U.S. soccer players happy to have tie with Slovenia
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa -- Was it a goal or wasn’t it?
Did the U.S, get robbed in Friday’s World Cup tie with Slovenia? Or did referee Koman Coulibaly get the call — whatever the call was — right?
“I didn’t see anything,” U.S. midfielder Benny Feilhaber said.
Considering the fact Feilhaber was on the field when Maurice Edu scored the goal that was disallowed, Feilhaber’s confession is almost as hard to believe as Coulibaly’s call.
But Feilhaber wasn’t really pleading ignorance. He was asking for a little perspective. Because the U.S. didn’t lose a 3-2 win, it won a 2-2 tie, keeping alive its hopes for a berth in the second round.
“At this point, we got a result that we would have taken hands down at halftime,” said Feilhaber, who came on after intermission to help the U.S. stage an improbable rally from a 2-0 deficit.
“Losing the game, we’re out of the tournament basically. So we’ve got to be really happy with what we achieved. I’m on a big high right now.”
And while the goal that put him there won’t be debated or replayed nearly as often as the score that was disallowed, Michael Bradley’s game-tying goal with eight minutes left in regulation may wind up being the play that saved the World Cup for the U.S.
“If the game ends 2-1, we’re probably out of the tournament,” Feilhaber said.
It started innocently enough with Landon Donovan’s long ball from just inside the midfield stripe. Jozy Altidore outfought a Slovenian defender at the top of the box to knock the ball down while Herculez Gomez raced across the goal mouth, taking the rest of the defense with him.
That left Bradley, hustling after the play unmarked, to collect the loose ball and bang it home.
“It was a great ball by Landon, a great layoff by Jozy and a great finish by Michael,” Feilhaber said. “So it was a great goal all in all.”
A great finish — that pretty much sums up the Americans’ style in this World Cup. They fell behind England in the fourth minute of their opener before rallying to tie. And they had twice as big a mountain to climb in the second half against Slovenia.
“It’s not like we sit there before the game and say to ourselves, ‘All right, let’s wait until we go down, 1-0, 2-0, before we start playing,’ ” Bradley said. “I think the mentality of the team has always been that, no matter what happens, we’re going to give everything we have and fight to the end.”
But didn’t they really win this one? What about the goal ...
“I don’t know. I have no comment about that play,” Bradley said. “There’s no point in talking about it.”
Instead, Bradley wanted to talk about the comeback, his team’s heart, their determination. This, he insisted, wasn’t a frustrating game to forget. It was an inspirational one to build on.
“Put it behind us? Why would we want to put it behind us?” Bradley challenged a questioner. “We were down, 2-0, at halftime.”
Feilhaber agreed. Asked what the team would take out of the game, he didn’t hesitate.
“The momentum,” he said.
“We’re definitely a stubborn bunch. We’re not going to let any team win easily. It was a great second half.”
And Feilhaber didn’t see anything in the final four minutes that changed his mind.
