The FIFA World Cup Thread #2/Sports Thread #2 For 6/18/10: US With Historic Comeback But Denied A Late Winner

Photo from Getty Images and FIFA.com

The Full Analysis:
1) Koman Coulibaly should never be allowed to ref another World Cup game again, until he has proven that he can be a competent officer of any future contest on the highest of level. What a disaster he was.

2) Landon Donovan exhibited today why he is semi-world class at the very least. Terrific 1st goal, and should of had an assist on the what should have been the winning goal on great service at the back of the post there. Awesome performance.

3) Michael Bradley will not be playing at Borussia Mononchglabach next season. His performance in that second half, especially his VITAL 2nd goal, shows that he is worth a bigger club in either the Bundesliga, or somewhere in the Barclays Premier League.

4) Oguchi Onyewu, and even Steve Cherundolo, were shells of their terrific shelves from England on Saturday. Onyewu made the two crucial mistakes just like he did against the Czech four years ago, leading to the two Slovenia goals and having the US come from behind yet again.

5)Finally, and most importantly, the United States has got to play well when they are the favorites and they are an elite team expected to do things. They have to hold up to their mantle of acting like a semi-big boy and make no stupid mistakes in the back like they did today.

That centers around Onyewu clearly, but everyone else on the backline needs to heed that message and believe in it. The foundation of a team capable of winning deep in a tournament is a sound difference if you don't feature attacking players of the calibre of a Spain, an Argentina, a Brazil, or a Holland (and maybe today Germany, with how they showed ability down to 10 men despite losing today).

Hopefully Bob Bradley will embed that into his team, because they will be the favorites once more against Algeria, no matter how much they get slaughtered today by England.

The clear Man of the match is this semi-world class player, at the very least:

And the phantom call:

Photo from Getty Images and FIFA.com

Donovan is still wondering how we don't have third points.