Timing and luck often dictate a team\u2019s success at tournaments. And the co-hosts have players coming into form at just the right time<\/p>\n
Bruce Arena once said that if his United States men\u2019s national team had contested the 2006 World Cup a year earlier, the Americans would have done much better than the joyless, winless group stage elimination they suffered through<\/a>. That team, he felt, had peaked during qualifiers and were past their best \u2013 despite being ranked an absurd fourth in the world by Fifa \u2013 when the World Cup kicked off.<\/p>\n Four years earlier, when the USMNT stunned the 2002 World Cup by nearly reaching the semi-finals, his side benefited from time\u2019s relentless march, Arena argued<\/a>. The Americans, cohesive and energized then, upset a golden Portugal generation<\/a> that had already lost its sheen, 3-2, to spark their run.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Timing and luck often dictate a team\u2019s success at tournaments. And the co-hosts have players coming into form at just the right time Bruce Arena once said that if his United States men\u2019s national team had contested the 2006 World Cup a year earlier, the Americans would have done much better than the joyless, winless … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}