Sports

U.S. World Cup team has, quite literally, a long way to go

By Matthew Semisch

06/10/2014

During the group stage of this year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil, the United States men’s national soccer team (USMNT) is set to face four opponents.

The three most glaring ones are what are listed on the Yanks’ schedule. Germany, Ghana and Portugal are the U.S.’s three Group G counterparts.

The fourth opponent? Jet lag.

If the USMNT travels to its match sites both to and from its World Cup base camp in São Paulo, the Yanks will travel further than any of the other 31 teams at this year’s finals.

They’ll be making treks to Natal and Recife in the Brazilian northwest and Manaus in the northeast in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. In all, the U.S. team could log 11,561 miles in the group stage alone if all three are taken round-trip.

During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the U.S. team only had 192 miles to cover for four games and traveled to them all by bus.

Action in Group G, the Americans’ four-team pod for this year’s World Cup, will kick off Monday. The U.S.’s first game will take place that evening when the USMNT takes on Ghana.

That game, set to take place at Arena das Dunas in Natal will start at 5 p.m. Central. ESPN will air that and the U.S.’s other two Group G games live.

The Americans then get nearly a week to prepare for their second group game. That game against Portugal will take place at 5 p.m. Central Sunday, June 22 at Arena Amazonia in Manaus.

Four days later on June 26 in the Brazilian city of Recife, the U.S. will take on another European soccer giant. That time, it will be Germany that stands in the Americans’ way.

That game, set to start at 11 a.m. Central at Arena Pernambuco, will wrap up Group G play for both teams. Ghana and Portugal will play at that same time in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.

The top two teams from each of the eight groups in the first stage of the World Cup finals will move on to the 16-team bracket-style knockout phase.

Getting that far, however, will be a tough ask for the Americans.
The United States is listed 13th in the latest FIFA World Rankings. The World Rankings lists each of the 207 nations the world over that have FIFA-sanctioned national soccer teams.
Portugal is listed fourth. Germany’s even higher in second place, behind only the leaders from Spain.

Ghana is 37th. This puts the Black Stars - the Ghanian national team’s nickname - behind both the Côte d’Ivoire (22nd) and Egypt (36th) in terms of the African nations listed in the World Rankings.

Ghana has, however, knocked the U.S. out of both of the last two World Cup finals. The first of those two came during the group stage in 2006 in Germany, while the second was four years ago in the round of 16.

If the Americans qualify from Group G, they are guaranteed to play a team from Group H in the round of 16. Group H at this year’s World Cup is made up of Algeria, Belgium and South Korea.

The winner of Group G will play the Group H runner-up in Porto Alegre on June 30. The Group H winner will play the Group G runner-up the following day in Salvador.

The 2014 World Cup final will take place July 13 in Rio de Janeiro. The Estádio do Maracanã, the site of the 1950 final when Brazil last held the tournament, will again see the winning team lift the FIFA World Cup Trophy.