The U.S. men were in the middle of their greatest soccer run ever. If they won this game, they would be in the gold-medal match. They had played stunningly the first few rounds. And so, we sat in the stands with some Spanish fans and waited for the inevitable American takeover of men's soccer. The Spanish fans had painted their faces with little flags of Spain, and they looked so worried.
Soccer is life in Spain.
There's no explaining how devastating it would be for Spain to lose an important game to the United States in soccer. It would be, I suppose, some football team from Beijing coming into Arrowhead Stadium and beating the Chiefs in the playoffs. As it turned out, there were no worries. Spain scored a goal very quickly, and then another, and then the Spanish had about 28 chances to score again before the end of the first half. Talk about getting blitzed.