Despite loss, Brazil match a positive experience

Scheduling a game at the New Meadowlands Stadium against Brazil one month after the World Cup always was a win-lose situation for the Americans. It was an automatic victory to bring the Brazilians, sport's potentates, into a soccer-savvy area, with the assurance of a large crowd to showcase a venue that very well could host the championship final in the 2022 World Cup.

But for a U.S. team that had invigorated - then let slip a bit - a new enthusiasm for soccer on these shores, it was a potential dead end from the start. And hardly a favor to national team coach Bob Bradley, whose future descended into limbo the minute the United States lost to Ghana in the Cup's second round.

Brazil, itself smarting from a World Cup quarterfinal loss to the Netherlands but already in a rebuilding mode to host the tournament in 2014, won the Tuesday night friendly, 2-0. The Americans, with a team cobbled together at the last minute, reinforced the notion that they still are not ready to convince their populace to turn its eyes away from baseball, football and basketball for more than a few weeks every fourth year.

"This game was difficult," said Landon Donovan, who reinforced his status as America's primary soccer practitioner during the World Cup. "The timing was difficult. Most of our guys went on vacation after the World Cup, and those of us in MLS were going non-stop. It's difficult to assess where we are right now. If this were later in the year . . . "

It wouldn't be unfair to point out that Brazil fielded, essentially, a junior varsity team, and still controlled the match. Only three starters had seen significant playing time in the World Cup, and a coaching change already had been made, with Mano Menezes replacing Dunga.

Nor would it be inappropriate to note that the Yanks, by contrast, used most of the faces who were becoming familiar to the U.S. public during the Cup: Donovan, goalie Tim Howard, midfielder Michael Bradley (the coach's son) most prominently. And still lost for the 15th time in 16 career duels with the Brazilians.

But Howard rightfully noted that "there is a lot of change and what-ifs going on."

The Americans had only a single practice session prior to the Brazil game, and Bradley started a couple of raw rookies, defender Omar Gonzalez (in his first national-team appearance) and midfielder Alejandro Bedoya (in his third).

"Everybody knew this was an exhibition," Bob Bradley said, "and that, when you end one [World Cup] cycle, you start another" - putting his team in something of a spring-training mode.

The U.S. players were in agreement that the New Meadowlands experience was both exciting and, in terms of attention, a boost for the sport. The committee that is bidding to bring the World Cup to the United States in either 2018 or 2022 - most likely the latter date because the 2018 tournament is assumed to be heading to Europe after going to Brazil in '14 - clearly benefited from Tuesday's huge crowd of 77,223.

The National Soccer Hall of Fame, furthermore, attached its 2010 induction ceremony to Tuesday's event, a powerful reminder of how far the sport has come in the United States since any of those new Hall members - Kyle Rote, Jr., coach Bruce Arena, Thomas Dooley and Predrag Radosavljevic, known as Preki - played on a far smaller soccer stage.

"It was a good experience for the younger guys," Donovan concluded, "to realize what it takes, not only to play on the national level but to play against Brazil. But we're at a point now where it's not good enough just to learn. We need to win."

Somewhere along the way, what's good for the U.S. team is good for soccer in America.