The latest FIFA World Rankings have the U.S. ranked as the fourth best in the world.

Although the U.S. may be ranked in the top 20 nations in the world, there is no way that they can be anywhere near the top 4. I don’t think anyone can honestly say that the U.S. would beat France, Portugal, Argentina, England, Italy, or Germany in a match.

The fact remains that I would be very surprised if the U.S. even made it out of their group. They have the Czech Republic, Italy, and Ghana in their group, and I think they will be doing well if they finish with one win and one draw. Now while I think that a World Cup failure is in store for the U.S. team, I don’t look forward to the inevitable backlash from the U.S. media, if and when the failure of the U.S. team occurs. The only extensive coverage that soccer has received in the 4 years that I have been living in the U.S. was when they made their unlikely run to the quarterfinals in the previous World Cup - and the coverage was hardly impartial. The problem with sports coverage in the U.S. is this: if the U.S. is performing excepetionally well, then it will be in the news, but if they aren’t performing well, soccer will suffer because the World Cup will be pushed into the shadows of the mainstream media.

So I’m stuck between hoping that the U.S. is put in its place in regards to their world ranking, but also hoping that the media will cover the sport in the manner that it deserves. Soccer is the only true world sport, but that doesn’t matter in the U.S. where the media coverage for Football, Basketball, and Baseball runs supreme - these are the only sports that matter over here, and two out of three of these sports are uniquely American.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.