So how big was the U.S. victory on Wednesday?  For most Generation Xers (like myself), is there any doubt that Landon Donovan’s goal might now be the most memorable in US soccer history?  But plenty of sportswriters didn’t attend high school in the 1980s or the early 1990s, never attended concerts by the Roots or Jane’s Addiction, and hate Allen Iverson for questioning the efficacy of “practice” (never mind that NBA players are forced to ball 82 games a year, making practice fundamentally stupid in the regular season), meaning they fail to grasp the nuances of a sport that for much of their lives was viewed suspiciously.  Moreover, this willful ignorance fails to take into account the sport’s historical trajectory stateside.

Take Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke.