Photo: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images
Probably you woke up yesterday with no hope and a hangover, with a Tim Howard-shaped hole in your heart and a white USMNT jersey balled up in the corner. Or maybe that was just me.
Life goes on, America, even after our pretty good but far-from-great national soccer team is eliminated from the world's greatest sporting event. For one thing, we've got eight more World Cup games to watch, featuring all of the teams that are legitimately excellent at soccer and pretty much exactly those that deserve to be there. Also, there's the #thingsTimHowardcouldsave meme on Twitter. And of course there's Game of Thrones, coming next March.
Here are some other things to be thankful for:
1. U.S. soccer is getting better. Really. I spent an embarrassing amount of time after the game arguing with people on Twitter, and via email, and even briefly in person, over the deafening roar of the Dropkick Murphys at a Boston bar, about American soccer. As soon as the team lost, in exciting but also dispiriting fashion to a Belgian team that was clearly superior, people trampled each other to leap off the bandwagon. "We still suck," my friend Mike texted me. "I'm not seeing any progress," a writer tweeted. They're both wrong. No national team has come farther in such a short time than the United States, which was basically born as a program in 1990, the first time we qualified for a World Cup since 1950. We were spoiled quickly by results—by beating Colombia at home in 1994, and making the quarterfinals in 2002—but while our coaches have always found 11 pretty good (and sometimes very good) players to put on the field, they were basically scraping the barrel to fill out a 23-man roster. Our weaknesses were most apparent at defense and striker, and that's where I see the most obvious progress. Our defenders no longer panic and boot the ball; they have skill, play with composure, and generally make the right passes. After a long period in which we lived on garbage goals and headers off corner kicks, our strikers now combine with the midfield and actually build up to scoring chances. Are those chances too few and far between still? Yes, but we're making huge strides. There were guys left off this roster who would have been locks in previous cycles, and I don't mean Landon Donovan (though obviously him, too). I mean Maurice Edu, Tim Ream, Danny Williams, Terrence Boyd, Juan Agudelo, Eric Lichaj, Jonathan Spector, Michael Parkhurst, and Brek Shea. Guys who barely played, especially Julian Green and John Brooks, are going to become stars.
2. Exciting reinforcements are coming soon. We all laughed when Jürgen Klinsmann used his final sub against Belgium, in the dying moments of a game that seemed lost, on Julian Green, the 19-year-old wunderkind whose selection on the team is widely thought to have been at the sacrifice of Landon Donovan. Green then scored an incredible goal. It was, I think, a glimpse of what's to come. There's a reason Bayern Munich started dressing Green for games when he was just 18. He has tons of potential, and could be a superstar by 2018. Hard on his heels is Gedion Zelalem, an Arsenal prodigy who is Ethiopian by birth but raised and discovered by scouts in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. If soccer gossip is to be believed, he's in the process of getting his U.S. citizenship now. If you'd have told me two months ago that I'd be excited about DeAndre Yedlin I'd have kicked you in the shins. I thought his selection on the team was pointless, that while he was fast and had potential, he'd played only a single full year in MLS, and would be out of his league against international competition. Tuesday, he proved me very wrong; he replaced a guy I considered irreplaceable (Fabian Johnson, who is awesome and will be back himself, by the way) and was one of the best players on the field. Other names to look out for: Luis Gil, Joe Corona, Joe Gyau, Sebastian Lletget, Marc Pelosi, Erik Palmer-Brown, Emerson Hyndman, Junior Flores, and Rubio Rubin. Some combination of these guys, plus Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Aron Jóhannsson, Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, and John Brooks (as well as possibly Terrence Boyd and/or Juan Agudelo) will form the core of the U.S. team through the next World Cup cycle. They will build upon the progress of this latest team, and play faster, more fluid soccer. The U.S. isn't likely to be Belgium by 2018, but we'll get there, probably sooner than most people think.
3. Wait, what about Tim Howard?
I know I said these were happy things, but this is an issue we must address. Most likely, that's the last World Cup for America's best player and quite possibly the greatest goalie we've ever produced. Howard will be 39 in Russia in 2018, and while he is such a phenomenal athlete that he could probably still be world-class at that point, he's likely to end his USMNT career with one of his best games ever. It's Brad Guzan's turn, and, once we all get over the shock of Howard's loss, we're going to learn to love him too. Guzan, who is 29 but looks 39—somewhere there is an obscure US Soccer bylaw that mandates all goalies be bald; perhaps it's about wind resistance?—starts for Aston Villa in the Premier League and is an incredible talent himself. I have said it before and I'll say it again now: He could start for most of the teams in the World Cup, including several that are still playing. So that's positive, right?
4. You don't have to wait until Russia 2018 to watch them play. Your first chance to see the next iteration of the USMNT is only a year away: At the 2015 Gold Cup, next summer. Beyond that, you should be very excited about the 2016 Copa America, the South American championship that will be held in the U.S. for this one special edition, meaning that Jürgen Klinsmann is sure to assemble his best possible team for a high stakes competition against the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The games will be played at stadiums all over the U.S. Dust off your Uncle Sam hat and see them play in person.
5. Last, but certainly not least: There are still incredible World Cup games to watch. The quarterfinals have basically lined up in the best possible way, if the goal is to assemble the eight best teams remaining. And that is the goal, right? All eight group winners won their knockout round games, meaning that there are no surprises left, unless you count Costa Rica, which we all picked last in a group that included England, Italy, and Uruguay—three of the eight nations that have actually won a World Cup. Los Ticos, though, won the group, and then outlasted Greece by playing nearly an hour with one less player. They deserve to be here, and will almost certainly lose to Holland. Friday's line-up is incredible, with the perennial contenders, Germany, facing a resurgent France that reminds me quite a bit of the 1998 team that won the World Cup. And then the host nation and favorites, Brazil, playing a second consecutive game against a young, dynamic South American rival, in Colombia. Brazil barely survived against Chile and faces an even better team now, led by the tournament's breakout star, James Rodríguez. It's hard to believe that Colombia's best player through qualifying—the goal-scoring machine Radamel Falcao—didn't even come to Brazil, due to injury, but Rodríguez, just 22, has more than made up for his loss. The fourth and final quarterfinal is Belgium versus Argentina, and while Argentina has the best player alive, Lionel Messi, Belgium has the best ginger, Kevin De Bruyne, and also probably the better team. While it would be a great story to see Messi and Argentina play Neymar and Brazil in the World Cup final, I have a feeling one of them won't survive the weekend. Probably that one is Messi, and he'll have his defense to blame. That said, I've been wrong about most predictions so far, and I'm fine with that. The 2014 World Cup has been bonkers, easily the best Cup of my lifetime, and the best thing that could possibly happen over these final three rounds would be for it to keep surprising me. Let's cherish what we have left before it too is gone, like Team USA.