dubag,

The US is playing Italy in Kaiserslauten (or however it's spelled) on my birthday. Hook a brother up with some tickets for his 27th and we'll party like rockstars.

Oh, and I talked to the guy with the tickets. He's not sure what he's going to do yet, but he said he'd let me know.

Italy vs America. America is going down I have to say.

You're probably right, Italia, but that's why the games are played.

It won't be the cakewalk it was for Italy in 1990 but Italy are the obvious favorites. Oh how I would love to beat them.

I'll be in Cologne Germany the day they play their opening match. The i'll be in Amsterdam the day The Netherlands plays their opening match.

If you recall Italy's win was only 1-0 in the white hot atmosphere of Rome. The Americans figured it out-defend fanatically and pray for a result. Only Zenga saving Vermes' close range shot allowed the Italians to win.

Of course it was mostly 1 way traffic most of the night.

It might just be very different 16 years on.

Honestly, I switched the Czechoslovakia/Italy results from '90 in my head (we lost to Czech 5-1) but as you said, the 1-0 scoreline against Italy wasn't very indicative of their dominance.

In 6 months, we'll find out what happens.

We were really overmatched by everyone in 1990.

Did ok in 1994, mostly becase we were at home.

1998, we simply stunk. Steve Sampson's roster selection being the biggest issue.

2002 we got rolling and should have beaten the Germans in the quarterfinals.

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Who screwed up so that we now have this stupid policy?

so with all this talk about the netherlands, i'm guessing the are the team to beat this year? i understand that van nistelrooy is a great player.

nope, not the team to beat. They are a good team that didn't get a spot in the first (best) pool. They were going to be matched with a pool 1 team automatically, making their group almost impossible to get out of for the other two teams in the group.