From a distance, the Jeonju World Cup Stadium looks like a giant spaceship that landed in the middle of a rice paddy.
Located in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the provincial city of Jeonju, the stadium actually is shaped like a Hapjukseon, a Korean fan.
Jeonju will be remembered as the place that U.S. soccer finally landed on the world stage.
U.S. coach Bruce Arena bristled at the notion, expressed in the international press, that his team had been lucky, but it didn't have much to celebrate after reaching the second round, not after being thoroughly spanked by Poland, 3-1.
''I spent the morning shopping for the Koreans players and staff,'' Arena joked the morning after Korea's 1-0 win over Portugal spared his team from elimination.
The Mexico game was different. The American players celebrated doubly, for bouncing back from the loss three days earlier and for the achievement of reaching the quarterfinals.
It wasn't easy to get back from Jeonju to Seoul after the Mexico game. There was only one train, at 12:44 a.m., out of Jeonju. The American fans arrived at the tiny Jeonju station in groups of twos and threes to wait for the train. There was the King and his entourage, the young Elvis impersonator, playing Frisbee with his buddies late into the mosquito-filled night in the square outside the station. There was a guy with his head shaved like the panels of a soccer ball – ''Soccerhead.net'' his T-shirt read – and his girlfriend, a tall black woman with her short hair dyed white like the young French star Djibril Cisse's.
The local Koreans looked on curiously. They, too, had had their World Cup moments. The Mexican fans waiting for the train grudgingly put up with the exuberance of the Americans.
As everyone slowly filed to the tracks for the night train back to the capital, one fan turned to another and asked, ''Is this the best day of your life?''
For American fans, it was.
by Soccer America Managing Editor Paul Kennedy