The Defining Moment of 2011: The Dagger

(Before we truly embrace 2012, I'd like to take one last look back at what I believe was the defining moment of the past year and discuss in a less conventional manner- think some prose/analysis hybrid not unlike my piece on Landon Donovan's goal from last December. Enjoy.)

"Dagger."

It's a word used time and time again in sports conversations and broadcasts across the country. It signifies the final nail in the coffin, the final push that sends the boulder of momentum careening unstoppably down into the opponent. It quite literally inflicts pain to those on the receiving end, be they fans, players, or coaches.

Never in recent memory has that description been more apt than June 25, 2011, when Giovanni dos Santos, he of the punchable face, embarked on a mazy endeavor to shatter American hearts.

The moment was not simply momentous; it was tectonic. With one goal, one could feel the earth of CONCACAF shifting with one last violent jolt, ending 90 minutes of slow but evident movement in the North American soccer landscape.

It was a bildungsroman in the form of a football match. A hungry, talented, young bunch took their lumps, responded to adversity, grew together, and ultimately achieved great success as a result, all over the course of two halves. Mexico's Golden Generation came of age, and after years of American dominance, the stage for that true emergence could not have been better for El Tri.

While the phrase "dagger" might understate the massive nature of the shift that that one play represented, it couldn't be more appropriate to describe the feeling that it instilled to those supporting the USMNT on that fateful day.

The play built from fairly innocuous origins. With four defenders and Tim Howard accounting for just three Mexican attackers around the box, the situation seemed to be under control, albeit with the perpetual air of stress that comes with trailing in a final.

But then the pass. A slow, agonizing opening slit that left us all squirming. Tim Howard seemed to be out and capable of closing dos Santos out, snuffing out the play in its nascent stage. But each delicate touch from the former Barcelona midfielder left Howard (and those supporting him, vicariously) reaching in vain for a dangling carrot. It was as if dos Santos, in the heat of the moment with 90,000 fans around him and millions of others watching, made some conscious decision to make the moment as torturous as possible. Some great retribution for years of gut-punching moments from those gringos to the north.

And with each touch and each bit of ineffective American defending (close him down, Jermaine!), a crescendo of discomfort and worry built for USMNT fans.

Then, in a manner that truly did maximize the pain inflicted, dos Santos' coup de gras was not a thunderous blast, emphatically making a statement. Instead, it was a tormentingly world class chip that- naturally- was just out of the reach of a leaping Eric Lichaj. It was the final twist of a knife that had been thrust into the collective American soccer gut, killing an era (that of Bob Bradley, and one of sustained American dominance) in the process.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "To see others suffer does one good; to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle...Without cruelty there is no festival."

You would think Gio dos Santos read that before taking the field at the Rose Bowl last summer.



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