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a. Let me be the 9,467th to say losing or winning by penalties is a terrible way to decide a game. But the coach saying, “We’ve been working on penalties for the last nine, 10 months” to Jenny Taft of FOX, and the U.S. missing three of the penalties on non-saves?

b. I know there’s pressure, major pressure, on these players. The game is hard. But missing the net on three of seven PKs when the keeper never touches the ball is not good.

c. “Soccer can be cruel sometimes,” said Vlatko Andonovski, our coach. It can be, and it was. But you make your own breaks in sports. For a United States team to score one goal in the last 300 minutes of World Cup play (1-1 Netherlands, 0-0 Portugal, 0-0 Sweden in 120 minutes) is fairly shocking, and a clear sign that we’ve stagnated while the rest of the world has caught up with us.

d. It’s great to see the world catch up—I’m not down on that at all. It makes the sport better. But scoring one goal in five hours of soccer is awful, and finding and developing finishers has to be the focus of our team for World Cup ’27.