NATAL, Brazil—It's not really jetlag. It's more like whiplash… combined with a slow, grinding pain the neck.

I arrived in Sao Paolo Friday morning, sleep-deprived and groggy thanks to a jam-packed red-eye on Delta, changed my dollars to reals, and quickly secured the services of a politely maniacal cab driver who literally danced in his seat during the 50-minute drive to the U.S. media hotel.

Thanks to his taxi bonito lane-changing skills, we samba-ed assertively through the traffic and arrived at the Tryp Higienopolis Hotel just in time to board a bus full of media types that was off to hobnob with the U.S. national team.

We all get on the bus. We wait in traffic. Arrive at the team hotel. Get off the bus. Stand in a designated area—the driveway, it turns out—and wait for a handful of players to be trotted out so they can say a whole lot of nothing about what it's like being thisclose to playing in the 2014 World Cup.

Yes, we're excited. No, we can't wait to get started. Yes, we know our answers are boring, but your questions aren't exactly thrilling either.

After that, we reboard the bus and head back to the media hotel where we sit and watch Mexico vs. Cameroon and Spain vs. Netherlands and we write some very sleight pieces about the very sleight things we heard the players say earlier.

Post a story or two. Eat. Stretch your legs. Sleep. Everybody wakes up early Friday and boards a bus for the airport where we spend a whole lot of time standing in lines and waiting for our plane to take us to Natal so we can get on with this damn tournament already.

In case it's not clear—sorry—I'm trying to make two points here:

1. There isn't much to say until Monday

American Soccer Now and the United States Soccer Federation and the entire American soccer community have been obsessing over Monday's clash with Ghana since it was announced in December.

Much has happened since then: Jurgen Klinsmann re-established his singular authority over the soccer program. Landon Donovan was jettisoned. Julian Green made the team despite every indication that he just just isn't ready to help. Jozy Altidore rose like a phoenix from the ashes in the team's final contest. New formations were rolled out. Bob Bradley-era tactics resurfaced. The U.S. got better and better as the Send-Off Series competition got tougher and tougher.

And by 9.p.m. local time Monday, we will have a very clear sense of where the United States soccer program stands.

Before then? Create your lineups. Read the tactical analyses. Prepare your pint glasses and launder your Red, White and Blue gear. But don't expect much wisdom or insight from Brazil until the Ghana match, the biggest match the U.S. has played in four years, gets underway.

2. The travel is going to be a factor

In fact, it already is. The U.S.S.F. decided to establish a base camp in Sao Paolo before it knew the location of its three group stage matches, and that decision already looks like a complete disaster.

Never mind me and Grant Wahl and Leander Schaerlaeckens—who cares what happens to a bunch of journalists? But Jermaine Jones and Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey will spend an inordinate amount of time in buses and planes—not to mention standing in lines to get on and off said buses and planes—during this tournament.

The infographic from Germany's Bild shows just how bad it will be for the Yanks, who will travel further than any other team in Brazil.

It's a U.S. soccer truism that winning on the road in Central America during World Cup qualification is difficult, and it is. The elaborate travel plays a big role in that. And the U.S. is enduring travel conditions that match, and perhaps exceed, the worst of what Central America has to offer.

It cannot help the U.S. cause in Brazil.

The abysmal traffic in Sao Paolo only amplifies the impact of the U.S. national team's itinerary, as the repeated trips to and from Governador André Franco Montoro International Airport and the training ground at Sao Paolo FC, require earlier departures and more time spent in uncomfortable buses and the general feeling that you're constantly on the go because, well, you are.

Today's travel, for instance, featured a three-and-a-half hour flight from Sao Paolo's Governador André Franco Montoro International Airport to Governador Aluízio Alves International Airport in Natal. No big deal, right?

But it took us 10 hours to get from point A to point B. The traffic in Sao Paolo compelled us to leave the hotel at 7 a.m.; traffic ensued; general chaos at the airport; waiting; boarding; flight; touchdown; baggage retrieval; waiting for buses; boarding; and then a long drive to the hotel in rainy/muddy conditions.

We pulled into our hotel in Natal at 5 p.m.—and this is the same sort of travel that the players are enduring throughout the World Cup.

Sao Paolo to Manaus in the Amazon basin, where the U.S. will face Portugal on June 22, is an even longer flight. The trip to Recife, where the Americans will face Germany, features three hours in the air along with all of the extracurricular travel activity.

For a short while the U.S. federation considered moving its base of operations somewhere north, where all three of its group stage matches will be played. For whatever reason, those plans fell through and the team remained in Sao Paolo.

If the U.S. had moved its base to, say, Recife, its travel within Group G would have been reduced from 9,000 miles to about 3,800 miles. They would have had a "home" game in Recife and a quick half-hour flight to Natal for its opener.

But no. The team picked Sao Paolo early on, and stuck with the decision despite the math, the traffic, and everything else.

If today's 10-hour sojourn is any indication, it's a choice that could come back to haunt Klinsmann's men.

John Godfrey is the founder and editor in chief of American Soccer Now.