And just like with the stereotypical gastrointestinal disorder that can accompany drinking untreated water in México, the ultimate effect of México's scoreless draw with Chile combined with Brasil's 1-0 win over Ecuador resulting in the United States Men's National Team's elimination from the tournament is unpleasant, but hardly life-threatening.

Not that I really think that motivation was too high on Mexican coach Hugo Sanchez's mind when he trotted out his version of a B-team Wednesday night in Venezuela, it nevertheless probably gave Los Tricolores some measure of satisfaction as a partial revenge for their loss in last month's Gold Cup final.

(South American Soccer Federation Miffed At U.S. For Sending 'B' Team) "We like for the continent's most important competition to be respected with the best players," CONMEBOL General Secretary Eduardo Deluca said yesterday. I'm sorry Mr. Deluca, and all you confused Europeans out there, but North and South America are two different continents, and we sent our best players to OUR continent's most important competition: as I said before, (Blooding the Next Generation of Nats) , that's why we'll see either your winner or runner-up in South Africa in 2009. Sorry México. Maybe you're confusing "continent" with "hemisphere".

The fact that a first-choice Mexican team could beat a second-choice Brazilian team, while what some have called a third-choice American team losing a game they were at least in to a first-choice Argentine team, and then taking it to Paraguay, what many consider the third best team in South America, says far more than the scorelines and chest-thumping South of the Border.

When México took their foot off the gas pedal a little tonight against Chile, not exactly giants in CONMEBOL themselves, El Tri couldn't even score a single goal. Our third-stringers at least managed goals in both of their first two games, and if truth were told should have scored a fistful more against the fore-mentioned Paraguayans.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blues

So now that we no longer even have a mathematical chance of advancing, Coach Bob Bradley can concentrate on the real business at hand for us in Venezuela: getting some quality experience for a bunch of pups still wet behind the ears to prepare them for the not exactly grueling task of qualifying for South Africa over the next 2 years.

Here's another knock at all of the critics baying about how shameful it was that Bradley took such an inexperienced side to Venezuela: which is going to be more useful at separating the wheat from the chaff in this group of players: 3 games and out in Copa América, or a few lop-sided early round wins versus Caribbean island nations?

Another worthless argument trotted out ritually every time we play an international tournament is how Major League Soccer just isn't competitive enough, playing too many "meaningless" games to steel the nerves of the players for pressure-packed situations like the World Cup, etc, (Low-Pressure MLS No Training Ground For Copa) . If you subscribe to that theory, and I don't wholly, then how can you criticize Bradley for taking his one chance to give them some real pressure before it really counts for anything important to see how they stand up?

The contradictions just abound! Even former US coach and current Red Bull New York coach Bruce Arena keeps yammering on about the meaninglessness of the 30-some-game, 7 month MLS season, as if the threat of Euro-style relegation would make more of a motivational difference on players than the notion of getting booted down on the roster to Developmental status, or shipped out to Rochester, Richmond, Seattle, or any of the first and second tier USL or lower division teams.

Furthermore, do you think there is no connection between the facts that Taylor Twellman and Eddie Johnson have started off the MLS season roaring, netting 7 and 9 goals respectively and that they both want to succeed Brian McBride as the go-to American striker? Do you think that not one of those young men down in Venezuela sitting on less than a dozen caps so far isn't going to feel the pressure to perform if they want to get another sniff of national team duty?

It's absolutely inconceivable that Twellman and Johnson don't feel as if they have the weight of the world on their shoulders each time they suit up and don't score for the Nats, when they have no problem doing so in MLS, especially Johson after the scorching start to his international career. He went from being a 7 figure European transfer to Kansas City.

What is pressure but people who follow you yelling at you every time you screw up? No, it's not Tony Kornheiser yelling at you, unless you're Freddy Adu, but it's people you know, or see at meet-and-greets, parties, etc. It's watching people and teams you've beat surpass you, while deep down you know you're better than that. It's having writers who just finished a puff-piece profile on you for the local paper, then turning around and saying you're nothing compared to the real deals in Europe and South America. It's Fox Soccer Channel pundits like Nick Webster saying MLS teams aren't even good enough for the English Championship (Fans Want Goals, Goals, Goals) .

Who needs relegation when you have the chance to either personally make so little money that you have to work a second job in addition to playing soccer, or earn a fat European transfer and guaranteed chance at competing every four years in a World Cup? That's quite a swing of fortunes, one that few EPL, La Liga, etc. players have to personally deal with. This is actually one area in which the English Championship League is far more apt of a comparison, in a good way, for it keeps the players truly hungry, even if the extent to which it occurs in MLS is quite ludicrous when the league wishes to be considered in the same breath as the traditional Big Four of American sports.

What We Have Here is A Failure To Communicate

I believe that the people who are to blame for the current state of top-tier American players is not the players and the degree of personal motivation and pressure they feel, rather the coaches and administrators who receive players in their late teens and early 20s who arrive able to compete very well against their same-age peers, yet fail to help those same players graduate to the next level like the Brazilian and Argentine soccer factories. I'll even give an assist on the squelching of American talent to all of those supposed supporters in the media who continually tell them how they just don't compare to real talents like Lionel Messi, Robinho, et al.

Now if players don't really develop until their mid-to-late twenties, and we're internationally on a par with the best of them up until the early twenties, how is this possible? It defies logic that men who can compete with the best at their age are somehow inferior to them, but that's the kind of crap that gets trotted out year after year from the American soccer press, maybe because they're trying to impress the "real" soccer writers in Europe, who get to sit in far swankier digs, covering the royalty of Real Madrid, Internazionale, Chelsea, etc. I don't know, but there definitely appears to be some logic short-circuiting going on somewhere.

At any rate, hopefully our men down South will attack Colombia as they did Paraguay, only this time find the net a few more times. I don't think my Tivo remote control can take being thrown many more times after American strikers either completely miss the target, or hesitate instead of going straight for goal when they have a chance, or any of the other stupefying things we saw happen the other night versus Paraguay.

In the meantime, we can now all shift our attentions North to Canada where Adu, Altidore, Szetela, Seitz and company are doing their best to show the rest of the world just how far we've come in the past 20 years. The systematic destruction of Poland Tuesday night was a good start, now we'll see what they can do against their Brazilian counterparts on Friday.