Japan 2 - 2 United States (3-1 PK's) (Women's World Cup Final)

You can't blame this one on the referees or FIFA. Our Girls were the better team throughout the game, and yet they managed to lose to Japan -- a team who had never beaten the United States in women's soccer.

Everyone talks about how we couldn't finish early in the game. Well, that's soccer. The ball takes weird bounces and teams don't often finish. Germany couldn't finish against Japan. France couldn't finish against us. In my opinion, we scored enough goals to win.

There's also a lot of whining about penalty kicks. Again, the game is what it is. Soccer teams that want to win tournaments have to be good at penalty kicks -- just like teams that want to win football games have to be good at extra points and teams that want to win basketball tournaments have to make free throws. But again, in my opinion, this wasn't the problem -- the match never should have gone to penalties.

There is also a lot of talk about Japan's "effort" and "never-say-die" attitude. Well, of course they tried hard -- it was the final of the World Cup! I can't remember too many examples of a team throwing in the towel in the middle of such an important game.

The real issue wasn't any of the excuses listed above, but that the U.S. defense was awful. Ever since Herbert Chapman built Arsenal into a defensive powerhouse in the early 1930's, soccer strategy has focused on the basic fact that soccer is a game where it is extremely difficult to come from behind. Given the rules, the best way to win a soccer game -- at any level -- is usually to get the lead and start running out the clock.

But Our Girls literally could not do this. They blew a 1-0 lead in the quarter-finals against Brazil. They blew a 1-0 lead in the semi-finals against France. They blew a 1-0 lead in the final against Japan. And then they blew a 2-1 lead in extra time against Japan. That's four blown leads in three games -- which is simply horrific. Furthermore, I'm told that Hope Solo is a great goalkeeper. If true, that fact makes the performance of our defense even more embarrassing.

It reminded me of the troubles our men's team had last year. Against England, we gave up a goal after only 4 minutes. Slovenia scored on us after 13 minutes. We managed to shut out Algeria, but Ghana scored after 5 minutes -- and scored again only 3 minutes into extra time. It was the same basic pattern that we saw with the women's team -- whenever the other team really wanted to score, it usually didn't take long for them to do so.

Until the Americans can learn to play true lock-down defense, they will find big-time soccer to be very disappointing.