Donovan’s Second Half Stoppage Time Strike Advances The USA To The Second Round

After all the pain and suf­fer­ing our National Team has gone through with bad starts, bad offi­ci­at­ing and phan­tom calls for fouls, they finally got a goal that sends them to the Sec­ond Round of the World Cup and now they are sit­ting pretty wait­ing for Group D to pro­duce an opponent.

Four min­utes of sec­ond half stop­page time was added by the fourth offi­cial and after Tim Howard made a nice grab on an Alger­ian chance, he dis­trib­uted the ball per­fectly on the throw to the far side where Lan­don Dono­van was. Donovan with the ball was mak­ing an attack­ing run and finds Jozy Alti­dore who crossed it inside the area for Clint Dempsey.

Dempsey tried to smack it thru, but Alger­ian keeper Rais M Bolhi made the cross body div­ing save, but the rebound was loose and the trailer was Dono­van. When he got inside the area he ripped the rebound home and for the first time in these three group matches the USA took the lead and with stop­page time quickly fad­ing, the ref­eree blew his whis­tle and the USA for the first time wins their group and will await their oppo­nents from Group D.

So many qual­ity chances were either squan­dered or stopped by the bril­liant goal­keep­ing of Rais M Bolhi. No mat­ter how many times the USA knocked so loudly on the door, it was Bolhi that came up big, but the first ques­tion­able call from the offi­cials came in the 21st minute was a rebound chance that was pounded in by Clint Dempsey was called off-sides.

The replays showed that Dempsey was on-sides or even with the last Alger­ian defender and unfor­tu­nately for the USA who should’ve been up a goal to nil early, had to fight on till the stop­page time mir­a­cle by Lan­don Dono­van. What a fan­tas­tic fin­ish by a side that has looked ter­ri­ble early, but was able to get their chances in the sec­ond half and capitalize.

Bob Bradley’s tac­tics and for­ma­tions has been spot on since the start of the tour­na­ment and even though I had ques­tioned his start­ing eleven selec­tions, Edson Bud­dle should have been start­ing this match with Jozy Alti­dore. But after such a fan­tas­tic result, it is so won­der­ful to finally see the fruits of their labor show up within the final four min­utes of the match.

Now we have a chance to watch these two Group D matches and see who will earn sec­ond place and face the USA this Sat­ur­day After­noon. They were down and out, but one thing that has kept this team going is the belief in each other and prov­ing the doubters wrong that they can play with the best in the world.

For the first time not play­ing in a CONCACAF Tour­na­ment or in CONCACAF World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing, they were able to defeat a side that they were bet­ter against. But at the same time you have to give Alge­ria credit. They knew who they were deal­ing with and they never backed down against them. They played a hard fought match and showed moments of being dangerous.

But now it’s time to relax and cel­e­brate enter­ing the Round of 16 in the knock­out stages of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.