President Obama spoke to captain Clint Dempsey and goalkeeper Tim Howard on Wednesday to congratulate the team on its performance. Obama ‘‘commended them not only for their work on the field, but for carrying themselves in a way that made the country proud,’’ the White House said in a statement.
Meanwhile, it turns out Jurgen Klinsmann was right: The United States isn’t ready to win the World Cup.
The Americans were eliminated in the Round of 16 for the second straight tournament. They've been ranked 13th or 14th every month since September, which means their exit was pretty much at the stage it’s expected to be.
‘‘Clearly it gives you the message you have a lot of work still ahead of you,’’ the US coach said Wednesday, a day after his team’s 2-1 loss to Belgium in extra time.
From Wall Street to the White House to the West Coast, Americans watched their national team on television in record numbers. While buoyed by the increase in attention, players are desperate to join the world’s elite and far from attaining that level.
Klinsmann was a World Cup champion as a player with West Germany in 1990 and coach of the German team that reached the 2006 semifinals. Having moved to California in 1998 with his American wife, he is seen as bringing the perspective of soccer’s elite to a nation that remains a new world in the sport.
His message to players is they don’t do enough. They don’t play twice a week, like Champions League stars. They don’t face condemnation from their community after losses and poor performances.
‘‘It makes them feel accountable, not just walk away with a bad performance and nothing happens,’’ he said. ‘‘If you have a bad performance, then people should approach you and tell you that, so make sure that next game is not bad anymore and that you step it up.’’
The Americans’ final match, which kicked off at 4 p.m. EDT on a weekday, was seen by 21.6 million on ESPN and Univision, impressively close to the record 24.7 million set for a Sunday evening game against Portugal earlier in the tournament. An average of 1.6 million watched the loss to Belgium on digital streams.
‘‘People now start to care about it. Fans care about it. They comment on social media. They comment everywhere about it, and that’s good,’’ Klinsmann said.
His most controversial moves coming into the tournament were cutting Landon Donovan, the biggest star in U.S. soccer history, and taking along 18-year-old Julian Green, 20-year-old DeAndre Yedlin and 21-year-old John Brooks. Brooks and Green, who turned 19 on June 6, responded with late-game goals when they came in as substitutes, and Yedlin was stellar against Belgium when he replaced injured right back Fabian Johnson.
But Klinsmann’s proclamation that the U.S. would play an attacking game didn’t pan out. The Americans were outshot by a combined 92-41.
‘‘The interesting part is every time we would go down a goal, we'll shift it up,’’ he said. ‘‘I believe it’s more a mental topic that we have to work on than it is a talent topic.’’
Klinsmann took over from Bob Bradley in July 2011. Last December, he was given a contract through the 2018 tournament that added the title of U.S. Soccer Federation technical director. In the next four-year cycle, he has numerous chances to integrate youth: the CONCACAF Gold Cups in 2015 and 2017, the centennial Copa America in 2016 and a possible trip to the Confederations Cup in 2017.
There also is the under-23 team that will try to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics — the 2012 team stumbled and didn’t reach the London Games, slowing the careers of more than a dozen players.
‘‘We've got to do much better than the last cycle,’’ he said.
He defended his pre-tournament comment that the U.S. was not ready to win the World Cup, saying he didn’t want to raise ‘‘expectations to kind of a level that is over the moon.’’ After he arrived in Brazil, he mentioned he was prepared to stay for the entire tournament, that he had booked a plane ticket for the day after the final just in case.
But as U.S. players prepared to scatter to clubs and family vacations, Klinsmann conceded he also was leaving early.
‘'I changed the ticket last night,’’ he said.
Record ratings
An estimated 21.6 million people watched the US Tuesday — an impressive total for a weekday afternoon that almost certainly undercounts how many people actually saw it.
The Nielsen company said Wednesday 16.5 million people watched the game on ESPN, with 5.1 million more seeing it on the Spanish-language Univision network. In addition, nearly 1.7 million people watched an online stream of the event, Nielsen said.
The record US television audience for soccer is the 24.7 million who saw the US play Portugal on June 24, which tied the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands.
The Portugal game took place on a weekend, however. The US-Belgium game started at 4 p.m. on the East Coast, earlier in other time zones, during a working day.
Nielsen does not measure viewership in bars, offices or other public places. In 2010, ESPN estimated that the stated audience size for weekday World Cup games would increase by 23 percent if public viewing were taken into account.
Still, Tuesday’s knockout game exceeded the average viewership for the most recent World Series and NBA Finals, events that took place during prime-time when more people were home to watch.
The just-concluded NBA series where the San Antonio Spurs beat the Miami Heat averaged 15.5 million viewers, with 18 million watching the final game. Last fall’s World Series averaged 14.9 million viewers, with 19.2 million watching the Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the last game.
US coach Jurgen Klinsmann said Thursday that everyone connected with the soccer team is excited to see how the sport is reaching a U.S. audience. He could see it coming, given the popularity of the game among young people and the large crowds that turned out for the team’s sendoff games before the World Cup.
‘‘Soccer is breaking through and gets its deserved recognition without taking anything away from the other big American sports,’’ Klinsmann said.
He said it’s important for people to identify with the way Americans played the game.
‘‘The energy and the commitment and the tempo and the aggressiveness that we played with kind of made people proud at home and surprised a lot of people outside of the United States, maybe in Brazil or in Europe,’’ he said.
The highest overall ratings for the US-Belgium game came in New York, Nielsen said.
ESPN said that overall viewership for the World Cup is up 44 percent over 2010.
Fixed game doubted
FIFA expressed ‘‘substantial doubts’’ about a German magazine’s claims that a World Cup game could have been fixed and asked the publication to provide evidence to back up its report that a renowned match-fixer accurately predicted details of the match hours before it kicked off.
FIFA said it wants Der Spiegel to provide details of all its conversations with convicted match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal to prove its claim that Cameroon’s 4-0 loss to Croatia on June 18 may have been fixed.
‘‘The article has put the integrity of FIFA World Cup matches in question, which is a serious allegation,’’ FIFA director of security Ralf Mutschke said in a statement read out at a briefing at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
FIFA said it had no indication from betting markets that any of the 56 games so far at the World Cup were suspicious and has ‘‘substantial doubts about the alleged manipulation published by Der Spiegel.’’
The weekly magazine claimed that Perumal told it in a Facebook chat hours before the Cameroon-Croatia group game that he knew what was going to happen. Der Spiegel said that Perumal — a Singaporean who is arguably the best-known fixer in football — correctly predicted that Croatia would win 4-0 and Cameroon would have a player sent off in the first half. Cameroon midfielder Alex Song was red-carded just before halftime.
Perumal has denied he made any such predictions.
Suspicious betting activity around a game is an indication that it may have been fixed for illegal gambling syndicates. That could include an unusually large amount of money being bet on the game or wagers being placed at unusual times during the game or on specific happenings — like a first-half red card, for example.
But FIFA said it had found no suspicious activity around Cameroon-Croatia or any other game in Brazil. Football’s world body has access to information from hundreds of betting operators through its Zurich-based EWS, or ‘‘Early Warning System.’’
‘‘As mentioned on various occasions, FIFA has carefully monitored all 56 games to date and will continue to monitor the remaining eight matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup,’’ Mutschke’s statement said. ‘‘So far, we have found no indication of any match manipulation on the betting market.’’
The Der Spiegel story grabbed attention because of Perumal’s match-fixing history. He was jailed in Finland for paying players to fix games and is suspected of fixing games in other continents, including Africa. He is believed to be behind fixed matches involving South Africa’s national team in the weeks before the last World Cup in 2010, where corrupt referees are thought to have manipulated the games.
But in a statement Tuesday, Perumal said that his Facebook chat with a Der Spiegel reporter about Cameroon’s team took place three days after the game in question and not hours before it, as the magazine said. The authors of Perumal’s biography sent copies of the chat to The Associated Press where it was indeed dated June 21.
The Der Spiegel reporter whose name was published with the story, Rafael Buschmann, insisted his report was accurate, writing in an email to the AP: ‘‘We firmly stand by our assertion that Mr Perumal wrote in a Facebook chat with der Spiegel some hours before the world cup match Croatia vs Cameroon, that the result of the match will be a 4-0-victory for Croatia and that a player of Cameroon will get a red card in the first halftime.’’
Buschmann didn’t respond to phone calls and emails to also provide copies of the conversation.
Der Spiegel’s claims prompted the Cameroon football federation to open an official investigation into possible match-fixing by its players. Perumal did say in the Facebook chat that seven Cameroon players were ‘‘rotten apples’’ and the team was ‘‘on the take.’’ However, in his later statement he said that was only an ‘‘educated guess’’ and he had no proof of that.
Cameroon lost all three of its games at the World Cup: 1-0 to Mexico, 4-0 to Croatia and 4-1 to host Brazil. But the results were not surprising considering the West African country’s poor World Cup record over the last two decades. It has won just one out of 15 games since 1990.
‘‘It is stupid to think that anyone would have fixed Cameroon’s matches in Brazil,’’ said former Cameroon goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell, who played in three World Cups. ‘‘Why would any normal person or group of persons be tempted to arrange to win against a team that would lose anyway?’’
Money talks
Ghana is planning to take pre-emptive action for the next World Cup to avoid off-the-field problems over bonus payments.
The country’s football association said it will have contracts with players for their bonuses at future tournaments. The move comes after the federation had to rapidly bring in $3 million in cash to keep the team playing in Brazil.
GFA president Kwesi Nyantakyi said Ghana had also used cash ‘‘in order to prevent player revolts’’ at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups, but would now revert to ‘‘signed agreements’’ and bank transfers for the bonuses.
The decision follows a series of pay disputes involving African teams at the World Cup. Cameroon and Nigeria players also argued with their federations and threatened to strike unless they were paid immediately instead of waiting until after the tournament.
The problems were because informal promises made to African players by their federations had been broken before, former Nigeria captain and FIFA technical study group member Sunday Oliseh said.
‘‘You know, promises have been made to them and when it gets to the World Cup some of these promises are not really fulfilled,’’ Oliseh said, calling the off-field problems that surrounded three of the five African teams in Brazil ‘‘painful.’’
‘‘It’s one of the reasons why I think we have not won the World Cup yet,’’ the former midfielder said. ‘‘Because when it comes to quality [players], Africa has [them].’’
Ghana’s players didn’t have signed agreements for their bonus payments for Brazil and feared they ultimately wouldn’t see their money. The demands to receive their money ahead of the decisive final group game against Portugal forced Ghanaian authorities to fly the stacks of cash in on a chartered plane.
Cameroon’s squad refused to even get on their plane for Brazil before the tournament started until their bonuses were improved and guaranteed, and Nigeria missed a training session as they demanded their payments for qualifying for the second round of the tournament before they played France.
Following the Ghana problems, FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said that FIFA would now look at becoming involved to ensure teams have bonus agreements in place well before the start of future World Cups.
‘‘It is sad that we end up with such a story,’’ Valcke said of the issues that undermined Ghana’s World Cup.
The West African nation was a quarterfinalist and the feel-good story at the last World Cup and could have been the first African nation to make the semifinals. But Uruguay striker Luis Suarez stopped a goal-bound shot in the final seconds of extra time with his hand, Ghana missed the penalty and then lost in a shootout.
Four years later and surrounded by off-the-field issues, Ghana didn’t win a game at this year’s World Cup.
‘‘It hurts me personally,’’ Oliseh said. ‘‘We saw what the Ghanaians did last World Cup. Just one handball short of going into the semifinals. It’s not as if the quality is not there.’’
Scalping ring?
FIFA said it is helping Brazil’s investigation of a ticket scalping ring believed to be reselling World Cup tickets.
FIFA spokeswoman Delia Fischer said the organization was ‘‘actively assisting’’ in the investigation and that FIFA representatives will meet with Brazilian officials to discuss its ticketing operations. She also cautioned Brazilian media not to jump to conclusions.
Camila Donato, a press officer of the Rio de Janeiro police department, said police arrested 11 suspected ticket scalpers on Tuesday and seized 100 tickets supplied by FIFA to sponsors, non-governmental organizations and members of the Brazilian squad’s technical commission.
Donato said police are investigating the possible involvement of FIFA officials and members of the Brazilian, Argentine and Spanish football federations.
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