Day 16
Today I'm in more of a daze than anything. I'm still reeling from the loss that US soccer suffered yesterday. I was stoked coming over to Germany, thinking that our team would definately make it out of the group and into the knockout stage. If we faltered there, it was still successful. I think we ended up in 25th place...not very impressive. I'm disappointed because of all of the time and effort that I put into making plans and preparations for coming over mainly to see our boys advance into the second round...and they played like they didn't want to be here. It's like they thought they could just show up to the match and the other team will give in. The only time our boys played like they wanted to win was after 2 men were ejected from the game against Italy...that's the only time they decided it would be a good idea to put for any sort of effort. To me, it's almost a slap in the face that they couldn't give any more than what they displayed in 2.5 games. I have an EXTREMELY bum ankle/foot, but I was ready to strap on some boots, put on a jersey, gritted my teeth and gone out there and do it myself...but I'm afraid I would have made a couple of the players look bad (the ones just loafing around the field).
So, to get up for another game today wasn't the height of excitement it was 6 months ago. Besides, after standing for the 90 minutes at the match yesterday and the long walk back to the car, I can barely put any weight on my foot today, but I'm still gonna give it a go. We check out of THE CASTLE, got in the car and headed down to Kaiserslautern. This is where one of the major US bases (Ramstein) is located, and you could definately tell the American influence in the city itself as well as the me-first attitude of the Americans that we saw. Very disappointing.
We needed to get to the game early so that John could pick up his ticket. Unfortunately, I got his ticket after I had gotten Rico and my tickets, not knowing he was going to be joining us. The game was quite a shooting affair between Spain and Saudi Arabia. Not one of the "big" matches in the grand scheme of thing, but very exciting. Spain had put in some of their second-level players in order to save some of the stars for the next round, but the "second-tier" players are still playing some of the best clubs in the world. The poor, poor Saudis...it seemed like Spain took a shot every time they had the ball with some amazing saves by the Saudi goalie who, by the way, managed to hurt himself in the last 2 matches we have seen the Saudis play. Either he's prone to injury or just not a very good player who always wanted to waste time. All in all, the game was entertaining with the Spaniards winning 1-0.
After the match, we travelled down to a town called Heidelburg. It's a town on the Nekar River with quite a large, OLD castle looming over the entire city. It's set up on the hill/mountain side looking down toward the river with the town therebetween. Once we checked into the hotel, each of us was hungry and wanted to watch the late match that day, so we walked a couple blocks down to a bar/restaurant that had a TV AND FOOD. We watched the French shoot their way into the second round and then headed back to the hotel for the night. No pictures today as we didn't take many and Knuckles has already posted the highlights.
'til tomorrow,
Rocco
So, to get up for another game today wasn't the height of excitement it was 6 months ago. Besides, after standing for the 90 minutes at the match yesterday and the long walk back to the car, I can barely put any weight on my foot today, but I'm still gonna give it a go. We check out of THE CASTLE, got in the car and headed down to Kaiserslautern. This is where one of the major US bases (Ramstein) is located, and you could definately tell the American influence in the city itself as well as the me-first attitude of the Americans that we saw. Very disappointing.
We needed to get to the game early so that John could pick up his ticket. Unfortunately, I got his ticket after I had gotten Rico and my tickets, not knowing he was going to be joining us. The game was quite a shooting affair between Spain and Saudi Arabia. Not one of the "big" matches in the grand scheme of thing, but very exciting. Spain had put in some of their second-level players in order to save some of the stars for the next round, but the "second-tier" players are still playing some of the best clubs in the world. The poor, poor Saudis...it seemed like Spain took a shot every time they had the ball with some amazing saves by the Saudi goalie who, by the way, managed to hurt himself in the last 2 matches we have seen the Saudis play. Either he's prone to injury or just not a very good player who always wanted to waste time. All in all, the game was entertaining with the Spaniards winning 1-0.
After the match, we travelled down to a town called Heidelburg. It's a town on the Nekar River with quite a large, OLD castle looming over the entire city. It's set up on the hill/mountain side looking down toward the river with the town therebetween. Once we checked into the hotel, each of us was hungry and wanted to watch the late match that day, so we walked a couple blocks down to a bar/restaurant that had a TV AND FOOD. We watched the French shoot their way into the second round and then headed back to the hotel for the night. No pictures today as we didn't take many and Knuckles has already posted the highlights.
'til tomorrow,
Rocco
posted by Rocco at 2:15 PM
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