Star-Spangled, Down 2-0

Lyrics

I remember Couva.
The heat on the skin. Eighty-two degrees.
The smell of the plastic turf, burning under the lights.
October tenth. 2017.
Just a kid, Pulisic was. Nineteen.
The whole damn country on his shoulders, it seemed.
Soaked through his jersey before the first whistle.
And Bruce Arena staring into the middle distance.
The echo of the ball on that cheap field.
Then a silence so loud...
when the whistle blew and nothing was real.
The World Cup of 2018... just a ghost on the wind.
And that's the feeling.
Star-spangled, down 2-0.
Heart in your throat, nowhere to go.
Just mud on the cleats and a prayer in the humid air.
This is our story.
The beautiful, terrible dare.
To believe when the clock is bleeding red.
Star-spangled, down 2-0.
Playing it back in your head.
We know the bus rides out of San Pedro Sula.
The batteries thrown at the windows in San Salvador.
This isn't Europe, this is a war fought in the dirt.
Every cycle the same beautiful hurt.
The Berhalter eras, the plans on the board.
But it always comes down to this.
A moment, a misstep, a forgotten word.
A single point dropped in the abyss.
And that's the feeling.
Star-spangled, down 2-0.
Heart in your throat, nowhere to go.
Just mud on the cleats and a prayer in the humid air.
This is our story.
The beautiful, terrible dare.
To believe when the clock is bleeding red.
Star-spangled, down 2-0.
Playing it back in your head.
But then... a night in 2022.
Down again. Of course. What else is new?
Against Mexico, the giants, the eternal foe.
And you feel that old ghost, that Couva low.
But something shifts.
A tackle, a run.
A flicker of hope against the setting sun.
And you stand up in your seat... you scream 'til you're raw...
Because this is it. This is the only law.
Star-spangled, down 2-0.
It's where we live.
It's all we know.
The heartbreak is the fuel.
The doubt is the fire.
Climbing, always climbing, one rung higher.
It hurts.
It really hurts.
But we're still here.
Down 2-0.