that would be one possible reason for the US to not get out of their group. one thing that really bothers me about the world cup is how people make such huge proclamations about such a tiny sample size of games.
small sample or not.. there should be no reason for US to at least be ahead of Algeria and Slovenia after group stages.
i can think of plenty of reasons. injury, bad decision by a ref, random goal completely against the flow of the game, etc. i mean the US could lose to england(who is unquestionably the better team) and win their next two games and still not advance because of goal differential(if 3 teams end up tied with 2 wins and 1 loss while the 4th team loses all 3 games). take last world cup as an example. the US left basically embarrassed as a soccer country. but why? they played one terrible game against the czech republic and lost. they then played a decent game against italy but were on the wrong end of some questionable calls and forced to play 9 on 10 but still managed to get the tie. then in the final game, they lost because of a bad penalty decision. it you judged by the overall play of the US, they would have lost the first game, beaten italy(because they should have been a man up rather than a man down), and tied ghana. instead the US finished with only 1 point and was in last in their group. a 3 game sample size tells you almost nothing about how well a team played. if you need another example, just look at the confederations cup. the US lost to italy(in a game made worse again by a poor decision to send off an american) and were dominated by brazil. but they still made the semi finals just by beating egypt. that tournament is considered a "success" because the US made the final eventually but the group stage was pretty similar to the group stage at the last world cup that was considered a complete failure. i'm somehow that prefers to judge things on how they actually happen rather than strictly on result alone. obviously, the result ends up being the most important part but it shouldn't be the only thing that matters.
