Watch This

USA Marches On!

Today, USA defeated Algeria 1-0.  Today, USA also defeated all the doubters, naysayers, and nonbelievers. All the English fans who weren’t worried about us, all the national pundits who slammed the US team, all the referees who blew calls against us:  Defeated.  And it was so sweet.

Landon Donovan’s 92nd minute strike was the best moment I’ve had as a US Soccer fan, and I’ve been alive for some great ones.  Up until now, that honor went to John O’Brien for his early strike against Portugal in the 2002 World Cup.  Today blew that away.

I was at Tigin Irish Pubs (the official US Soccer bar in St. Louis) for the match and there was red, white, and blue everywhere.

USA Makes Final Roster Cuts

I meant to do this yesterday but I was busy.  It happens.  Anyway, Bob Bradley made his final cuts from the provisional squad down to the 23 man team that will be representing the US in South Africa.  For the most part, I think he did a fine job.  One pick in particular confused me a bit, but we’ll get into that later.  First, let’s take a look at the team:

USA Qualfies for World Cup 2010

Conor Casey celebrates a goal

For the sixth straight time the United States will be playing in the World Cup Finals.  There were some dramatic moments in their 3-2 victory at Honduras, but the US came out on top, making their game against Costa Rica on Wednesday irrelevant.

The US needed three goals and a late missed penalty kick to put away the pesky Hondurans.  Striker Conor Casey picked a wonderful time to score his first two international goals when he found the back of the net in the 55th and 66th minutes.  Casey simply out-muscled the Honduran goalkeeper on his first goal, a header from the six yard box.  For his second, he was sent through on wonderful pass from Landon Donovan and he buried it in the corner.

Five minutes later, Donovan put the US ahead for good with a cracking free kick from the top of the box.

ESPYs

As many of you know, and probably saw, the ESPYs were on last night. For those of you that don’t know, the ESPYs is an annual awards show hosted by ESPN. This year Samuel L. Jackson hosted the show and did a pretty good job. There were funny parts and on the whole it went well but I think there have definitely been better ESPY nights in the past. We did get a small glimpse at what a day in the life of Peyton Manning is like, which was obviously my favorite part of the night. We also had some eye-candy on hand with two of my top three favorite super models being in attendance; Miranda Kerr and Marisa Miller. I would also like to add that Marisa Miller is a Vols fan, just to throw that out there.

On to the results: