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"  Photo: Getty Images My twin brother calls me a fair-weather soccer fan, and I don&amp;#039;t blame him. Unlike him, I didn&amp;#039;t play on my high school team; I don&amp;#039;t spend hours perfecting my FIFA team on Xbox; I don&amp;#039;t wake up early to watch Chelsea pummel the Premier League on the FOX Soccer Channel; I&amp;#039;ve never attended a MLS soccer game. So, for many of my friends\u2014my fellow gays especially\u2014it&amp;#039;s pretty confusing that, as soon as the World Cup comes around, I turn into a rabid, work-skipping, beer-drinking supporter of the U.S. men&amp;#039;s soccer team. But I do, and with a sincerity and passion that, when at its full tilt, I can hardly equate to anything else in my life. And that&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;m still a bit stunned by yesterday&amp;#039;s USMNT 2-1 loss to Belgium in the round of 16. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong: I&amp;#039;m proud. I&amp;#039;m so fucking proud of those guys and what they were able to accomplish given that powerhouse teams like Spain, Italy, and England didn&amp;#039;t even advance out of the group stage. And Tim Howard&amp;#039;s performance? Beyond world class. Get that man a statue in a town square somewhere. Related: This World Cup PSA Against Domestic Violence Is Incredibly Powerful But I still can&amp;#039;t help but sulk and pore over those missed opportunities. If Chris Wondolowski&amp;#039;s touch had been a little more refined on that header assist from Jermaine Jones; if any of those dynamic late-in-the-game attacks could have put the ball in the back of the net, we would have made it to the next round. Curse the skies that I have to wait four more years before I can again proclaim that this is the year the US is going to prevail. Or, as Ben Collins so profoundly put it on Esquire today, champion our &amp;quot;new moon landing.&amp;quot; I may not be a big sports guy\u2014beyond my home state&amp;#039;s Arkansas Razorbacks and the tennis opens, I don&amp;#039;t invest too much time in following\u2014but I&amp;#039;m a competitive individual, thanks to growing up jockeying for all kinds of positions among my three brothers. And I know that&amp;#039;s part of my World Cup fervor: just getting off on the adrenaline this level of play elicits. But the crux of my love for the Cup, and my ultimate sadness over our loss, is closer to what Collins touched on: the sheer, unmatched camaraderie it inspires in our nation. And this is coming from a guy who is hardly patriotic, who finds our busted bipartisan government and country endlessly frustrating, and who has contemplated becoming an expat for nearly a decade. But as Americans, when do we really get the chance to so resolutely bond with one another over, well, anything? One could recall the Obama elections, which, at least in New York City, sent people into the streets with glee, but that was a victory for only half of the U.S. The Olympics provoke an ardor of allegiance, but the games are so vast and so populated that our support feels unfocused. And, of course, U.S. professional sports teams have no shortage of zealots, but, again, with so many of us cheering for so many teams across college and professional platforms, we&amp;#039;re inevitably split into warring factions. (I&amp;#039;ve also always found it hard to relate to or care about athletes who are paid to play because there&amp;#039;s hardly any glory in it; I&amp;#039;m just not inspired by a guy whose incentive is that multimillion dollar paycheck.) Related: Your Guide to the Hottest Soccer Players at the World Cup But for the 90 minutes of each of the four U.S. games that took place over the last three weeks, a whole lot of us\u2014in fact, yesterday&amp;#039;s game netted record ratings for ESPN\u2014were honed in on 11 American athletes fighting for nothing more than to win in the name of our country. And in doing so, they were able to show a skeptical culture that the USMNT deserves respect as a formidable soccer club. And they did gain that respect, I think. So I&amp;#039;m grateful for that. But I&amp;#039;m just sad it&amp;#039;s over. Because I wanted to cheer, and drink, and rub it in the world&amp;#039;s face that we can play the game (and all of that). But, really, what I wanted was harder to explain. Yesterday, sitting at the bar downstairs where I&amp;#039;ve been sneaking off to watch games, in the minutes after we scored that first goal against The Red Devils in the 107th minute, and we all thought that maybe, just maybe, our boys could pull this off, I surveyed the crowd. Huddled together at the dimly-lit pub were a group of business men in suits, a table of tourist moms, a handful of gay men, one lone woman in a sheath dress, pumps, and perfectly styled hair literally clutching the pearls she was wearing, and me, the guy who just jumped up on a bar stool and screamed his head off when Julian Green flicked in that wonderful goal. And we\u2014in the bar, at home, in viewing parties across the country\u2014were in it together. We were believing. We were staring at the screen with inspired anxiety. As if we were watching our men land on the moon. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a17140/personal-essay-on-team-usa-world-cup-brazil/>