Murphy's Laws of Thermodynamics

Murphy's First Law of Thermodynamics: at any given moment, in any given place, all the wrong people are on fire.

Murphy’s Second Law of Thermodynamics: The likelihood that a particular person will be on fire is in inverse proportion to how much they deserve to be.

Chris Walters, 2010

Belgium 2-1 USA

A Good Loss.

In 2002, USA were denied the chance to progress from the Quarter Finals of the World Cup by referee Hugh Dallas, who laughed off appeals for handball against Torsten Frings. It was handball. It's at about 2'05":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLtT0imwdCQ

Had it been called, the resulting penalty would have equalized, and that would have changed the game.

Dallas also refused to penalize Germany for timewasting, diving, and gamesmanship, which were rampant among them when Michael Ballack played for them. They required all of these tricks to hold on to a 1 goal lead against us.

In 2006, we finished bottom of the group. A large part of this was the fault of manager Bruce Arena, and his selection of Goalkeeper Kasey Keller over Tim Howard. Contrary to the mythology of US Soccer at the time, Kasey Keller was a mediocre keeper, at best, by this time. He was just senior to Tim Howard, and better known.

And he was terrible. He let in 3 against Czech Republic. Our first match. At no point did the team look comfortable with him at the back. We got rattled, and never fully recovered.

But we had a chance against Italy. They, of course, didn't come to play. They came to throw elbows when the ref wasn't looking, and dive when he was. Approximately 1:00:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqnmbjE8i6E

They hadn't counted on 2 things: The ref looking, and sending De Rossi off, and Brian McBride playing on after he received treatment. We drew 1-1 against them, but they were flopping and protesting and wasting every second.

We got it all wrong, but Italy still couldn't beat us in a straight match.

In 2010, while Ghana did beat us, they spent both periods of extra time after the goal, wasting time. They stopped playing, and started gaming. I was insulted; they were better than that, and should not have to behave like Italy.

This time, Belgium beat us. We were not robbed of any chances, Belgium did not resort to bullshit. We failed to score when it counted. They were better than us.

This is the first time I have no hostility toward anyone involved. It's a clean loss. And, according to one English Football site: "Jurgen Klinsmann's USA side pretty much took the admiration of everyone watching."

The better team won. But they won't always be the better team. This USA side was better than in 2002. Against that Germany, this USA would have scored 3. The future is very bright. For US Soccer, at least.