Something truly amazing happened last week. Did you hear it?
The United States’ national soccer team turned out one of the most improbable outcomes in the history of the sport at the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa.
After being soundly defeated in their first two games of the tournament by scores of 3-1 against Italy and 3-0 against Brazil, Team USA needed a borderline miracle simply to make it out of pool play and into the semifinals. In need of a second-place finish in Group B to advance into the semis, the Americans had to beat an Egyptian team which had already beaten Italy — plus hope that Brazil beat Italy — just to force a three-way tie for second place in the pool.
Furthermore, in order to win the second-place tiebreaker, Team USA had to have a better goal differential than either Egypt or Italy. They were in an almost impossible position to do that, as they would need to beat Egypt by at least three goals and hope that Brazil beat Italy by at least three goals just to tie the Italians in goal differential.
Then, in order to beat Italy on the next tiebreaker, the Americans had to finish with more total goals in their three games than Italy had in their three games.
The chances of all this happening were about as good as Rosie O’Donnell saying that she plans to marry Donald Trump, that every fan at the soccer stadium should carry a concealed weapon, and that she’s going on a diet.
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