The Group of Death!!

Today I was taking my daughter back to our seats at Joe and Mimma's Italian restaurant when something caught my eye.  It was Alexi Lalas face.  It looked....sad.

I'm no friend to Mr. Lalas.  I don't wish him harm, but if I see him walking down the street and he looks sad I won't bother to say too many comforting words to him.  But today was different.  Today was the World Cup draw and, aside from the death of Nelson Mendela, there is only one thing that could actually make Mr. Lalas sad.  I knew instantly what it was.

"Oh no!" I exclaimed to my daughter.  "We are in the group of death!!"

On the way home from the restaurant, my daughter asked "What is death?"

I answered candidly.  "It's what happens when someone dies."

She considers this for a moment, and started to whimper.  "I don't want to die!"

And then I realized it.  She thought we, my family, were literally in some kind of group of death, and we were now all going to die.

"No no no," I said.  "You see, Elizabeth, the USA has a soccer team and they will be playing in the World Cup this summer.  We've been drawn semi-randomly into a group with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana.  All of those teams are pretty good.  Only two will make it out.  Since the group is so hard, it is called the group of death."

"Well that is stupid!" she said.

"Aye, it is a bit of an exaggeration."

But wow, that is a tough tough group.  It will be hard for them to get out.  But do not fret, dear friends.  Crisis in America means....well, okay, it means Wolf Blitzer is coming and you should head for the hills with a crate of MREs and all the virgins you can find.  But in other cultures I have heard it said that crisis and opportunity mean the same thing.

What a great thing it would be if the USA could beat Germany!  If they could shut down Christiano Ronaldo!  If they could get revenge on the Ghanans for kicking them out of the last world cup!  My friends, Mr. Lalas, this does not need to be the doom of the United States.  Perhaps as a nation we will look at this time of strife many years from now and say "Huh?  What?  The world cup?  That's like hockey right?  What?  The USA has a team in the World Cup?  So that's like DC United right?  They can't get to the world cup?  What do you mean they can't get to the world cup?!  Why are you laughing?"

USA! USA! USA!