America F*@K Yeah!

Well now I know why I have felt an uneasy sense of forboding ever since the World Cup began. The USA’s 0-3 annihilation to the Czech Republic confirmed all of my worst fears about what to expect. On and off the field the Americans were an embarrassment.

First I’ll regress back to the few days before June 12th. The cup started last Friday and I made my way up to Gelsenkirchen for the match against Ecuador and Poland. I actually got tickets for the game on the way from two Brits who had extra tickets. They sold them to me for face value. The atmosphere was actually tentative on the Poland and the Ecuador side for both fans. You could sense neither side was confident with their team’s chances. The lack of cheering made for some rather staid pictures before the game. I actually didn’t make it in either cause they wanted me to check my camera’s in so I decided instead to just resell the ticket for 10 euros extra then I bought it and watch the game from a bar near the train station.

I also wanted to get back in time to get ready for the next day when American fans were arriving. I had made contact with some American’s traveling together in a tour group arrainged by this guy out of Kansas City, Pat Ryan. A bunch of them were going to dress up in Elvis jumpsuits and I thought it would be a good photo op. They got there at 7:15 in the morning and I followed them from Dusseldorf airport to Cologne Germany where they were staying. They were a good bunch of guys having a good time, but they definitely were not a hardcore group of USA fans, who I kept meeting over and over again.

I actually can not tell you how many USA fans I met that were actually had never been to a game before or very few that were at the World Cup. It was shocking in more ways than one, but I’ll write more about that later.

After the Elvis fans made it to Cologne and checked into their hotel I said goodbye and went to check my email. It ended up getting really hot and I ended up lost but eventually found my was to an internet terminal. While there my friend Joel called up. I met him at the 2002 World Cup and he is hardcore. The first day there he actually ended up breaking his ankle. For another week he hobbled around on it before the pain got the better of him and he had to return to the USA. It was either that or lose the ankle.

This time for the first part of the cup he brought his dad, Shelly, who is 65 and just recently retired to his first World Cup ever to get a taste of the event.

I ended up hanging out with them most of the next few days. Joel let me crash on the floor of his hotel in Cologne for the night before and after the game, which was great because it was a lot closer to the action then my place in Erfurt.

Cologne was a good location for the games. A lot of fans were located there or passing through, including a huge contingent of Brazilian fans because the city was the home base location for the Brazilian national team during the World Cup.
On Sunday the Portugal-Angola game was played in Cologne and Joel was able to score some tickets face value from some English fans (you can not believe how many English fans there are here in Germany, Its insane how many there are, and a lot of them have tickets to matches, just not English matches).

I went there with Joel and Shelly, and it was Shelly’s first World Cup game. He was a World Cup virgin. It actually ended up being a great game. Portugal came out storming and got an early goal against Angola, but they recovered and held Portugal scoreless the rest of the game. An entirely respectable showing, which is not what I can say about the USA unfortunately.

When we got back it was about midnight and Joel and I thought it would be fun to go out and Shelly, even though 65 was up for the romp around town.

So we walked around and found the only party going on down near the fan fest. There were Brazilian and Portugese and English fans and then the same Elvis group that I had photographed a day earlier.

Appearently wearing an Elvis suit is a huge chick magnet in Germany cause the Elvis guys were doing really well with the local ladies. Who would have thunk?

But although this was all fun and games I still felt this kind on unease going on. I couldn’t place it but not that its happened I know what it was:

The USA was going to get killed in the first game.

The feeling had troubled me ever since the cup had started and pretty much everything that happened on game day confirmed that.

After waking up around 11 am I said goodbye to Joel and Shelly and made my way back to the Elvises. They were supposed to play a soccer game against some other fans. However the partying of the last night left them sluggish and the ended up just heading for the train to Gelsenkirchen and the game.

The train ride was packed with Americans. I met a good group of fans from around D.C. and then another group from Connecticut. There were some Americans who just graduated from college and had spent several months traveling around South America and Europe that had painted themselves red, white and blue so that was fun.

I wish I could say things got better in Gelsenkirchen, but unfortunately they didn’t. Getting off the train the USA fans were everywhere and someone pointed us at the gathering of US Fans outside the stadium. The energy was definitely pounding but unfortunately it let me with a sour taste.
Some of the chants were done by some old school New York Cities fans which were fun “We know you hate us, but we love your women!” but there was a group of fans that were taking it way too far, including my favorite: “We’re Americans. F**k you!”

Not only were they arrogant and obxonious they were completely clueless.

When I got to the stadium they would boo the Czech Republic team when they came on the field and before the game.

I was in the “Sam’s Army” section were the fans were supposed to stand and chant the whole game. In fact besides the New York and some DC guys there were about 100-150 fans standing up and cheering, even less than there were in Korea.

Sure there were five thousand or ten thousand fans, but they were useless.

At the beginning of the game I stayed near the New York guys to help with the cheers. It was O.K. But once we went down that quick goal I knew we were in trouble.

Before the goal, the USA Fans had been loud, and cheering and shouting. One early goal and they shut up.

I was looking around in the fans eyes and you could see shock and resignation: “This isn’t supposed to happen? Were supposed to win.”

You don’t want to know how many fans I talked to that said we were going to clobber the Czech Republic. Maybe the USA team thought we were as well cause once the goal happened it was like they didn’t know what to do. The rest of the game the team played like they didn’t even know what to do.

I went down to a section in “Sam’s Army” and tried to lead the chants from down there but no one got up and no one chanted, except for the occasional “USA”

When the second goal happened it was even worse. The fans were stunned.

I wish I could say it got better in the second half. But you all know what happened. And to be honest I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I knew this was coming and I was waiting for it to happen and it did.

So now its over.

I could go into dozens of analysises of what went right and what went wrong but what’s the point? The only thing the USA could do now is win two games and get a little luck to advance. If it happens it would be a great story. If it doesn’t then I’ll still get a story, just not the one I and a lot of other hardcore fans wanted.