“On June 12th, the United States men’s national soccer team faces England, in Rustenburg, South Africa, in a match that is expected to draw one of the largest audiences in the history of televised sports. The last time the U.S. met England in a World Cup was sixty years ago, in June, 1950, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The American team, cobbled together so hastily that many players had just met one another, included a dishwasher, a mail carrier, a meat packer, and a hearse driver. A reporter from Belfast called them a ‘band of no-hopers” and “surely the strangest team ever to be seen at a World Cup.’ No one gave the Americans the slightest chance. Their coach, Bill Jeffrey, described his squad before the game as ‘sheep ready to be slaughtered.'” New Yorker