US eliminated from World Cup

Ghana (2) - USA (1)
Almost went into the half all tied up, but there was a fishy penalty called giving Ghana an easy penalty kick score. From there, the US just couldn't put something together, even though they made some decent strikes. I know a lot of folks feel that the penalty calls against the US are biased. But I think we need to stop blaming the refs. What we need to do is learn how to fake an injury when we lose possession of the ball. The rest of the world does this so well, they should give away artistic awards for best acting performance. We need to setup training camps like this...

Seriously, we just don't have the mentality to take a fall. The closest sport I can think of is Basketball, and we are taught that the defender has to plant themselves to draw the foul. That just doesn't work in soccer.

We also need to learn to take the refs out of the game. We need to learn how to call the game like the Europeans and South Americans. I remember playing against my first foreign team (Germans) and was awestruck at how well they called the game. If we were off-sides, all the defenders hands went up in the air, and the referee felt obligated to blow his whistle. If there was a slight chance of an accidental hand ball, all the surrounding German's hands went up. When the ball went out of bounce, they all pointed in their direction and before the whistle even blew, they were grabbing for the ball to through it back in. Well, an American can only take so much of this. Tug of wars over the ball and fist fights broke out until the Ref would start calling the game. But we learned quickly, as by end of the game everything that appeared to go our way, UP went our hands. Even the stuff that didn't go our way, UP go the hands. We also picked up on some key German words, like "Hinter!" (Got your Back). So when they were on the attack getting jammed up, I found that saying "Hinter" did an amazing thing, they would flick the ball back to me! So I would say "Thank you" and proceed to make haste to their end.

We will learn one of these days.