By Brian Murphy
“Almost heaven/
West Virginia/
Blue Ridge Mountains/
Shenendoah River . . “
All right, all right. I’ll stop. For now. Singing on the air this morning with my co-host Markus (Waterboy) Boucher may have led to the phrase my pals and I settled on back in the 1990s. We realized our overly active and boisterous shouting and laughing at Giants road baseball games did not please all, and invented:
“Stokin’ Some/Bummin’ More”
Sorry, the fun was just too fun after Team USA reminded us all of American mettle and grit and good old-fashioned how-to in a 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina at Levi’s — ERRR — “San Francisco Bay Area” Stadium.
It’s so special when the United States does well in sports in which we are not the overwhelming favorite. Sure, it’s freaking *awesome* when Steph Curry puts on the red horns and becomes “Le devil!” in the Paris Olympics, but the fact is we are supposed to win gold in basketball, Wemby and Jokic be damned. Women’s soccer? Child, please. Let us count the Cups.
But Olympic hockey vs Canada? Winning that gold makes a guy like toothless Jack Hughes into a national icon. Canada is supposed to win that gold. Not us. Except — that unforgettable moment happened early on a Sunday morning way over in Italy.
When the U.S. men’s soccer team — a considerably lesser international factor than even U.S. men’s hockey —wins a group and then wins an elimination game *on U.S. soil, in front of U.S. fans, enjoying U.S. flyovers, singing the Star-Spangled Banner en masse* . . . well, it makes you want to turn up the John Denver.
“Life is old there/
Older than the trees . . . “
See? I told I would only stop momentarily. I’m back singing.
U.S. hockey in February was awesome, yes. U.S. men’s soccer doing all this on the eve of the 4th of July in the good ol’ U.S. of A. — land of Ray Charles, Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, Nirvana, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Prince, Elvis Presley and, yes, John Denver — is next level stuff. We are electrified and unified in a manner that has only happened a few times in my nearly six decades on American green grass.
So what exactly is happening here, in this 2026 FIFA World Cup of soccer hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico?
One, we are good. Christian Pulisic from Hershey, Pa,; Flo Balogun, raised in England and born in New York; captain Tim Ream from St. Louis, through and through; Malik Tillman from Germany via an American serviceman father; Weston McKinnie born in Fort Lewis, Wash,; Alex Freeman from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. . . . these American boys come from all over but are playing as one. They have speed, they control the ball, they play as a team.
Two, they do because coach Mauricio Pochenetti, “200 percent Argentine” but caught singing “Country Roads”, applies the tactics to fit his personnel and meshes them with a personal touch that has the team peaking at precisely the right time. “In football, anything is possible,” Coach Po said, “if you believe.” Ted Lasso called, Coach Po. He says thanks for reading.
Three, we are playing on our soil, and this matters so very much because of all of you. I had friends at Levi’s on Thursday night. You had friends at Levi’s on Thursday night. Hell, you might have been at Levi’s on Thursday night. There were 68,827 human souls there and, yes, while Bosnia did represent — respect — let’s say 60,000 of them lost their ever-loving minds when Tillman somehow surgically knifed that free kick through the air and into the net; impossible turned into possible; ten men superseding eleven. You all exploded. The whole nation did, together.
Four, that’s the point. Right now — Thursday, July 2, 2026 — may be the best America has felt, collectively, in a long, long time. Yes, Olympic hockey in February comes close. But this — summertime in America, kids out of school, red, white and blue in the sunshine, 4th of July looming — is about as good as its gotten in a while, sports fans. There is a purity to this team’s style and its coach and they are fresh to our eyes, not burned out from overexposure on social media and morning TV sports shows that drum the same topics over and over and over.
Yes, there are concerns. Balogun will miss the game on Monday vs. Belgium and we could have done a whole Jock Blog on whether or not video replay has ruined our sports lives. I held off because the double play in Kansas City in Game 7 in 2014, and all. The red card was even worse than the Draymond Green 2016 NBA Finals suspension. It sucked. It presents problems on Monday. And so does Belgium — even though you want to dismiss them because, well, Belgium. Twelve million people does not seem threatening.
But Belgium has knocked us out before, and is the 9th-ranked team in the world, according to FIFA. We are 15th. The teams we have beaten when we play our starters are Paraguay (34th), Australia (28th) and Bosnia (61st). So, yes. Schedule.
This, though, can’t end yet. Our NFC West friends in Seattle will surely create a din and a palpable atmosphere. And there is something more at work here: a country finally coming together and that energy matters. You might even want to sing about it.
“Younger than the mountains/
Growin’ on the breeze/
Country rooooooads … take me home … “
Why not?
