Maya, looking every bit the Mexican senorita, stakes out high ground to record video of the USA versus Turkey match. A professional video crew from Turkey showed up and tried to displace her citing the quality of their equipment. I asked them if they would be recording at 4K UHDTV and that seemed to shut them up. Their tripod can be seen on the next tier down.

Although we won the video showdown, the same cannot be said for the match. The Turkish team controlled the game from the first whistle and it is a credit to our defense that we limited them to a 2-0 victory. Fortunately our goal differential for group play was sufficient to avoid elimination and for the first time in history, the US team has advanced to the elimination phase.

Nico earned a yellow card early in the first half. Everyone other than Nico agrees that he deserved one for the cumulative effect of his punishing style of play. This meant that he had to play with great caution for the remainder of the game to avoid a second card which would have sent him to the bench and left his team a man down. Pictured below, he takes on Turkey’s top player winning the ball high in the air.

After the game we bid farewell to Burton and Tito who are headed to the Copper Canyon by way of El Fuerte. Kyle and I are hoping to join them in a few days but that will depend on how well the US fares against Poland on Thursday.