Brow Beat: Slate's Culture Blog

USA Blows Two-Goal Lead to Brazil. Nuts!

For the U.S. national team, the Confederations Cup was a crap sandwich with the crap on the outside. After starting the tournament with feeble losses to Italy and Brazil, Team USA scored five straight goals in ripping through Egypt and Spain. That streak ran to seven goals in Sunday's final, with Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan out Brazil-ing the Brazilians, scoring on the kind of spectacular strikes that usually come off the feet of the guys in the yellow shirts. The Guardian's live commentary, having referred to the Americans as "raggy gits" prior to kickoff, described the action as "frankly surreal." In the last 45 minutes, alas, the gits once again turned raggy, the Brazilians resumed being Brazilian, and surrealism made way for futbol vérité.

Loads of pundits have compared the Americans' win over Spain to 1980's "Miracle on Ice." One major difference: After taking down the USSR, the U.S. hockey team beat Finland to win the gold. Brazil ain't Finland, and after a dominant first half the Americans were lucky to lose by just one goal—a header by Kaká that clearly breached the goal line was, inexplicably, not counted. (If nothing else, international soccer tournaments are a good reminder that the officiating in the NBA could always get worse.) According to U.S. captain Carlos Bocanegra, his squad got trounced by Brazil in group play because they gave the Samba Kings "too much respect." The Americans played a far less-reverent first half in Sunday's rematch, but the underdogs ultimately fell back into bad habits, giving the ball away too easily and failing to shut down Kaká and Luis Fabiano. The United States' loss, however, wasn't a failure of strategy or fortitude. The team with the better players won.

Does the team's second-place finish augur better days for U.S. soccer? ESPN's commentators put a happy face on Sunday's loss by arguing that the national team will now assuredly have greater confidence for the 2010 World Cup. But as the Americans' topsy-turvy Confederations Cup revealed, confidence on the soccer field comes and goes in minutes, not years. More significant than some vague sense of emotional uplift is the possibility that, as George Vecsey pointed out on Wednesday, the national team's impressive showing might earn them an easier draw in 2010. The United States, clearly lacking in skill compared with the likes of Spain and Italy and Brazil, still needs all the breaks it can get. For a game and a half at least, the U.S. got the feeling of scoring and swaggering like Brazilians. It was frankly surreal, and it was fun while it lasted.