Well, I don't know how far the US players improved since this match, but from what I saw, they're far superior to the European players...
Daler just makes so many mistakes (wrong weapon choice, aggressive shaft vs rocket launcher, goes to distance with shotgun vs shaft), and when I started watching the demo, I thought there is no way he's gonna win that match, considering socrates finish in CPL winter.
If this is the general level of US players, and they don't improve all parts of their games (timing, aim, map knowledge) really quickly, can't see any US player take a top 16 spot in the coming CPL events. Except maybe fatal1ty, ZeRo4 etc. who are training in secrecy.
By that I didn't mean he is secretive about training it, but the train itself, the progress, his performance, is still completely unknown to anyone outside.
And I saw ZeRo4 on a server playing 1on1 against someone just yesterday xD.
they're superior but they're not good enough? make up your mind. yes, daler was shit in this game (if I recall, I watched it about two months ago) and so was socrates really, but it's just a bullshit online game where americans go nuts with their completely different "style" (if it could be called a style).
I assure you that the top US players are very capable of handling themselves against the top European players, or players from any other countries for that matter.
As it looks now, not in Quake 4 mate. But you'll see that early enough. Sorry to have offended your national pride, but the skill level of US is hilarious when compared to the EU players ;).