by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

ANAHEIM–The U.S. in the World Cup gets an opportunity to try and move up to the next level on Thursday with Germany. They got some competition against Germany and the U.S. has played very well. They played Portuagal to a 2-2 loss on Sunday but they have a opportunity to be the best team in the history of the United States as a soccer team as we know it today.

With the U.S. not considered a soccer country that’s changing as the U.S. team is now playing with the best of them in Brazil’s house. There are many power house teams here and the ratings for ESPN for the World Cup has been huge. Eventually the U.S. can be the team to beat someday and it’s going to be a battle for the U.S. on Thursday and it’ll be fun for the fans watching.

The Brazilians are so far the favorite and they beat Cameroon convincingly 4-1 and they’re picked to finish on top. Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico those are powerhouses and when we mention Brazil there’s no doubt that the critics know what they can do. I was at the World Cup in 1994 and it was one of the highlights of my career so when you talk about Brazil that’s the ultimate soccer country of the world.

SF Giants and their struggles: The Giants do have a good nucleolus of pitching but their pitching is not what it was earlier this season. They have a lot of problems and their on a slide right now losing ten of their last 13 games. The Dodgers are going to go heavy and get some help be it pitching or in the line up and close the gap on the Giants.

Needless to say the Giants have hit a really rough patch and they have a number of injured players and the pitching is suspect and the hitting at times is non existent. The Giants are really having some problems and Giant pitcher Matt Cain got shelled on Monday night by the lackluster Padres offense in a 6-0 loss to drop his record to 1-6.

Cain’s problems are a combination of factors, he said after the game on Monday night that he feels fine but the losses mount, Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum is having his own struggles at 5-5 with an ERA of 4.90 Lincecum has lost two of his last four games.

Giants rookie second baseman Joe Panik who debuted on Sunday in Arizona with two hits is impressing the club with his glove and his keystone partner at shortstop Brandon Crawford says he’s got some fine tuning needed but he’s going to do just fine, “There may have been a few things he needed to work on, but he’s a good athlete. He adjusted pretty quickly.”

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish TV voice for the Los Angeles Angels and does News and Commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com