First of all vick, i've played soccer 17 years of my life so ... for all of those who truly do understand the game and don't go by pure stats to prove their arguments... they would understand that sometimes in games where scoring is not so direct (unlike basketball, hockey, football), a long term strategy is placed into a game. You bring up stats to prove your point, but did u actually watch the game? Where was Brazil's dominance in the first half? Ya they had the better percentage of the ball, but if Brazil plays any team, they're going to have that no matter what. What I did see, were frustrated Brazilians fouling us, playing horrible balls, tripping up on their own dribbling, and just not getting to play the way they usually play because the us team condensed their whole team onto their side of the field. that's called strategy...because no matter how good you are, you can't dribble past a whole team..not even c.ronaldo and messi can do it... and naveen brought a good point.. the counterattack isn't the only style that USA can play with. They can push up all players and play attacking futbol too.. but there's no point in doing that if you're gonna score two goals and give up five (evident in the first game). Condensing the team brings back your forwards past the center line who usually just jog around barely playing defense. Doing this, our attack gets tired and especially with a team like Brazil. Not only that, chasing around Brazilians while they try to dribble around you gets you tired too... and the people who did that the most were our center midfielders... not only do they defend the trickest/most skilled players on the pitch... but they also are the people who lead the attack. So Ricardo Clark and Feilhaber got tired. The whole team got tired. That's our fault... conditioning was not good enough. After half, we were too tired, our condensed defense didn't work because there was no energy. Both Clark and Feilhaber get subbed by Bornstein and Sasha Celjstan. They both suck. No depth on the bench, therefore our center midfield broke down... the place where the brazilians exploited. We broke down, they scored. So... they didn't dominate in any sense. If you look at pure stats.. Brazil always has more possession, more shots, more corner kicks, more anything cuz they can dribble. That doesn't mean that they dominate teams like the US, Italy, England, Germany, Russia, France, etc. always. Sorry for the long post... but it's my review of the game... stick to vtech football vik hah.
Naveen amen on the analysis you said exactly what I would have about Italian style of play and the similarity found in USA soccer