Wow! I was truly expecting to see some very positive posts about last night's game, but of course I should have realized the obvious overreactions would prevail. The US played Argentina straight up for about 60 minutes last night. It was about 5 minutes before Argies 2nd goal that it was obvious our players were very tired. We backed off and gave too much space in the midfield, and that killed us. It lead to Messi running at our defense to lay off to an open Crespo. Prior to that point, our team (which consisted of 3 international players in Feilhaber, DeMeritt and Keller) stood up Argentina. We held position well at times and put constant pressure on the ball. IMHO, there were 2 things missing from the US squad: 1) Lack of attacking pressure from our forwards. TT was essentially a non-factor as Argentina's defense marked him well. EJ did well to get open and run down balls, but he couldn't do much after receiving. Instead of out-running the slower defenders, he continually stopped and tried to pass off. 2) Dropping back defensively in the midfield in the 2nd half. It was obvious the US was looking to squeek out a tie in the 2nd half and dropped back to bunkering too much. Without much offense, they could just keep attacking and we ended up giving up too much space. Reasons for hope: 1) Plenty of skilled, fast U20 forwards that couldn't play will be pushing for some major playing time. Also, we didn't have our top players to put offensive pressure on. 2) Experience is a great teacher. We didn't play bunker ball in the first half. Our players stepped up to pressure defensively and created chances. We bunkered in the 2nd half and suffered for it. 3) The US has had serious soccer development programs going for about 10-15 years at most now. Argentina has been a world powerhouse in soccer for decades. Still, without our best players, we hung with Argentina's best for 60 minutes. A, B, C teams aside - we played without many of our best players last night. Argentina had such a loaded squad that Tevez and Gago were their late 2nd half subs. I don't know what anyone else expected, but I knew that our team would likely lose and I hoped for a tie. Our guys stepped up and played their hearts out in a hostile stadium. The best players for us just finished winning the Gold Cup a few days earlier and this team had only a few days to prepare together.