Relief trickled down the Germans’ spines along with the sweat an athlete only feels after he stops running. Goalkeeper Oliver Kahn flopped on his back, spent by the effort required to shut out a worthy opponent.
Disappointment puckered Landon Donovan’s elfin face, making him look at last like the kid he is. Veteran Earnie Stewart caught him in a big brother’s headlock, rumpled his hair, chucked him under the chin. There’ll be more where that came from, little buddy.
Once, the Americans would have been tickled to step on the field. Once, the Germans would have been ticked to win by a mere 1-0. Friday, the Germans were glad to get out alive and the Americans allowed themselves a moment to be crestfallen before they shook hands. After years of small steps forward and a few backward, the U.S. soccer team took two stairs at a time in this World Cup.
Three-time champion Germany has reached the quarterfinals six consecutive times (as West Germany through 1990); the United States hadn’t been there since 1930. Yet players from both teams–and German captain-in-perpetuity Franz Beckenbauer, commenting from a broadcast booth–agreed afterward that the United States had the better of the action.
“The Americans more than tested us,” Kahn said. “They threw everything at us. They had so much power and fight in them, and they had two days of rest less than us. They were in incredible condition.”
The Germans were crisply professional, bunkering in defensively after they took the lead. But the U.S. players are pros now, too, and they made Germany sing for its supper.
Donovan pierced the 18-yard box like a dart twice in the first half, forcing Kahn into one outstretched, fingertip save and another at point-blank range.
Bundesliga-based defender Tony Sanneh played both ends with verve, and had the last decent U.S. scoring chance–a header that rustled the side netting of the goal the way a bird dog noses around brush.
Claudio Reyna sported a shiner under one eye as if to visibly rebut any doubts about his toughness. Four years ago he seemed to shrink after a calculated clobbering by German defender Jens Jeremies.
The two scuffled briefly after Jeremies entered Friday’s game as a late sub. Reyna backed into Jeremies, whacked him in the leg and drew a foul. Point taken. The two embraced after the game as peers.
The soccer deities extracted retribution for the hand-ball the United States got away with against Mexico. Gregg Berhalter’s shot early in the second half struck Kahn, then glanced off the arm of defender Torsten Frings on the goal line. The hand-ball rule states contact must be intentional, that the man must play the ball instead of the other way around. Hand-balls giveth and they taketh away.
Germany’s Michael Ballack outjumped Sanneh for the winning header off a corner kick, and the team’s size advantage prompted some frustration fouls from the U.S. players. But the United States was no 98-pound weakling in this knockout game.
In 1994 the U.S. team played conservatively against Brazil in the second round, hoping at best to force penalty kicks. Friday, the team attacked for 90 minutes.
As for the future, to some extent, each quadrennium is a fresh start. The team’s accomplishment becomes part of a growing tradition, but tradition is like the human wall a team constructs before a free kick, ever-shifting and prone to gaps.
Germany, after winning in 1990, was thwarted by underdogs Bulgaria and Croatia in the quarterfinals of the next two Cups.
Defending champion France trudged home this time after the first round. The United States lasted longer than Argentina, but not as long as whichever upstart survives Saturday’s Turkey-Senegal match.
Progress in international soccer is actually less like climbing stairs than it is making a tricky mountain ascent.
The 2002 team drove stakes into the rock and left a fixed rope in place, showing one way to go up.
The next team will have to decide whether to take the same route, and try to get higher.
