That was amazing! It’s a shame we won’t have Bradley in the final. I thought red was harsh on that.
Also, not that it matters, but a lot of the offside calls on both ends seemed suspect.
Probably the pressure on Spain of continuing their streak contributed a lot, but nice win by the USA.
I think that could well be true. Might be better than our win making it into the quarters of the World Cup in 2002, which is, admittedly, a more important tournament.
On further thought, definitely true. 
Well that was just unbefuckinlieveable. Wow.
**Jozy And The Giant Killers
Do you believe in miracles? The U.S. did, weathering shot after shot to stun top-ranked Spain 2-0 behind goals by Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey.**
Well, if this sort of performance continues, I may have to rethink criticism of Bob Bradley; apparently someone managed to get the team fired up enough to start playing some decent soccer.
Landon Donovan was outstanding today. His workrate was easily the highest on the team, and he constantly was getting Spanish attacks snuffed and then starting American attacks. Kind of funny, in a way, that the second goal resulted from a poor decision on his part NOT to shoot. 
From a USA point of view, I think a case could be made for Donovan and Onyewu and Howard as man of the match. Officially it was Dempsey, but without that goal he’s not even in consideration. CNN/SI suggested Demerit. I think the whole defense did a great job of bending but not breaking. Howard stood on his head.
Also, to be fair, it’s almost as if Spain reverted back to their old habit of one too many passes a lot of the time.
I don’t watch a lot of soccer, but have been keeping an eye on this tournament. I felt that the US won this game with two things. Heart, and a stifling defense. The US was diving for every ball, getting their feet on every cross, and laying in front of every drive. All that, plus they seemed to bring everyone back on D when defending. Crowding the box so that Spain couldn’t get their feet on a solid shot. And then the goalie had some great stops.
I really enjoyed it and look forward to a good showing on Sunday.
Win or lose, I think they’ve created some good storylines to garner interest in the WC.
Howard played a blinder. When you say that about a keeper it usually means your team sucked and you were lucky your keeper was the exception. But for all Spain’s possession I really felt they were playing as if they thought they only had to turn up. Good for our defenders for really putting it up to them.
Awful decision for the red but other than that I thought the ref had a decent game.
Still a bit in shock
I think so too. But then I thought it might just be the heat of the moment emotion so I did a little thinking back. A friend of mine mentioned a win over Brazil in the Gold Cup, but was that played with truly full sides? Then there’s the win over Mexico in 2002 to advance to the quarter finals against Germany. That one’s up there, but wasn’t the almost unthinkable upset that today was. W O W !!!1111!
Mexico in '02 was better. This tournament is basically a bunch of friendlies. Still feels great.
My hands are still shaking. Donovan was great. Think he can’t play in the Bundesliga? Bullshit. Onyewu and Demerit were amazing. I thought the Donovan yellow and Bradley red were beyond soft. Altidore needs a touch. He can turn guys all day, but he needs to be able to hold the ball up. Feilhaber is great. Howard is great. I can’t wait for Sunday.
A great win but the complete lack of possession doesn’t exactly give me a lot of confidence for the final (unless of course we’re playing SA). It’s indeed better to be lucky (and have a good keeper) than good.
Dude, it was Spain. We were never ever going to hold possession against them. The US executed the gameplan perfectly, nothing lucky about it.
Bet someone’s RedFurious! 
If you count letting the Spaniards shoot the ball continuously at our goal while barely holding them off a perfectly executed gameplan, so be it. To me, it doesn’t look like a recipe for long-term success. What was the shot-on-goal and corner differential, anyway? I don’t remember ESPN showing any stats on the screen. Don’t get me wrong, I was jumping up and down on my couch with the second goal, but I think we had a fair amount of luck today. Nothing wrong with admitting that.
I freely admit that I am no soccer expert, just a fan, but it seemed to me that the marking of the Spanish players, particularly before the second U.S. goal, was shockingly lax. Were we pushing too many players forward (seems unlikely) or are our back four and midfielders loosey-goosey?
Spain’s players are much much better than ours. This is the type of victory we can get against them. The US is not at a point where he can play with them directly. Their two forward probably make more money than the entire US team combined.
What? The Confederations Cup is basically a big friendly. Making it to the quarter finals of the 2002 World Cup (and losing only to the eventual runners-up) was a much bigger deal - pick either of the wins over Portugal and Mexico.
ETA: Erdosain, there’s nothing wrong with result football. The Czech Republic turned the world on its ear with it at Euro '96 - they made it all the way to the final without scoring a single goal except on counterattacks.
I’ll tell you who wins badass of the match…
Effing Oguchi Onyewu.
That guy is one helluva defender. He was ALWAYS in the box blasting out shots, intercepting them, and not letting ANYONE get a clear shot.
That game was amazing to watch…
Also wanna give props to Landon Donovan. We are nothing without his leadership and work ethic.
I will note that the defending on both of our goals was quite poor. I have NO idea what Xavi thought he was trying with that move from behind Altidore on the first goal, but it left Jozy with nothing but space to move into after he shrugged the guy off. And on the second goal, Sergio Ramos acted as if he had all the time in the world to pick someone to play the ball at his feet to, clearly unaware that he had Dempsey draped all over his back ready to pounce (and that’s after the ball obligingly goes through three sets of legs slightly deflected on the cross, rather than being cleared).
The first 15 to 20 minutes the game was pretty even, with the US creating a lot of chances. In that period, the person who was really sparking the team was Davies, who was creating and shooting. He was clearly committed, and I think the team got infected with the spirit of that as the game went on. But Spain were also threatening, and it seems to me that their play suffered after the US scored the first goal. After that, it’s like they lost composure, and retreated to the Spain of the past: no brilliant play, just take it and shoot it. I think Torres was the exception (Howard’s kick save at the end of the first half was amazing, but Torres had just walked around us to take that shot!); Villa was astonishingly unremarkable, unless you like your soccer filled with lots of blazing shots from too far away, many of which are not on target, followed by glares of dissappointment that the ball didn’t do what the striker wanted it to. 
Great result for us: now let’s see if we learned anything when we face Brazil on Sunday.
Bollocks.
This used to be true of the Confed Cup; often teams didn’t even bring their top lineups. This year, that’s not true at all. Spain, Brazil and Italy brought their top teams. And you can take it for a given that the Italian papers aren’t giving Lippi any wiggle room for the fact that that blowout to Brazil happened in some sort of pseudo-friendly.
Now it MAY be true that the players of Spain and Italy aren’t quite as pumped up as they will be next year, but I think that, if you asked Spain’s players right now whether they think their loss was unimportant, since it’s “just a friendly,” you’d get some looks of scorn. :dubious:
Well, that’s a good point.