Draw with Germany? That's just dumb

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SAO PAULO – Since both the United States and Germany need nothing more than a tie in their final game of group play to advance to the knockout round of the World Cup, and since they face each other Thursday afternoon, and since Jurgen Klinsmann used to play and coach for the Germans, and since his former assistant is now their head coach, there is a sizeable school of thought not just that the two teams will conspire to draw but that they should.

This kind of wink-and-nod deal making (or outright plotted result) isn't new in soccer. The Germans may be the most famous examples, particularly back in the 1980s. And there is a group of American soccer followers who pretty much blindly believe anything that is done by Europeans should be hailed as ingenious, should be emulated in all ways and any criticism of it is the work of the uninitiated or ignorant.

Yeah, well, here's what fixing Thursday's match would be – lame … pathetic … uninspiring … pitiful … and, most importantly, completely nonsensical in the interest of actually benefitting the American team.

[Related Slideshow: Heartbroken American fans]

For the record, Klinsmann, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati and a host of players all shot down the concept, repeatedly and directly, when it was first broached after the U.S. tied Portugal 2-2 on Sunday night. Some did so with a measure of anger.

"[Klinsmann has] answered it about 35 times," Gulati said bristling at the fact he had to even discuss the very concept. "Let me answer it real quick. That may have been the mentality in 1982. It is not the mentality of the U.S. team. We're going into that game to win the game. Full stop."

Of course, fair or not, what else are these guys going to say? Even if they were plotting out an easy, kick-it-back-and-forth tie, match fixing would call for massive FIFA suspensions and sanctions, not to mention possible criminal prosecution. No one is going to admit it. No one ever does. Yet it happens, or sure looks like it happens, in international soccer.

That leaves the U.S. program in the unenviable position of trying to disprove a negative while no one trusts what it says. They throw up their hands and point to the qualifying process of the last two World Cups and note that in the last game, with their spot already assured and nothing to play for but "American mentality," they went all out and affected the field. Fair enough, but that's a slightly different scenario.

So Gulati kept talking about how our culture would reject such a tactic.

"Was it at the Olympics that some badminton players got suspended?" said Gulati, mentioning a game fixing scandal centered on the Chinese at the 2012 Games. "It's not the mentality of the U.S."

The players scoffed at the entire concept, something of a smack in the face that they might not play to win.