Time for the A team
When the United States men's soccer team traveled to Maracaibo, Venezuela, last Thursday to face Argentina in the opening round of the Copa America, the game itself went without surprise. The U.S., participating in the South American championships as one of the two North American invitees (Mexico was the other), performed as we historically have in most ventures into Latin America over the past 75 years. We sent in the "B" team, played a cynical, defensive and negative style, and got pasted anyway.
This was a big let-down for the members of Sam's Army (as the followers of U.S. Soccer call themselves) after the confident, risk-taking performance of the full American "A" squad in the finals of the Gold Cup the week before. In that game, a former UCLA walk-on and newcomer to the U.S. International Team, Ben Feilhaber, struck the volley of a lifetime deep into the second half to knock off Mexico, 2-1, and win the North American Championship at Chicago's Soldiers Field.
Feilhaber, an immigrant to the U.S. from Brazil at the age of 6, and descended from a family of Austrian Jews, had tried the same shot a week earlier against El Salvador and missed badly. But in the best American spirit of "get yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again" Feilhaber didn't hesitate when given a second chance, and his goal is now part of U.S. sporting history.
Score another one for those people. You know - the immigrants. (Hint: unless you somehow sprouted off from a maple tree, you are one of these too.)
But back to Maracaibo. While the U.S. was doing its utmost not to risk doing well on the field, the soccer-citizens in the stands were doing their best to do something important. Their efforts all came down to one word: Freedom.
Now pay attention closely here, because you will not find this news reported anywhere else but the soccer papers, which are quite possibly the only real barometer of international politics worth reading anymore.
Just before the start of the second half, tens of thousands of spectators, nearly all of them Venezuelans, and therefore under the thumb of populist thug-president and dictator-in-training Hugo Chavez, began to chant, in unison, one word: Freedom.
Why did they do that then, at that game? Because they thought our media might report on it. Because they thought that, of all the nations in the world, the people from the land of the free and home of the brave would be the people who would understand. Still. Us Yanquis. Freedom.
These are wretched times for our country as a role model. And as if our legitimate failings were not painful enough for honest citizens to bear, our senses and psyche are pounded upon by the media-celebrity hydra both home and abroad who self-righteously wallow in our national misery and shamelessly profit from our plight.
Enough with them. We still have an "A" team, and it is us. Not the politicians, not the media, not the celebrities, but us. A country of independent, self-sufficient, self-thinking, self-respecting people who care enough to be engaged, who care enough to sacrifice for the greater good, who care enough to stop and go back and take a hard look at our history and relearn who we are, or at least who we used to be.
Freedom-honoring, Freedom-respecting, Freedom-defending, Freedom-loving, Freedom-earning Americans. It is still in us, and it is surely not too late for it to still be who we are.
In any case, if an oppressed people in a soccer stadium in Maracaibo, Venezuela, can still believe it of us, that ought to be as good a reminder as any that we can still believe it, too.
Happy Fourth.
