It won't be quick, easy, or painless, but American soccer players and fans will get over the disappointing performances in Germany this summer. Here's what I'm going to try.

First, I'm fortunate in that I work two days each week 2 hours away from home, so on the front and back sides of those trips I get 2 hours to just let my mind wander where it will (while concentrating on the road of course). Today was the back side, so I got 2 hours after the game to think about what had just happened and its ultimate impact. More on that later, but for now I'll continue with the therapy.

A perfect accompaniment for 2 hours of mindless driving is obviously music, and not pounding psyche-me-up Slipknot! music (Kasey Keller and Marcus Hahnemann's preference), or calm-me-downers like Nick Drake, but happy stuff, preferably sung by what sounds like a cute girl, maybe even one with a foreign accent. The Cardigans will do, but my preference ranges to Sarah Cracknell and Saint Etienne. Kind of dancy, but not in a super-repetitive way, just fun, frequently light, Nice with a capital "N" stuff.

Some people may have some pride here and feel kind of silly with my choices; probably most will, but the important thing is to find something that makes you smile in an un-self conscious way, as much as that may be possible any way depending on your degree of shyness.

It helps if it's sunny, and cool but not cold, so you can drive with any removable coverings off/open (windows, sun/moon roof, convertible/t-tops(!)). No such luck here on that front, but at least the air conditioning in the car works if the one at home doesn't.

After the drive it's time to plot some eating and drinking-type activity, whatever further makes you happy in a typical way. Me, I bought some Pilsner Urquell and fresh bratwurst for the grill. I figure I may as well get something that enhances what I'm eating instead of merely washing it down as normal since I'm trying to enjoy myself, not just get a mindless everyday beer-and-grill-food-in-the-summer buzz.

Find a copy of the FIFA World Cup 2006 video game. If the real US team can't advance out of its group, at least you probably can! Seriously, there's nothing wrong with a little living vicariously through virtual representations, or even cheating a bit to gain an advantage. It's just a video game after all, so let it whet your appetite for future successes, as they will come.

Think about what that game represents, the video one that is. It is a simulation whereby the average US team will 9 times out of 10 beat the average Saudi Arabia team, as in real life. It's a simulation that even in old versions had basics down like an American team playing with only 1 half-working controller will find it like the field is sloped down towards the US goal against a Mexican team, while you still don't have much trouble with the El Salvador's of the world.

That's based merely on pure athletic ability, since nobody I know would follow a game plan like any living coach generally. We all have our favorites who have been left off the roster, or out of the starting lineup, or even a wildly different pet formation. That's what's great about these games, they really allow one to fantasize what may be if we had different tactics (and different controllers of course).

Avoid going over the what-if's too deeply for a while. It can't change anything, and it's too close to the event to rationally examine alternative strategies with any sort of clinical detachment, and that's the final piece of the puzzle.

We have to approach 2010 now with clinical detachment. Of course Bruce Arena has earned a great deal of respect and admiration for his accomplishments thus far with the US team, but we need to really examine with clinical detachment whether or not he is the right man for taking us to that next level. As much respect as I want to give him, I know he's not perfect and he hasn't dealt with this sort of a challenge before, no one has in some respects, so I don't know whether he will be able to identify and make the adjustments necessary to do a better job in 2010.

Remember Project 2010? That was US Soccer's public goal of fielding a team capable of winning the World Cup Finals by 2010. The setup was to identify and separate out the players likely to be able to contribute to such a run and do whatever necessary to put them in that position. The next 3 years are the time to see if it bears any fruit, and that's what we must now turn our attention to.

We should definitely feel good about where we are and how far we've come as a soccer nation. Claudio Reyna mis-spoke in his recent interview when he said that "we're still a small footballing nation." (Post-Match Quotes: USA 1, Ghana 2) We're a large soccer-playing nation, one of the largest in the world. What we're not is an experienced, mature, fully-developed soccer-playing nation. We're the prototypical late-bloomers if you will: the stereotypical awkward kid whom everybody picked on in high school who returns from his freshman year 6 inches taller with 30 pounds of added muscle, but who still doesn't know what to do with it all.

The true question becomes whether we will always be an awkward, clumsy, unsure, big kind of passive hapless goof who every once in a while can get up for a big game or two, or will we step up to the next level of perennial contenders like England, the Netherlands, Sweden and even Mexico. All of those teams have habits of making it at least out of the group stages, independent of whether they actually win once out. Sure Mexico got the benefit of a very favorable draw, but they don't always, yet there they usually can be found at the beginning of the second round, and if they play at home they can even make it to the quarterfinals.

We're fundamentally an optimistic nation, which isn't too surprising when so many of us have someone in our history who was enterprising enough to come here to try and better themselves. So that means we have to approach this as something that can be done, a problem that can be figured out. Soccer is a creative sport, so it's not likely to be a solution that will turn out as rigidly formulaic as many professional American sports (football and baseball for example), but basketball is a free-flowing, creative sport and we invented that, so it's clearly something that there are coaches who know how to manage it.

That ostensibly was one of Coach Arena's pluses: that he got to listen in through the walls of the Virginia basketball visiting team locker room to all of the greats of ACC hoops. That's a pretty good background and coaching tutorial, but lengthy is the list of successful college coaches who can't transition their methods to the professional level.

As much as I like DC United, I don't think Arena's experience there can really qualify that much towards solidifying his credentials at the senior level of soccer. It's not even a top tier club league, much less an international level of sophistication, especially at the beginning.

Maybe 2002 was an anomaly. We know it's not exactly the most challenging of paths through CONCACAF qualifying, though it is more difficult than most Europeans would allow. The only real high profile rivalry for us is Mexico, though just about everybody else in the region hates us unilaterally. It's just kind of hard for most of us to get worked up about squashing cute little Honduras, or tropical Trinidad & Tobago with that wonderfully exotic and fun carnival.

The good news is the foundation and pipeline of players is solid and getting stronger. This year's breakout performances belonged to Clint Dempsey and Bobby Convey, along with a very strong and mature performance by Onyewu. Once the international referees figure out how to deal with someone of such imposing size (maybe Bruce should send FIFA a tape of all the "fouls" called on Onyewu and demand better referee education), he will truly be formidable for most teams to play against. I predict he will move to somewhere in the EPL, where a little banging of bodies isn't considered quite the grave offense as it is on the continent.

Those 3 plus Beasley, Donovan, and a still un-tested Eddie Johnson are potentially a pretty strong core for us to transition to in 2010, but we can't forget that it wasn't the retiring veterans who let us down in Germany. McBride, Reyna, Pope and Keller certainly gave it everything they had, despite not being perfect performances, and the same can't be said of Beasley and Donovan. Beasley recovered well for the last two games, but he was still too tentative, apparently looking for the perfect shot instead of an open shot. Donovan worked hard, but also seemed afraid to shoot, more willing to make an extra pass instead of take a shot from a less than ideal though open angle. I think he knows pretty well that he didn't really show up.

Hopefully somebody will come through who won't be afraid to take a shot once in a while in a World Cup Finals game.

The question is who is going to be the one to shepherd these burgeoning, but volatile talents through the next round of qualifying and hopefully competing in the next finals?

It's an important question, and a far different problem than the one Arena arrived to rectify so brilliantly in 2002. But it's one we have a little bit of time to answer.

Lastly, remember that thankfully for must of us it's only just a game, and so wasn't that great of a loss in the end. Many of us suffer far greater ones on a seemingly regular basis. That's what these games are designed to take our minds off of.

Unfortunately for Reyna, Keller and McBride, it was their careers and they deserved a better send-off than this. They seem to be pretty well-grounded individuals, so this isn't likely to devastate any of them personally. But if the boys in 2010 finally show up for all 3 games and play to their abilities, they should dedicate it to the last of the class of pioneers. These are the last of the ones who transitioned the game from one of downy-cheeked college boys, to one of ridiculously talented, seasoned professionals (albeit since we're still at the early stages, many of them are just as downy-cheeked as their predecessors).