As the World Cup nears, the U.S. has to start treating every game seriously.

The World Cup is finally starting to come into focus on nearly every continent. England and Spain have looked dominant throughout European qualifying, but teams like Serbia and Slovakia are now poised to lock down their spots as well. Brazil and Paraguay have dominated most of South American qualifying yet again, with Chile right behind them. The Asian spots were decided before the summer, and the Ivory Coast and Ghana are virtually secure in the African groups. Struggling holdouts like France and Argentina join roaring comebacks from Portugal and Cameroon in providing some 11th hour suspense, but we're finally getting a sense from the qualified teams that yes, South Africa 2010 is very, very close.

Even the CONCACAF hexagonal has somehow sorted itself out, despite looking totally knotted after Saturday. The region has essentially been a tight four-team contest since El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago starting dropping points, but Costa Rica settled the question of who would resort to the playoff with South America when they decided to remake Space Jam. Given that Costa Rican disaster, Honduras is content beating up on the teams below them to stay in 3rd, and Mexico's stunning turn in form since the summer has locked their place in as well.

All of which leaves the U.S., king of the CONCACAF castle and almost certainly headed for South Africa. In getting 6 points this weekend, the U.S. did a credible job in separate themselves from the other contenders. You would think, then, that almost securing a berth with these two wins would provide some relief, but the past week showed that we're nowhere close to being prepared mentally for the World Cup.

Saturday's game against El Salvador highlighted a notable flaw in the team's psyche, that poor refereeing decisions always throw us out of rhythm. No doubt, Jose Pinéda did a terrible job with the game: he afforded us almost no protection while whistling them for every small foul, and he also rescinded a fantastic 59' goal by Jozy Altidore for no discernible reason. However, like against Italy in the Confederations Cup, the U.S. just pouted in protestation, rather than rise to the occasion and defeat all 12 men. Strong teams should be able to fight through such adversity, and we're just not there yet.

More worrying was the total lack of sharp play shown at the beginnings of the last three American wins. A total lack of passing and movement characterized the U.S.' starts against Honduras and El Salvador, and in both cases, only an early goal by the opposition took us out of our daze and into Confederations Cup form. Against Trinidad & Tobago however, the opposition just wasn't playing well enough to score, so the team just never woke up. Not even Cornell Glen's chip off the bar did the trick, and truthfully, Ricardo Clark's out-of-nowhere screamer

bailed us out from an embarassing draw. Such a result would have dropped us into dangerous territory in the table, yet the team was inexplicably content to play sub-par soccer, as long as they weren't behind.

Alexi Lalas' postgame consensus was "Who cares if it wasn't convincing, we got 3 points", but this all-too-common outlook totally evades the fact that the current U.S. team is dangerously inconsistent at motivating itself. More specifically, too many players like Clint Dempsey come out firing against "big game" teams like Mexico, Spain, and Brazil, but wait for a reason to snap into world-class form against "lesser" nations like T&T. If you're wondering why that's a dangerous mentality, June's game against Costa Rica should clue you in: we underestimated our opponents, and got promptly overrun. Results like that will get us eliminated from the World Cup.

As much as I love both Dempsey and the U.S. team, this underlying malaise is inexcusable. If the objective is to win, and the game starts even at 0-0, the job is set out in front of you. In other words, nobody deserves a win until they earn it, even against "lesser" teams. The team needs to start treating every game like it's crucial, or we'll soon be left to rue missed opportunities at the worst possible times.