Ghana

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — Oscar Tabarez had a lot of words to choose from when it came to describing his country's penalty-shootout win over Ghana in a World Cup quarterfinal Friday. Incredible. Improbable. Impossible. They all fit. The one he finally settled on, though, was "lucky." "I am the coach of the team and I am a professional. But even so I lack the necessary calm to carry out an objective analysis of the game," he said. "We were lucky.

Quarterfinals: NETHERLANDS vs. BRAZIL Where: Port Elizabeth. Time: 7 a.m. PDT. TV: ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Univision. Radio: Sirius/XM, KLYY-FM 97.5, KDLD-FM/KDLE-FM 103.1, KSPN-AM 710. The buzz: Moments after his team's second-round win over Chile, Brazilian Coach Dunga had already turned his attention to Friday's foe, the Netherlands. "The style they play is very similar to a South American team," he said. Dunga was equally worried about travel.

Reporting from Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa And you thought George Steinbrenner was tough to please. Goodluck Jonathan , the apparently ill-named president of Nigeria, has suspended his country's national soccer team from international competition for two years after its poor performance in the World Cup. Playing in the first World Cup on African soil, Nigeria was knocked out in the first round, losing twice and...

Saturday's nerve-racking match between the United States and Ghana was the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history, the Nielsen Co. reported Monday. The game, viewed by 19.4 million viewers on ABC and Univision, topped the Italy vs. Brazil World Cup final in 1994 that was viewed by 18.1 million people on those two networks. By contrast, Nielsen said, the 2010 NBA Finals averaged 18.1 million viewers per game, and the 2009 World Series averaged 19.1 million per game. Of the 19.4 million who tuned in to ultimately see the U.S.' soccer dreams slip away last weekend, 4.5 million watched on Univision — which is on fire during this soccer tournament.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — Bob Bradley's future as the U.S. national team coach will not be decided in the coming days or weeks but only after discussions between him and Sunil Gulati , the president of U.S. Soccer. "I want to hear his views, express some of mine and see what makes sense," Gulati said Monday morning in Johannesburg. "He's done a very good job. I want to make that very clear. . . . The problem is that our expectations have risen pretty sharply and there have been some performances where we didn't play as well as we would have liked."

— Now that Lakers star Kobe Bryant has a little free time, he has decided to spend it in South Africa, with the sport he grew up loving. On his first trip to Africa, Bryant took in the U.S. loss to Ghana on Saturday — former President Bill Clinton and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger were there too — then spent Sunday visiting young soccer players at a training center in Soweto, where he answered questions. His favorite player? Didier Drogba , the powerful forward of now-eliminated Ivory Coast.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa -- Bob Bradley did not get a good night's rest. The coach of the U.S. national team and his players did not get back to their rural base until the wee hours of Sunday morning, but it wasn't the roosters or the dogs or even the cows that kept Bradley awake. Instead, unable to drop off to sleep, he played and replayed the 2-1 loss to Ghana that knocked the U.S. out of the World Cup. "I never sleep well after games," he admitted. "Wins, losses, it's never easy after a game.

The fact that his World Cup is over will hit Tim Howard hardest this morning. After four years of planning, two years of qualifying and months of training, Howard and the rest of the U.S. soccer team will wake up Sunday morning with nothing more to look forward to than a long flight home. "We're not getting up for practice, that's for sure," the U.S. goalkeeper said. "That part's sad. It's disappointing. It's hard. It hurts." Then he paused. "It's hard to put your emotions into words," he said, his voice catching.

Out here in the bone-dry South African bushveld, with the haze of grass fires hanging thickly in the night air, it is difficult to remember all the places where earlier dreams died. Places such as Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1930; Recife, Brazil, in 1950; Florence, Italy, in 1990; Palo Alto, Calif., in 1994; Nantes, France, in 1998; Ulsan, South Korea, in 2002, and Nuremburg, Germany, in 2006. On Saturday, Rustenburg, South Africa, was added to the unhappy roll call. It was here, in Royal Bafokeng Stadium, that the U.S. national team's great African adventure of 2010 reached its sad conclusion.

The U.S. team's manic run through the World Cup came to an abrupt end Saturday with a 2-1 overtime loss to Ghana that was decided on a splendid goal by Asamoah Gyan as the clock here ticked toward midnight. The Americans never led in regulation time in the tournament -- and never lost in regulation either. Yet they came within a goal of the quarterfinals only to be sent home on Gyan's shot in the dark. "The finality of it is brutal," said Landon Donovan, the L.A. Galaxy star who scored three of the five U.S. goals in the tournament.