ROANOKE, VA—Explaining precisely what the national team must do in order to compete with the sport’s global superpowers, local 39-year-old David Bower, who watched most of a single World Cup match over the last month, revealed Wednesday that he knows exactly how to fix the U.S. soccer team going forward. “The problem is the midfield—that’s always a weak spot for us,” said Bower, who reportedly only paid attention for roughly 70 minutes of the U.S. team’s round of 16 defeat to Belgium, during which he frequently browsed Facebook on his iPhone and missed the first 10 minutes of extra time while making himself a sandwich. “That guy Bradley isn’t good enough, and we just don’t have any good strikers outside of Jozy Altidore. What we really need is to play more like Germany—see, they know how to move the ball, and if we can do that, then we’ll be able to beat the best teams.” Bower then went on to confidently assert that the U.S. could have future success at the World Cup if it simply brings through a player on par with Lionel Messi and Neymar.

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