Thanks for the congrats, I doubt I would be so gracious in defeat. 
I’m still in awe of this victory. Best National team win I’ve ever watched.
You’re missing something here, which is that friendlies aren’t viewed quite the same way abroad as here. If England qualifies for the World Cup but loses to San Marino, the manager is getting sacked.
Friendlies are lose-lose propositions for the top teams. You don’t get kudos for winning them, but you can lose your job for sucking.
Y
The match today was not a friendly.
Nobody holds possession against Spain. Even Brazil wouldn’t.
Confederation’s Cup is not rated in England because England have never made the tournament. Agree, it’s not a friendly, it’s the Cup winners tournament. Certainly not as important as the World Cup, but much more than just a friendly.
Not true. 0-0 in a 1997 WC qualifier (after a first half Agoos red card).
No way. More important wins (in no particular order):
'50 England (WC)
'89 Trinidad & Tobago (WCQ)
'02 Portugal & Mexico (WC)
Maybe the '98 Gold Cup win over Brazil
Calling them friendlies isn’t quite fair. They’re a step above. But still, the Confederations Cup isn’t that big of a deal.
A great win nonetheless.
Wow. Great back-line defense by the US. I’d give man of the match to the back four collectively (they got some bounces, too, but great playing). I don’t think I’d ever seen defenders laying out like hockey players to stop shots before.
And solid attacking by the US the first half. But the second half mostly looked like an offense versus defense drill in the US half. If I was scoring on points, it would go to Spain probably 4-2, though of course the US would have attacked more had they not been ahead. Still, though the US showed they could play with Spain for stretches at a time, they got pretty lucky with this result.
Referee gets a B- at best. A couple close offsides calls, but at worst there was one too many each way. Game never got out of control, but he was way too willing to buy almost any act, particularly for nearly all the cards. It looked like the first yellow was going to be just a free kick, until the Spanish player started rolling around in ‘agony’. The red was ridiculous (sure, Bradley committed late, but it was an honest effort at the ball, he made an effort to bring his feet back rather than going in cleats forward and ended up barely bumping the guy). Even the late yellow against Spain wasn’t for the push (barely discernable on reply), but because the US player sold it so well. Maybe we should chip in and get the referee a Netflix subscription, since he apparently appreciates acting so much?
I agree that it’s hardly the biggest US MNT upset ever. US 1 England 0 in 1950 WC has to be bigger. In fact, given that that game was a bunch of amateurs and semi-pros on a fourth or fifth-tier team beating a top-three team in a WC elimination game, I don’t think the USMNT will ever be able to have a bigger upset.
grrrrrrrr, stupid hamsters. Ate a great post on how the Confederations Cup is currently on of the top international tournaments.
Let’s get this stupid meme that the Confederations Cup isn’t important put away once and for all. That may have been true in the past, especially when FIFA was stupidly trying to run the thing every odd year, and as a result, various continental champions were refusing to show, or sending second-rate squads. With the decision to run the tournament in the year prior to the World Cup, in the stadia that the World Cup will be using, the seriousness factor has been ratcheted up significantly. We see this by looking at the fact that, not only did every team able to participate do so the last two Cups, but the squads that are being sent are the top squads for these countries, even Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Spain, Germany, etc. No one is taking this tournament lightly any more.
And this is as it should be. It offers teams a rare chance to match themselves against teams from other continents in a competitive atmosphere. It gives them a real chance to evaluate where they stand against the best from around the world a year before the most important finals of all. As I said upthread, there is NO WAY Spain’s players, coach, or press are taking yesterday’s defeat lightly, thinking, “Eh? Well, it’s just a friendly with a suit on.” :mad:
I rank it as the fourth most important international tournament right now, behind the WC, the UEFA Championship and the Copa America. It’s definitely more important than the CAF African Cup of Nations, the AFC Asian Cup and the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
As for this win, well, in terms of “importance”, I’d say the 1999 win over T&T was more “important” given that it meant we could finally play in a WC Finals without being gifted a spot. And as I said upthread, beating Mexico in 2002 to make the quarters of the WC Finals was very important. If we win this tournament, that may well be more “important” simply because of the fact it would be our first intercontinental tournament win. The 1950 win over England, while famous for us, was hardly more “important.” It just meant that we got to preen a bit and made England’s trip home that year miserable. 
Put it this way, it’s probably the best team the USA have ever beaten.
Um, the late Spanish yellow was for dissent. Pique got it. The player who got run into from behind by the Oscar-winning Landon Donovan was Joan Capdavila, if memory serves me correct. I’m assuming that Pique said something to the effect of “Where should the Americans send your bribe?”
Also, please, please PLEASE do not tar a referee with incorrect decisions on the offside rule. Those are exclusively the domain any more of the referee assistant. It appears that the near-side assistant was being VERY ticky-tack about it (perhaps even giving too much doubt to the defense). But when viewing such cases, please recall that the player is offside if ANY part of his body, apart from his arms, is closer to the goal line than the body of the relevant defender. You cannot just look at where the feet are, because invariably the attacker is leaning in to make the run, and the defender is standing straight, or even leaning out, to make the trap.
And at least the referee didn’t end up giving either side a goal-scoring result from a phantom foul, like happened in the USA v Brazil game. :rolleyes:
Don’t take DSYoungEsq’s word for it.
Post game quote from Fernando Torres:
What odds on a USA-RSA final???
Probably pretty low, but I’ll be cheering for South Africa this afternoon.
Oh, fine, I’ll take Torres’ word for it. It’s still not as big a deal as a WC quarter final - but it’s a big deal.
Really? OK, I stand corrected. (and yes, I know the assistant/linesman calls offsides).
Just interested, what are (non-Spanish) Europeans saying about the red card (or the match in general)?
That is probably closer to the truth than my previous claim. The 1950 win v. England was most likely the biggest win, and the '02 v. Mexico was probably more important than yesterday’s win given the tournament.
In terms of making a large splash on an international stage, this was huge, and gave some credibility to a team that many people, including me, didn’t have much faith in.
Second hand account from RTE (Irish) feed:
It’s hard to compare the two, in a way. Clearly, at the time, making our first quarterfinals under the modern version of the WC Finals was huge. It showed tremendous progress on our part, especially since we had done so poorly in France '98. But when all is said and done, it was still just putting us in the final 8 of that tournament, effectively equivalent to where we started this tournament (and yes, I know THAT’s not really comparable, given the inclusion of NZ in this one).
This win puts us into a final. That’s right, one win away from winning the whole shebang. We’ve never tasted such a possibility before. Of course, it’s also just as far as we went in '02, that is, we qualified out of our group and won our first elimination game. It’s just that this tournament is a bit shorter than '02 was.
Makes it very hard to compare the “importance” of the two.
Should, I think, be noted that in '02, the win over Portugal was much more of a “shock” than the win over Mexico. Portugal had been playing well, and would in two more years be the European runners-up, having been semi-finalists in 2000. So if we were to compare which of those two games was more of an upset, I’d have to go with the USA 3 - 2 Portugal. And, yet queerly, the Mexico win was more “important,” because of where in the tournament it occurred.
Biggest upset ever has to go to the 1950 shocker. We were well on our way to being soccer nobodies then, and England were, well, ENGLAND. :eek:
I, too, am concerned about the quality of the refereing. But I detect that, with respect to the United States, there appears to be a belief among the top FIFA referees that we tend to be two-footed late-to-the-ball rash tacklers. Note that the ONLY red cards in the tournament have been issued to us, except for one well-deserved red card for a goal line handling of the ball by Egypt. It’s like they are seeing what they expect to see, and intend to punish it harshly so that we don’t do it any more. Sadly, the only one of the reds we received that was close to justifiable was Kljestan’s in game against Brazil, which really was pretty clumsy and rash, but still wasn’t a true example of play so dangerous that it needed immediate dismissal.
But the refereeing that concerns me is the tendency of the officials again to be deceived into giving fouls. The first Brazilian goal against the US was the result of a totally phantom foul. There was zero contact made; the Brazilian anticipated the foul was going to occur, and reacted as if it had. Similarly, Landon Donovan (shame on you Landon!) basically ran into a Brazilian fullback yesterday late in the game and then fell down as if the Brazilian had somehow run into him, drawing a foul, and provoking the Brazilians into such dissent that Pique was carded for it. There have been numerous other examples of fake fouls, though the players, to their credit, have not really started pushing the envelope on this again.
And there have been some pretty bad missed calls. A blatant handling of the ball prevented a goal in the USA v Egypt match; as an official you have to realize that, even if you didn’t exactly see handling, the ball cannot carom off someone’s stomache that way, so it must have been the upper extremity that caused the ball to do what it did. Howard Webb totally missed the almost identical handling by Egypt in the Brazil game; had his back-side assistant not seen it, it might have gone unpunished. As it was, it became the game-winning penalty kick. And, of course, there have been two or three of the assistants who have been questionable regarding their offside calls.
Having said all that, it should be noted that FIFA are getting exactly what they want. The referee for yesterday’s match was Jorge Larrionda, who was notable for sending off three players in the US v Italy game at the World Cup Finals in '06. He’s also been noted for harsh officiating in other matches under his control. Yet FIFA continue to use him for their tournaments, and generally praise his efforts. The same is true of most of the other referees they use. Which forces one to conclude that FIFA don’t see what we see. 
<------ not cool, btw.
Now the question: who will we face? :eek:
ETA: GOD that pitch is awful. :mad: