SAN FRANCISCO, California â€" As the United States Men's National Team (USMNT) trudged off the pitch following 45 minutes of soccer at Candlestick Park in a pre-World Cup tuneup match against lowly Azerbaijan here on Tuesday night, the team's dominant first half against Mexico some eight weeks before seemed nothing but a vague memory.
Sure, U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann trotted out a diamond midfield formation similar to the one that wreaked a half of havoc on Mexico on April 2. Sure, after last week's painful cuts that included American soccer legend Landon Donovan, Klinsmann had his final 23-man World Cup squad playing its first official game together. Sure, Azerbaijan was supposed to be an easy practice match before the World Cup's lethal Group G.
But through 45 minutes in San Francisco, none of that mattered. The U.S. looked sluggish as Azerbaijan played conservative defense and the first half ended in a nil-nil tie. The team's star striker, Jozy Altidore, looked overeager for kind whistles from the refs. The Americans who showed the most signs of life â€" Chris Wondolowksi, Graham Zusi and Alejandro Bedoya â€" are role players, not the guys who will have to carry the U.S. team through a tough group-stage draw.
In the second half, finally, a pair of goals would come. After the game Klinsmann called the contest "exactly what we needed at this point."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. With 16 days until the World Cup starts on June 12, Klinsmann and company didn't come to Candlestick to get a win, per se. They came to get ready.
And they weren't the only ones.
Casey Proud, president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Outlaws, before the USA versus Azerbaijan soccer match at Candlestick Park on May 27, 2014.
Image: Sam Laird, Mashable
Two hours before kickoff, Section K of the Candlestick parking lot was a throng of red, white and blue. From the flags raised over pickup trucks, to the cans of Pabst and Budweiser essential to the pre-game regimens of many, to the USA jerseys (yes, Donovan's was a popular item), to the T shirts, scarves and other accoutrements sported by fans, the section on the outskirts of the Candlestick parking lot was the American flag personified and plastered across every available surface.
Much of this came thanks to Casey Proud, president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Outlaws, the USMNT's nationwide body of hardcore supporters. Proud organizes gatherings such as this one and the "Night Before Party" that had taken place less than 24 hours prior at McTeague's Saloon not far from S.F. City Hall.
Dressed in his American Outlaws jersey, a stars-and-stripes bandana and soccer ball-shaped sunglasses, Proud was in his element before Tuesday night's match. He sipped beer from his left hand and water from his right. He MC'd goings-on in between greeting intrigued passersby with a hearty "Hey, where you from?"
Despite Proud's hardcore bonafides, however, the 28-year-old tech worker won't be following the team to Brazil. Pressing matters, you see, will require tending to to back home.
"Some of us have to hold down the fort," Proud explained over the pre-game tailgate party's thumping, bass-heavy soundtrack. "There's going to be people who want to know where to watch the games in the City. They want to know where A.O. is going to be so they can come cheer with us, come drink with us. We wanted a place for people to come watch in the City that's a little more involved than what you might get other places."
Just like for Monday's party, that place will be McTeague's. But whether in Brazil, at McTeague's or somewhere else entirely, local American Outlaws members will be together in spirit. At one point there in the Candlestick parking lot, the music died down and a hearty chant started up:
We love you
And where you go, we'll follow
Because we support the US
And that‟s the way we like it
ESPN2's broadcast team of Jon Champion and Taylor Twellman rehearses at Candlestick Park in San Francisco before calling the USA versus Azerbaijan match on May 27, 2014.
Image: Sam Laird, Mashable
The top level of Candlestick Park's press box offers a prime view of the "49ers Ring of Honor," a series of tributes that circles the top of the stadium and pays homage to Joe Montana, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott and other players who helped lead the red-and-gold to five Super Bowl titles when it called Candlestick home in the 1980s and 90s.
As a young man traveling the world in 1987, a Brit named Jon Champion visited this magnificently decrepit cement monolith for a look at American football. On Wednesday night, more than two decades into a professional broadcasting career that started at the BBC, Champion made his first trip back. The mission: To call his first game for ESPN's U.S. audience and prepare for his role as play-by-play man for matches from Brazil in June and July.
Later, inside ESPN's impressively decked-out production truck, producer Chris Alexopoulos would feed Champion cues and notes on upcoming promos and breaks. But the press box an hour before kickoff was a place for rehearsal, preparation and Sportscenter teaser segments. Champion opened a folder to show me his handwritten pre-match notes: Notes on the two teams, notes on important players, notes on referees, notes on broadcast partner Taylor Twellman and other notes he'd make note of during the night's ESPN2 broadcast.
"This is all done in a very different way from the way we'd do it in Europe," said Champion, who used to call soccer for ESPN's United Kingdom version. "From the lines of command, to the the way the pictures are cut, it's quite useful to go through now, rather than at the World Cup for the first time."
The view from inside ESPN's production truck during the second half of the USA versus Azerbaijan soccer match at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on May 27, 2014.
Image: Sam Laird, Mashable
Proud, his compatriots and the reported crowd of 24,688 fans at Candlestick were delivered some collective relief when reserve midfielder Mix Diskerud â€" a Norwegian-American who wavered between national squads before committing to the USA â€" rebounded an errant shot to put ball in net and break open the 0-0 tie game in its 75th minute.
Six minutes later, reserve forward Aron Johannsson â€" who was born in Alabama, raised in Iceland and still speaks English with a strong accent â€" headed in a corner-kick to produce the game's 2-0 final score.
Meeting with reporters in bowels of Candlestick shortly after the match's end, Klinsmann termed the tougher-than-expected result "fine."
He called the late scratch of star and captain Clint Dempsey with a groin injury "not serious at all." He called Altidore, who didn't get the goal he clearly wanted â€" perhaps needed â€" after a disappointing English Premier League season, "full of energy." He blamed Candlestick's notorious wind for disrupting the American attack. He said his team "found a way" to finally pressure Azerbaijan and get the win.
That assessment might sound optimistic to bloodthirsty USMNT fans hoping for golazos and a 5-0 blowout. But Klinsmann could be right â€" the Azerbaijanis played a pack-it-in defensive style the U.S. is unlikely to see in Brazil; his players had just come off what was, by all accounts, a grueling two weeks of training camp; and it was this 23-man group's first official game together.
Klinsmann's squad takes on Turkey in Harrison, New Jersey, on June 1 before concluding its domestic tuneup tour against Nigeria in Jacksonville, Florida on June 7.
Those matches will reveal a lot more about this team than could ever have been discovered against Azerbaijan at Candlestick Park. Equally certain, however: Escaping Germany, Portugal and Ghana to move on from ghastly Group G will take a much, much stronger showing than was delivered on Tuesday night.
Fortunately for the American team â€" as for the USMNT supporters eager to learn new chants, as for the media members still fine-tuning their World Cup games â€" Brazil 2014 doesn't kickoff for another two-plus weeks. There's still time, fleeting as it may be, to get ready.
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