Portuguese when we have them on the chopping block, eh?

I am not going to take a lot of time to go into the individual play by the US right now, other than to say that it was an industrious effort that made Germany earn their victory, which turned out to be better than Portugal did.

This is just to vent my sigh of relief and to say "well done" to the team and the fans - everyone invovled was fantastic.

Across the board, it was obvious that many many many people are deep into this World Cup run from the US Men's National Team, and the players are regarding us with a virtuoso performance.

I will say this - I worry a little about Bradley. Another middling performance at times in a position we really need quality. But he also is doing a fantastic amount of work and it is definitely contributing to overall shape and success.

For now, I am going to simply enjoy this - we have advanced to the Round of 16 for consecutive World Cups for the first time ever. This time, though, we did it through the Group of Death - something that neither England or Italy were able to do from a similar group. On top of that, it is clearly obvious to me that US fandom has grown to monstrous proportions, and for that I say thank you and well done!