US Beat Brazil to Win Group D in U-20 World Cup

Fri­day night’s vic­tory for the United States over Brazil in the U-20 World Cup was one of the great moments of the past sev­eral years for US Soc­cer. Brazil’s squad fea­tures the incom­pa­ra­ble Alexan­dre Pato, but tonight Freddy Adu made a strong case that at this level he is as effec­tive as Pato. Adu’s excel­lent ball skills and con­fi­dence were on full dis­play with a world class run and shot in minute 81 led to Jozy Altidore’s game win­ning goal. Adu was dom­i­nant but in truth the US defense was quite wor­ry­ing. After a sold first two matches Nathan Stur­gis and Tony Bel­tran both seemed to have their hands more than full with Brazil’s attack. Chris Seitz despite los­ing con­trol of the ball on Brazil’s goal, was per­fectly posi­tioned all night long and quite frankly bailed out his defense on sev­eral occa­sions after break­downs in the defen­sive third.

Freddy Adu’s work rate and com­po­sure were amaz­ing in the match. His poor form in MLS seems to not be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the type of player he is in big matches: he’s proven time and time again when he’s played at the inter­na­tional level or in a club friendly ver­sus top level Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion he raises his game to a very high level. Around minute 60, it seemed to legs of all the US play­ers except­ing Adu and Michael Bradley were dying or were already dead. Runs were being mist­imed, and the ball work and pass­ing was becom­ing slop­pier and slop­pier. Quite frankly, at this point I felt Coach Thomas Ron­gen should have sub­sti­tuted hold­ing mid­fielder Dax McCarty, a scrappy ball win­ner for Alti­dore whose passes and runs were becom­ing more and more erratic.

Unfor­tu­nately, when Brazil scored in the 64th minute, it was nec­es­sary to keep Alti­dore on the pitch. The dev­as­tat­ing pre-tournament injuries to Qua­vas Kirk (a mid­fielder who pushes often into the attack) and Johann Smith have forced Alti­dore to work alone up top and have clearly worn him down. From min­utes 65 until he scored the game win­ning goal thanks to being posi­tioned prop­erly for a rebound, Alti­dore was com­pletely inef­fec­tive and appeared to be com­pletely spent. The same can be said for Rob­bie Rogers, another valu­able attack­ing player for the US, who Ron­gen did pull out in the 82nd minute after Altidore’s game win­ning goal. Dur­ing the same period Sal Zizzo, who has been the US’ sec­ond best player in the group stage (behind Adu) also looked like the out­stand­ing runs he had made in the first two and a half matches of the tour­na­ment were a thing of the past as his energy level looked very low. In addi­tion, Zizzo failed to track back on defense twice and left Tony Bel­tran totally exposed on the right side, and this almost led to two Brazil­ian goals. But Freddy Adu kept on truck­ing so to speak, and his amaz­ing, high energy play dur­ing this period of the match won the US Team the group. Alti­dore has to be given credit how­ever for toil­ing through his obvi­ous fatigue and posi­tion­ing him­self in a text­book man­ner at the far post for a rebound that won the group for the United States.

After the US reclaimed the lead at 2–1 it seemed every­one on the squad dug a lit­tle deeper and found what­ever energy they had left. But Brazil, con­sid­ered the top U-20 team in the world before this tour­na­ment began cre­ated a relent­less assault on the US goal in the last ten min­utes. By this time, South Korea had drawn level with Poland in the other group match and it appeared that the US could still win the group with a draw. But thanks to Chris Seitz, who was notice­ably spent at the end of the match the South Korea-Poland result did not mat­ter and the US won the group with three points to spare.

Tonight’s vic­tory spoke to the char­ac­ter of the U-20 team, a char­ac­ter that has rarely been exhib­ited in big matches out­side the United States by the Senior National Team. Cer­tainly the draw in the 2006 World Cup against Italy, the 1999 Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup win ver­sus Ger­many and the 1995 Copa Amer­ica win against Argentina belong high in any cat­e­gory, but through the years it seems when the Senior National Team has had an oppor­tu­nity like this on the inter­na­tional stage, they have often times wilted. Despite fac­ing a con­stant assault from a des­per­ate team that was favored to win this tour­na­ment our boys held strong. I guess we learned tonight, to quote the Who, the kids are alright! (Even if we are still fret­ting over the Senior National Team’s Copa Amer­ica performance).

The US will next play on Wednes­day against the third place team from either Group B,E, or F. The pos­si­ble teams the US will face are Zam­bia, Jor­dan, Scot­land, North Korea or Costa Rica.