Quote Originally Posted by MKE_GoldenEagleFan View Post
Yes Wondo's miss hurts, but realistically if Tim Howard wasn't playing out of this world the US would have been down at least 3-0 at that point, Belgium had several misses themselves so if you play the what if game I'm not so certain it would work out well...
Before the game, I talked to quite a few people and my main thrust was that the underdog teams against the big boys, Chile, Algeria, Nigeria, and Mexico, all had chances to beat their more fancied opponents. For long stretches, those small teams dominated the run of play and honestly probably deserved to win their games. But they failed to capitalize on the chances they got and ultimately the big boys got the breaks they needed and escaped. The point of my argument was that we couldn't squander chances like they did.

Belgium was clearly the better side, created better chances and had more possession all day, but we had Tim Howard playing the game of his life, and honestly, the entire back four was excellent. When you can defend like that for 90 minutes, it often comes down to one chance for the underdog to steal the match, and Wondo's miss was that chance. As soon as it happened I turned to my buddy and said "That was it. That's the one we're gonna regret." We still had a chance, we even could have drawn level after going 2-0 down, but as soon as Wondo missed, I went from "I believe" to "I'm not too confident".

There's reason for optimism. Green's 15 minutes, the way Brooks and Yedlin played in spells, and knowing that Bradley (who was better than his critics said), Altidore, Johannsson, and Besler will be back. There are young players coming up, some that are US citizens (Joe Gyau, Erik Palmer-Brown) and some that are yet to fully take the plunge (Gedion Zelalem, Darlington Nagbe, Shawn Parker) that have a ton of upside and could make the 2018 team even better than this one despite the likely departures of Howard, Dempsey, Beckerman, Jones, and Beasley.

Proud of the boys, and honestly, my disappointment didn't last long. Less than an hour after the match, I got the sobering news that my dad is in the hospital with renal failure. Took my mind off the loss pretty quickly. News since then has been better, I'm flying down to Florida tomorrow to see him. I know that better things are on the way.