by Amaury Pi Gonzalez

You can expect it on Tuesday the largest crowd ever to watch soccer in the United States when team USA faces team Belguim. I’m not much of a soccer enthusiast but this game is the greatest game in the world with the largest audiences watching the World Cup everyday. These games when it’s done will draw crowds larger than the Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Championship or even the Olympics.

The U.S. team is doing very well with the opportunity to advance in this do or die part of the World Cup inspite of losing to Ghana in a 2-2 tie and losing to Germany 1-0 the U.S. survived to play another day. The game for Tuesday will be a very good game for this country particularily if they can win it.

Team U.S.can try to keep on advancing and we’re not sure how far their going to make it, Germany, Brazil, France and Holland has a good teams. We’ll see it’s great that the interest in the United States is terrific Mexico got eliminated and if the U.S. could go all the way that would be a real, real story, I don’t think they will but that would be a great story.

It’s good thing that the U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann said “we could not win” every country except the U.S. is a very passionate and very nationalist in this sport. If your a coach and you tell your country “were not going to win” their going to fire you. So that was his strategy to motivate his players he wants to be under the radar and no one expects the U.S.to do much.

This is not a soccer country people follow baseball more than soccer, we haven’t had really no huge names and Landon Donavon is the biggest name who didn’t make the team for this World Cup and has scored 50 goals internationally. So my point being the game is not a tradition in this country. If the U.S. keeps playing well and they recruit more people than interest in this counrty will grow.

Like I mentioned before this is a very nationalistic and very prideful game, you have your team playing and your national anthem is being played, their holding these games in the Estadio do Maracana in Rio de Janiero which is the largest stadium in Brazil that seats 200,000 fans and it’s the largest sporting event.

So with these huge crowds in Rio, large audiences watching by the millions all over the world, their is a lot of nationalistic fever and when you respresent your country. I have written and spoken about this, a lot of these countries for example Brazil, that’s all they do is play soccer. That’s like in Cuba it’s baseball, Puerto Rico and the Dominican it’s baseball.

In Brazil it’s 100 percent soccer and in Columbia their doing very well in the northern part of Columbia they play a lot of baseball and in Venezuela it’s all baseball. When you get deep into South America Bolivia, Chile who was eliminated recently not to mention Argentina a big soccer country and Brazil which is the biggest you have all these countries who put all their marbles in one basket.

The game with the U.S. and Belguim could be one for the ages it should be a good one.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the Spanish radio voice for Angels baseball and does News and Commentary for http://www.sportsradioservice.com