Like most Americans, I don’t know enough about soccer to make an informed judgment about the just-concluded women’s semifinal match between USA and Canada, but just from watching the intensity of play and the sportsmanship (at one point, a Canadian player who was walking by helped Abby Wambach to her feet), that was a match for the ages.
Congratulations to both teams, and I’m sorry they weren’t playing for the gold.
In a tactical sense, these multi-dimensional interactions suggest a spontaneous, synthetic/ creative, and flowing action/counteraction operation, rather than a step-by-step, analytical/ logical, and discrete move/countermove game. Patterns 176
I’ll be cheering for Canada in the bronze medal round (I like the French, too, but they didn’t play the US), although I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could naturalize Christine Sinclair in time for Japan on Thursday????
Slightly East of New 
Curious that a game invented by the English has resulted in such bad performances by the home teams (and not just in these Olympics).
Would another game, cricket, go the same way, I wonder (even though Patterns 176 is not as easily applied to it)…?
Did the Brits invent soccer? Interesting. They also invented race walking, as I recall.
As for cricket, I know nothing about the game. Bought a book on it one time on a trip to Saudi Arabia. Read it. Still don’t know anything about it.
However, a quick look at results from the Cricket World Cups show that Australia has won four times, the West Indies and India have won twice, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka have each won once. Team GB appears to be missing …
You are spot on for World Cups, Chet. In fact, once I’d posted the above comment, it occurred to me that even the best county (that’s a term for an administrative geographical region in England) cricketers tend to be foreign players (West Indians, Dutch, South Africans and so on).
Don’t be too quick on writing off the US as never topping the Cricket World Cup series in the future, though, if this recent bulletin is to be believed http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-1075837.html…
It should be noted that Team GB is doing quite well — third in golds and fourth overall. In games invented in other countries?
Acknowledged, Chet. Though a good summary of whether GB should need to be doing so well at all, for her self-esteem, is clearly addressed in this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19156183.
The generation who thinks The Games shouldn’t define GB, hail from the era when Britannia ruled the waves. This generation, who smiles whenever gold is won by Team GB, though, acknowledges that Britannia now just about rules the bath tub…