‘How the United States Missed the World Cup, Minute by Minute’. Yesterday, the United States Men’s National Team—with a 2-1 loss to Trinidad and Tobago—failed to qualify for next year’s World Cup. The last time this happened was 1986.

A lot of things went wrong to get us here, but I’m still upset. A few brief, emotional, and irrational thoughts:

• Missing the World Cup will take a lot of wind out of the sails for United States soccer. It really felt like we were building up some good momentum, too.
• Unlike other World * events, the World Cup is actually a worldwide competition, which makes it objectively¹ cooler.
  
• The World Cup is only held every four years, which means I still have the rest of 2017 to finish before the four-year-countdown can start.
• Does this mean no new jerseys? If there’s one thing a World Cup could guarantee, it’s that some designer at Nike would tweak a gradient on the old kits, and we’d be happy to pay for it.
• Who do I root for now?

Wednesday, 11 October 2017