Wednesday, August 11. 13:00 PDT, and other times. Google isn't new, and for the love of god, don't rely on me.divbr //divdivThis one is being somewhat a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/sports/soccer/09soccer.html?hpw"blown out of proportion/a. While Mexico are uncharacteristically struggling in the qualifiers for 2010, the 5-0 stomping of the USA in the Gold Cup final doesn't matter, and their a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_rankings"FIFA ranking/a is a near historic low 30th (the USA is 12th), the USA do not win this match. Sorry.br //divdivbr //divdivWhy? Sure, the USA beat Spain, and played respectably against Brazil. However, in their last 23 matches in Mexico City, they are 0-22-1. No wins, one draw, and 22 defeats. Additionally, I tend to put more faith in the Elo rankings over the FIFA rankings. For example, the USA were ranked something silly like 4th for a while according to FIFA. Indeed this is true: a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_men%27s_national_soccer_team"4th in May of 2006/a. And didn't the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup_Group_E"USA look just great/a in Germany that summer? Elo have the USA 16th, Mexico 11th, though it should be said that this, too, is not 100% reliable, as I think Elo was overly affected by the Gold Cup performance; the previous month the USA were 9th according to Elo./divdivbr //divdivWhile the US players are a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=666468amp;sec=usamp;root=usamp;cc=5739"talking the good talk/a, I like the resurgent a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/sports/soccer/12soccer.html?_r=1amp;hpw"Giovani dos Santos/a, (shame he plays for Spurs however), and the US have had problems playing at strike35,000/strike 7,350 feet in front of strike18,000,000/strike 105,000 hostile fans./divdivbr //divdivSpeaking of altitude, I'm off to hike part of the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Crest_Trail"Pacific Crest Trail/a for a week or so in about half an hour, with my lovely partner, her father and a couple of her brothers (one of whom I understand is a fan of LGM). We'll be somewhere between 5,000 and 6,500 feet over our route, if I know how to read the map. Hence, I'll be off the grid for a spell, which means I'll miss this match, but at least I've got a fifth of Sazerac Rye Whiskey packed away in my provisions. I suspect it will come in handy./divdiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-8744720065400662120?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div
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