[BostonCard]

13 goals is a world cup record; I don't think we are going to have a problem with goal differential, if that ever even became a tiebreaker. 

I agree with everyone on the celebrations. But goal differential is another matter. The tiebreaker would come into play if Sweden and we both win our first two matches (likely) and we end up tying Sweden in our match against them, which is entirely possible given we lost to them last time we played them (the infamous Hope Solo "cowards" match). So if we stop at, say, 8 goals vs. Thailand, which seems reasonable, who is to say Sweden can't score 9 on them -- or whatever they need to in order to score one more than us overall (they will know somewhat the number they have to beat, but not our score against Chile). So, given the stakes, our incentive is to run up the score as high as possible.

I don't disagree, and I wasn't advocating taking our foot off the gas (except maybe to rest and or protect certain key starters from injury).  But while they are not mutually exclusive, I think the marginal effort is better spent worrying about scoring the second or third goal against Sweden than it is scoring the 12th or 13th against Thailand.

Your position is a reasonable, but a low probability event.  Right now fivethirtyeight gives the US a 22% chance of drawing against Sweden (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201...s/matches/).  It doesn't give the breakdown of goal differential of the Sweden/Thailand match-up, but Sweden's probability of winning outright is 87%, the chance that it can score at least 12 goals (assuming that the US only beats Chile 1-0) is in the far tail end of the distribution.  My guess is that we would have been more than fine stopping at 8 goals.

BC

[BostonCard]

13 goals is a world cup record; I don't think we are going to have a problem with goal differential, if that ever even became a tiebreaker. 

I agree with everyone on the celebrations. But goal differential is another matter. The tiebreaker would come into play if Sweden and we both win our first two matches (likely) and we end up tying Sweden in our match against them, which is entirely possible given we lost to them last time we played them (the infamous Hope Solo "cowards" match). So if we stop at, say, 8 goals vs. Thailand, which seems reasonable, who is to say Sweden can't score 9 on them -- or whatever they need to in order to score one more than us overall (they will know somewhat the number they have to beat, but not our score against Chile). So, given the stakes, our incentive is to run up the score as high as possible.

I don't disagree, and I wasn't advocating taking our foot off the gas (except maybe to rest and or protect certain key starters from injury).  But while they are not mutually exclusive, I think the marginal effort is better spent worrying about scoring the second or third goal against Sweden than it is scoring the 12th or 13th against Thailand.

Your position is a reasonable, but a low probability event.  Right now fivethirtyeight gives the US a 22% chance of drawing against Sweden (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201...s/matches/).  It doesn't give the breakdown of goal differential of the Sweden/Thailand match-up, but Sweden's probability of winning outright is 87%, the chance that it can score at least 12 goals (assuming that the US only beats Chile 1-0) is in the far tail end of the distribution.  My guess is that we would have been more than fine stopping at 8 goals.

BC