We had just walked out of the disappointing US loss to the Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen. To be fair, they were ranked #2 in the world at the time, but that's no excuse, we played like crap... but I digress. My good friend Andrew was wearing his San Jose Earthquakes Brian Ching jersey, and this large, drunk, Czech man comes up to him, puts his arm around him, and just says "Brian Ching will score goals.", then walks away. It was awesome. To this day, every time I see Ching play, I can't help but think of that day.
Which brings us to yesterday (June 15th, 2008). Brian Ching did in fact score goals. And wow. Just. Wow. It was a massacre. As we were walking from the parking lot to the Home Depot center (or the HDC as it's sometimes called), I jokingly said "So, we're going to win 8-zip right?". Little did I know, that apparently I'm clairvoyant.
I won't bore you with the details of who scored when, but at the end of the game 5 US players were on the scoresheet with a total of 8 goals. We outshot them 22 to 2, with 14 of our shots being on goal to their zero. US records were set for the fastest goal ever scored (53 seconds into the game), the largest margin of victory (8 goals), and tied for the highest score ever put up by the US national team. All in all, a great way to start our 2010 World Cup campaign.
By the end, I actually felt kind of bad for the Babados players. This is only the first leg in a 2 game series, where goals will be aggregated to determine the final score. As you can see from the picture below, we were right by their bench, close enough to see the looks of despair on their faces as the US scored goal after goal after goal.
In the end, I think Clint Dempsey said it best: "We're not going to say we're going to go out and win the World Cup after playing Barbados," Dempsey said. "Nothing against them. They came out and tried hard, but we're supposed to win these types of games decisively."
And win decisively we did.
