Was Agoos entirely at fault on each play? Probably not. O'Brien certainly helped set the table on the first Portuguese goal, and the penalty against South Korea was a dubious call that actually resulted from a bump by Eddie Pope, not Agoos.

That said, the Goose is living in an alternate universe if he honestly believes what he told me on Wednesday. "I've been a little bit unlucky with one or two different plays in two games, and that's it," he said. "If you look at the two games, there were no goals scored out of the run of play. Two goals come out of restarts, and one comes on an own-goal."

The problem, however, is not luck. Instead, it's a lack -- of concentration, which Agoos has lost at key moments, and of speed (though Agoos has done well to overcome on occasion, as a kind of poor man's Laurent Blanc), which will betray you in the end if you give it enough time.

There's an element of humor in all this, of course. On the day after Agoos's own-goal, as coach Bruce Arena divided his team into offense and defense for training drills, he asked Agoos, "Which side do you want to go with today?" At the 3 Alleys Bar here on Tuesday night, just as Ireland and Germany were clinching their spots in the second round, a chorus rose up from the seats closest to the tap:

AGOOS SCORED MORE GOALS,
AGOOS SCORED MORE GOALS,
AGOOS SCORED MORE GOALS THAN ALL OF FRANCE!

(I love American soccer fans.)

Moreoever, in many ways Agoos is the heart and soul of this U.S. team. At 34, he is playing in his first World Cup. He has toiled in the mines for years, and even survived a few cave-ins (like his goal-enabling, game-tying back-pass against Jamaica in '97) that would have buried most national team careers in the rubble. At the 1999 Confederations Cup, he was the Americans' most valuable player, logging more minutes than anybody in a physically exhausting tournament.

Likewise, how can you not admire the Goose's persistence after such epic misfortune? He literally burned his uniform in 1994 after Bora Milutinovic cut him on the eve of the World Cup. In 1998, Agoos played more than anyone in the World Cup qualifying campaign, only to see David Regis take his place at left back in France. Even more cruelly, Agoos (one of the few American players who speaks French) had to tutor Regis for his citizenship test -- the results of which forced him to the bench!

But if we're going to torture this mining metaphor, let's get our money's worth: In this World Cup, at this very moment, Goose's canary is singing, folks. Squawking, in fact. Freaking out. From now on there is no margin for error, no more humor to be found in own-goals.

Agoos may not start against Poland. He's carrying a yellow card, and Arena may choose to go with Carlos Llamosa or Gregg Berhalter in his place, the better to avoid having Agoos pick up another card and a suspension for the second round. If he's available for Round 2, though, I expect Agoos will play. Agoos and Arena go back to the mid-1980s, when Agoos played for the coach at Virginia, and they have a long history of mutual trust.

As Agoos explained to me on Wednesday, Arena has shown faith in him on many occasions when few people would have done so. Before Agoos's first game at Virginia, he arrived to preseason camp two weeks late, the result of youth national team commitments. "The first day I was there, we had a meeting," Agoos recalled. "We were sitting around, 20 guys I didn't even know, and Bruce said, 'I want you to meet Jeff Agoos. He's going to be our starting sweeper. I have all the confidence in the world in him.'

"I'll always remember that," Agoos continued. "It basically set up my whole career."

In the end, of course, the decision is up to Arena, who has had the golden touch on nearly every call he's made in this tournament (starting Brad Friedel, using Clint Mathis against South Korea, benching Regis).

It's worth asking, though: Is it possible that Agoos might be Arena's blind spot? We'll know the answer soon enough.

Odds and ends

It'll be interesting to see what the U.S. does late in the game against Poland if the Americans are leading by one and have a chance to win Group D. Is there any chance Arena would instruct his players to let in a soft one so that the U.S. could avoid playing Italy in the second round? (As a group runner-up, the U.S. would face Mexico.) When I asked Arena in a private interview last week about how well the Americans could do here, he said this: "We can advance. Then it depends on the cross-over game. If it's Italy, then it's a whole different ballgame. If it's Mexico, Croatia or Ecuador, we have a chance to win that and get into the last eight." ... With Milutinovic's resignation after China's loss Thursday, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him get the Australia job. Not only is there talent there, but the Australians have failed at the last step before the Cup the last two times. Besides, it's the only continent (besides Antarctica) on which Bora hasn't coached ... Since the South Korea-Portugal game is taking place at the same time on Friday night, I'm expecting that a crowd of 273 people will show up for the U.S.-Poland game ... Among European journos, DaMarcus Beasley is causing the biggest buzz of any U.S. player. But when I talked with Run-DMB about it last week, he said he's not just looking for mad cheese. "If I'm getting $8 million from this team and $6 million from that team, but the $6 million is a better situation for me, then I'll go with less money," he told me ... What was Beasley's most memorable behind-the-scenes moment before the Portugal game? At the hotel that day, he said, Earnie Stewart was shooting him with his home video camera when he asked, "Beaz, are you nervous?" Said Beasley, "I was like, 'Yeah, a little bit.' And he said, 'I am too.' That made me feel more comfortable right there. He's been to three World Cups, and he was as nervous as I was." ... Got a chance to play soccer the other night with Ethan Zohn, the Survivor dude, and a bunch of U.S. Soccer folks over at Nike Park, where they've set up one of those chainlink soccer cages. Zohn seemed like a cool guy -- too bad he hurt his ankle, which might have kept him off the dance floor for, oh, about 10 minutes.

Back at you from Daejeon tomorrow.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Grant Wahl covers soccer for the magazine and will contribute frequently to CNNSI.com throughout the World Cup tournament.

 

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