I’m not going to lie to you, my wonderful readers… I had almost clicked “save” on a wonderful little article outlining the institutional bias of FIFA, how their officials never give us the benefit of the doubt, and how I hate having to cheer for England so early.

Then, the Lord made Landon Donovan, and it was Good.

THE UNITED STATES IS MOVING ON. And thanks to Univision - ESPN wouldn't let me watch, stupid corporate America - “El Estados Unidos, el primero del Grupo C”.

After pressuring the net all day long, a dozen of solid runs, plenty of great shots, a robbed goal on YET ANOTHER phantom offside call, a miss on an open net. I was ready to turn it in, and turn it off… and the absolute desperation of a team, of a country, came through in the clutch.

Association Football (what we Americans refer to as “soccer”) gets one chance every four years to win over 310 million people. One chance. And thanks to garbage officiating in 2002 and 2006 the sport lost us all. Now, it has us back.

The United States posted its first clean sheet victory in the World Cup, and is moving on to the Round of 16 as the top team in Group C.

There are times when I hate America (politics)… there are times when I love America (sports). And I feel right now like I did when our 4x100 Freestyle Relay team ran France’s cramping asses down in the pool two years ago. I feel like I did when Shawn Johnson and Paul Ham were taking home their gold. I feel almost as great as I did when the Colts finally topped the Patriots and got to the Super Bowl.

Congratulations football… you’ve got me.

We don’t yet know where the rest of the next round will land, but we do know that we can compete. We beat Spain last year in South Africa. We took a 2-0 lead into the half on Brazil (before giving up 3 excruciating goals to lose the Confederations Cup). We outplayed England, we “beat” Slovenia, and we BEAT Algeria. Not bad… for our 4th-tier athletes ;)

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