The Substitutes, Oh My!
2-0 up at half time, and the United States come out at half flat and content to play defense. That game plan worked for all about 20 seconds until Brazil got a quick and effortless goal, making this a contest that we only knew was a matter of time before Brazil equalized.
With the obvious Brazilian onslaught continuing, Bob Bradley made the audacious decision to field Sascha Kljestan & Johnathan Bornstein while removing Jozy Altidore & Benny Feilhaber respectively, thus dooming the United States to a defensive shell which ultimately was their demise. In doing so, Bob Bradley signaled to the Brazilians that the Americans were done pushing the ball forward (despite needing a goal to win) and were content sitting in the back defending. The game winning goal wasn’t far behind Bradley’s decision to bunker and in a last gasp effort to tie the game, Bob brought on Connor Casey in the last few minutes of the game.
Nobody expected the United States to win this game and there’s no shame in losing 3-2, but what hurts so much is how the USA succumbed to Brazil. In the first half, the US took it to the Brazilians and were rewarded with 2 excellent goals but they completely fell apart with a different second half game plan. Everything that could’ve gone wrong did. They got scored on in seconds after the start, made defensive substitutions, and allowed two more goals.
This feeling of being letdown that I have right now sucks and I know that next year in the World Cup, at some point, I’ll have this feeling once again. Just one time I’d love to have that feeling of winning a big competition instead of surrendering to the ultimate understanding that it takes a near miracle to win these type of games.
Impressed that we made it this far, but ultimately still disappointed with the result.
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Even John Harkes was stunned by these subs. He just went silent and tried to figure out exactly what Bobo was trying to accomplish, but even he couldn’t B.S. something. And Harkesie is an excellent B.S.er.
It goes to show that, definitively, it was not Bob Bradley that beat Spain, it was the players beneath him. Bradley is still a bad coach, he just has the right players underneath him for that kind of thing to happen occasionally.
I can’t say I feel bad for the USA’s loss against Brazil in the Confederations Cup. You can blame it on the coach, the substitutions, the weather… whatever. The fact is that a complacent American team learned a hard lesson in basic football tactics, and that is, you never play defense to Brazil. Ever. They’ll destroy you. Chew you up and spit you out in itty bitty little pieces. You could be leading 5-0 and they could still manage to make you look bad. Playing the counterattack may work some of the time against some teams ahem*Mexico*ahem, but most teams are not Brazil. Their knack for making magic with the ball is legendary, and even on a bad day you can still catch glimpses of genius here and there. The US simply got outclassed and outmatched by a rival that understands football like no other nation on Earth (except perhaps Italy, but their football is not what I’d call exciting). I can just picture Bob Bradley thinking “Now is the time to defend this score… All I gotta do is hang on for 45 more minutes, what could possibly go wrong?” Well, as the final score suggests, the answer is: Everything.