Counterpoint - Yes The US Should Be Celebrating Today's Loss Because Getting Into The Round Of 16 Was Goal Number 1

Just to quickly counterpoint Dave’s blog. I understand the whole sentiment that cheering a loss feels weird but that’s missing the point of today. Yeah the US lost but they advanced in a group that everyone thought was the most difficult.  The dreaded “Group of Death”. Tons of experts picked America to not make it out of this group. Alexis Lallas was playing naysayer as late as this morning.

Goal number 1 when qualifying for the World Cup is to advance out of Group Stage. You know who would have celebrated a loss today that put them into the next round? Spain and England and Italy. It’s a tough tournament, and the US did enough to get to the round of 16. Just because the games played out this way doesn’t mean you don’t celebrate. What if the Americans had started with a loss against Germany, tied Portugal then in the last game beat Ghana with 5 minutes left to advance. That’s exactly what happened just in a different order. It’s not game by game, it’s 3 games and finding enough to get to the knock out stage and we did that today. It’s weird to celebrate a loss sure, but that doesn’t indicate a losing attitude or “bad vibe”. The US team’s goal still is to win the entire tournament, it’s a long shot, but it’s still their goal. So saying they shouldn’t have cheered today is wrong. They accomplished something only 16 teams in the world accomplished, sorry they’re a little happy about that.

PS

The exact same thing happens in baseball every year. A team will lose on the night they clinch and still celebrate. They’re not celebrating the loss, they’re celebrating a larger achievement. Exact same thing here. They achieved something today, something a lot of people didn’t think they could do.