USA fans weren't waiting for the match to start to begin their vocal support of the team. It continued all night...

Finally—the team I recognize as mine showed up on Saturday night to challenge Italy. I fully expected to get at least one point out of this game and I suppose that was the best we could hope for under the circumstances—those circumstances being, of course, that the referee would send off three players in the game. It just goes to show that it's not only the players who can buckle under the pressure of a World Cup.

The match was also interesting from another perspective. One of the reasons I wanted to create this blog was to provide a snapshot of U.S. supporters, to show that people here get the sport and that our own soccer culture is growing. I also wanted to see where the bulk of U.S. supporters outside the groups I associate with were coming from, what they were like, and how they expressed their support. This match, in many ways, provided me with that snapshot.

An interesting thing happened before the game. A group of U.S. supporters started singing a melody I've only heard before at college gridiron games. I won't try to duplicate it here in text but I remember hearing it in Ann Arbor at Michigan games in the early 80's, a series of notes that repeated three times, leapt to a flourishing finish, and ended with an emphatic chant of "Let's go Blue!" I know lots of U.S. supporters who have been wracking their brains trying to come up with simple songs that we can do and here was one that everyone already knew and was uniquely American. That was the first time the light bulb went on that night.

The second was a chant that grew in response to gamesmanship from the Italian players and is one I also heard first at college football games in response to bad calls from the referee. It's simply "bullshit," shouted rhythmically over and over, and it was cathartic to be able to state plainly what Italy has been doing for years. That was light bulb number two.

Here's the thing: In many ways, we've spent years imitating things we've seen in England or other European countries, adapting songs slightly for our own uses. But these two chants last night were born and raised in the U.S., and I'm reasonably certain that a Uruguayan referee or a diving Italian midfielder has never had 20,000 people chanting "bullshit" at him before. It's loud, blunt, and a little rude, but what the hell? We're Americans. Our soccer culture is growing and last night, it took a big step.