United States' Red Card Performance Thus Far in the Confederations Cup

For the second game in a row, the United States conceded three goals against tough competition. For the third game in their last four, the United States conceded a goal very early in the game. Unlike all of these other games (except for Costa Rica, but we can partially excuse that for the hostile environment and the crummy playing surface), the United States today was downright terrible. Not that we had been playing our best soccer these last couple of weeks, but today's performance made those other games look very good indeed.

From the very get-go of this game, the United States never looked like they would be able to contend with Brazil. To their credit, not many teams can. Still, going down 2-0 inside of 20 minutes when both goals could've easily been prevented is not how you go about playing any team, and certainly not Brazil. The first goal (a point-blank header from a set piece) could've been avoided with better marking. The second goal (a break-away from a USA corner) should never be allowed to happen in a college game, let alone an international game. For the third goal, the ball took an unfortunate deflection away from Tim Howard, and the result of a goal from that play seems harsh on the United States defense. The United States looked much more lively in the closing stages (hitting the crossbar twice), but their efforts were never going to threaten Brazil's lead in the game, especially considering the United States also had Sacha Kljestan sent off.

This loss puts the United States with one win and three losses in their last four games, and they're surely out of the Confederations Cup now. Even if Egypt manages to beat Italy this afternoon to keep the United States alive in the tournament, they would somehow need to overturn their -5 goal difference against Egypt, who managed to score three goals against the team who just crushed us. And we've only played one decent half in the tournament thus far, which was the first half against Italy.

Here are some worrying statistics from the last four games against Costa Rica, Honduras, Italy and Brazil:
- We've conceded 12 goals while only scoring 4
- Only 1 of the goals we've scored has come from open play (Landon Donovan scored the other 3 from penalty kicks) - that's 1 non-penalty kick goal in 360 minutes of soccer
- We've conceded 3 goals in 3 different games within the first 6 minutes of the game

Comparing the US line-up in our last game in the 2006 World Cup against Ghana to today's game against Brazil, only 4 players started both these games: Onyewu, Donovan, Dempsey and Beasley. The latter two players had little or no impact on the game. We have a young and very inexperienced squad assembled at the moment, and it has showed in these last few games that they're nowhere near ready to compete at next year's World Cup. I'll hold off on judgment of Bob Bradley, but it sure seems like we haven't made any progress as a team on the world stage. The Gold Cup next month will be very telling to see how this team responds on home soil against far inferior competition. It'll also be interesting to see who Bradley drops, if anyone, from his squad (I expect Beasley will be the first one to go).

Overall, the poor performance from the United States today was simply a continuation of our form of late. It's very worrying because we're already less than a year away from the 2010 World Cup. Let's at least hope for a better performance against Egypt.