Not against Mexico though. Definitely WC’s a more prestigious tournament, but as long THIS Argentina squad brings its best players and wants to win, this is a bigger hill to climb and means more about U.S. progress. Agreed this tournament as the whole means less—but Argentina wants that hardware. Doesn’t matter either…

If he had a good game against Argentina, it could be worth a lot of money for him!

Don’t forget third place match!!

I see it both ways. If we somehow snaked to the finals, I don’t really care how it happens. If we hold our own against Argentina, that will be satisfying in it’s own right, win or lose. Losing to Venezuela would be depressing and getting demolished by Argentina would also suck.

Our form so far in the tournament is a step up in our class and skill. Some degree of that is a prerequisite for beating Argentina by any score, in any fashion. Taking the two squads right now, we already know Argentina would win AT LEAST 8 out 10 times, likely 9 out of 10 times and possibly 10 out of 10 times. But…

Argentina BROUGHT an A team! They are in their own dry spell and want to win this tournament!

Beating Argentina this year would be more of an achievement. The reason that victory against Mexico is remembered is because it advanced U.S. to the final eight, not because it was Mexico that was vanquished. In fact, Mexico being the opponent is half the reason the U.S. made it to the final 8.

Yeah but it was Mexico. We had already beaten them numerous times in qualifying and gold cups and friendlies before WC 2002.

Well, Colombia’s latest surge in quality has come after the reforms in that country so this phase doesn’t really fit your narrative. But agreed on the Valderrama era. (They kind of sucked in between though.)

That 5-0 shellacking was a B- squad for the U.S. though. Not really a good example. That said, I do believe Argentina is capable of beating U.S. by 4 goals or more. They would probably take their foot off the gas at around 3 though.

Yeah but 2-0 leads back to back versus Spain and then Brazil in a meaningful tournament—that was absolutely the peak of U.S. Soccer right there. Brazil just annihilated them from that point though.

Yeah still great game for the U.S. but it was a shooting gallery for Spain the last 30 min or so.

Actually, Argentina would be smart to rest most of their starters against the U.S. and bring on fresh players for Tuesday’s game. They can leave the likes of Messi on the bench and only run him on the field for the last 20 minutes if they haven’t secured the victory yet. On the other hand, they might rest a bunch of…

Probably true except that nobody over 8 will cry.

Easy—just remember he’s the guy who played Blaine in Pretty in Pink.

I mean there’s no particular reason for some nobody NOT to fake something like this and post it. and a decent amount to potentially gain. and again, this would be soooo easy to fake. And it’s gone up by about 70k views since I watched it earlier today. And heck as much as I disliked listening to him cough and gasp, it…

I first thought was ‘why would he do this?’ Then I thought, ‘youtube ad revenue.’ Then I thought, ‘y’know this would be extremely easy to fake.’ Even if the ad revenue only amounted to a few hundred bucks or less. I’m not saying it’s a scam, but very few people are THAT dumb and, unless he was lying about it, he has…

Yeah that was my other thought—that he might’ve been ‘cheating’ the other way and had his weight shifted and it fucked up his reflexes.

In the brief snippet of the footage shown ‘this’ is defined as 13 full force baton blows (by my count) on a guy on the ground, making no aggressive moves, in fact barely moving.

I plan to bail too, as soon as I have an actual life and everything.