Sometimes Americans deserve to win

I admit it: by the end of the Algeria match right now, I had switched sides and was pulling for the United States. For a simple reason, because they (we!?) deserved to win, and if they had lost, they would have been (twice) stung by injustice. It’s rare these days to feel sympathy for the U.S. as a co-equal player on the world stage, but that’s what I felt. I wish our international profile was one of co-equals, too. (And yes, now I go back to my predictable Third-World sympathy, hoping an African country gets through.)