Sean B. Fitzgerald It doesn’t go something like this, it goes exactly like this.

Fast-kickin’! Low-scorin’! And ties?!

I had a bit of a scare on Saturday when I was suddenly called into work. At around 9am, my boss requested me to work for a few hours to quell some sudden emergency (doesn't really matter). He said it would take between 3-6 hours, but he would pay me for a full day of work. I really didn't want to do it. Saturday was the day of England vs. USA. A game I had been looking forward to for the past few months and probably the only "must watch" sporting event for me this year other than the Jet playoff games. But since I'm the freaking Worker of the Decade, I reluctantly said I would show up.

In the back of my mind there was a fear that the day would go long and I would miss the entire match. So I made sure in that case, I would avoid all media outlets and human contact until I watched the whole thing on my DVR.

And there were points throughout the day where I thought I would have to pull that off. I counted every minute as I checked off the tasks that needed to be done. "Okay, so I have to do these five things in two and a half hours." "Now that's done. So now I have to do this, this, and this in a hour and 45 minutes." It a brutal. I took into account everything, even potential bathroom breaks (which of course I didn't take).

It was close. Real close. So close in fact, that I was plopping myself onto my couch as the national anthems were being sung. I couldn't have been more relieved. That is until Robert Green said "Right this way" to the Jabulani as it entered the English goal.

But I'm not here to talk about the actual game (which was terrific by the way). I'm just wanted to highlight the great pains I went to in order to watch it. Quite honestly, I had been anticipating this match since the United States had been eliminated in the 2002 World Cup. It's all I really was thinking about for the weeks preceding it. I even put the Yankees in the back seat (a reasonable thing to do in retrospect. They're steamrolling weak opponents). It was sit my ass in front of a television at 2:30pm, or die trying. Luckily, it didn't come to the latter.