Landon Donovan's added time winner set off a series of reactions around the American soccer whateversphere. Bars exploding everywhere, blogs waxing poetic, yours truly and a ginger-colored man babbling on about "what it all means."
It's all very natural. When something of note happens, we immediately scramble to slot it smoothly into the G.O.A.T (Greatest of All Time) ladder - as if we're at all capable of appreciating a moment properly so soon after it happens. Perspective comes with time, emotions removed and furor long dead.
More interesting to me than where the U.S. win over Algeria and that singular moment of Donovan slotting it home ranks is how our view of where it ranks is affected by when it happened. In the bigger picture of American soccer, there are clearly bigger goals; without Paul Caligiuri's "Shot Heard Round the World" for example, there's a chance the U.S. soccer timeline wouldn't be as far along as it is. John O'Brien's goal against Portugal in 2002 is undeniably massive, and we couldn't talk about great American goals without mentioning Joe Gaetjens and 1950. From a "most important victory" perspective, yesterday's win is already being mentioned as one of the biggest ever from people at the highest levels of the game in the U.S.
“The is the biggest win we’ve ever had for so many reasons. One is obviously the passion in which it happened. And the second is the overcoming of adversity not just today but the last game. And three, most of the country was tuned into the game." - Sunil Gulati
Is it the biggest? Maybe, maybe not. Rankings like these are arbitrary and rife with the biases of those doing the ranking. Is it more about history (1950 is tough to beat, then)? Is it about a return to the world stage (the aforementioned Caligiuri goal to beat T&T is the winner here)? Or is it about World Cup success (Dos a Cero, 2002)? Context matters too; the rankers may give more weight to the wider impact of the win, both on the fan base for soccer and the growth of game in this country, than to the pure glory of it all. In that case, even beating Colombia on an own goal in 1994 is a landmark victory because it gave World Cup '94 a greater impact than that of just a summertime curiosity.
This win, the one that led to the bar roofs lifting off and the hyperbole we're all wading in at the moment, becomes "the greatest" for some because it's the most recent of the "the greatest." It's that simple; now almost always means more than then, especially for a sport like soccer in a country like the United States. The confluence of factors, including television, Internet, fifteen years of professional domestic play behind us, and the money available to spread the word make beating Algeria in dramatic fashion to go through to the knockout rounds, and win the group to boot, a historic win of epic proportions. More people are watching, or might run into a bit of coverage, than even in 2002; if the Americans lose to Ghana on Saturday and fail to match their best World Cup performance in the modern age, it could have a detrimental effect on the win over Algeria in retrospect. But part of the importance of winning that game and going through to Stage 2 is who saw it, who is talking about it today, and how those people will move forward with a different appreciation for the sport.
It also matters when Donovan scored. Most of us were counting on disappointment by the time injury time rolled around; after ninety minutes of wasted chances and dented crossbars, what other result made sense? The Americans couldn't find the net; it just wasn't their day. If you were anything like me, you were dreading the coming autopsies, and already a bit angry that this was how it was going to end, that the words would be harsh, that the trip home would be an injustice. That the goal came so near the final whistle, snatching victory from the jaws of despair in the most clichéd movie-ending manner possible, is a sports universal; the new and the uninformed didn't need help from soccer fans to understand what just happened. If soccer is a foreign language to many Americans, then Donovan's goal is the bit of the language that needs no translation.
American soccer will now move forward with this win and Donovan's goal in its proverbial trophy case. Moments like yesterday are special because they're rare, but also because they become common experience when performed on the biggest stage. There's no stage bigger than the World Cup and the times we live in aided in making this win common experience. How that common experience affects the great popularity of the game is uncertain, but it's the possibilities that have us ranking USA 1, Algeria 0 so highly.
Yesterday may not have been the biggest win in American soccer history , but the when it happened certainly gets it on the list.
