SANTA CLARA, Calif. — We heard it more than once in the buildup to Friday's Copa America opener. Colombia is beatable. Jurgen Klinsmann said it, and his players said it too.
The reality is, Colombia was beatable on Friday night, but the U.S. national team simply wasn't good enough to take advantage. Instead, the Americans beat themselves with costly mistakes and an overall flat performance that never really threatened the No. 3 team in the world.
Giving up an early goal didn't help matters. An eighth-minute lead allowed Colombia to sit back and look to break on the counter. Unfortunately for the Americans, they did very little to threaten Colombia in the first half. The second half wasn't much better, save for a pair of great chances by Clint Dempsey, the only American who really looked up for the challenge on Friday.
The South American side wasn't at its best, but to be clear, the Colombians were clearly better. Their touches, their passes, their movement, their defensive challenges. You name it, the Colombians did it better when they wanted to, and when they needed to. It may not have yielded any goals in the run of play, but the U.S. defense was tested far more often, and with many more threatening sequences than the Colombian defense.
Klinsmann disagreed with the notion that Colombia was the better team on the night, saying the teams were even save for the corner kick goal and the penalty call he and his players considered questionable.
The U.S. could try and look at the bright side of not surrendering any goals from the run of play, or that it held the edge in possession, but Klinsmann knows his team wasn't good enough, and the painful part was that some of his senior players were the most disappointing performers.
Here are some key takeaways from Colombia's 2-0 victory:
WHEN CLOSE ISN'T THAT CLOSE
The post-game talk was dominated by comments about how close the U.S. was to Colombia. After all, the Americans did create some chances and held the edge in possession. But the reality is they were never truly all that close to threatening a Colombian side that coasted to victory without having to get out of second gear very often.
"We were absolutely OK with the team performance," Klinsmann said after the match. "Obviously, we got punished for two set pieces in the first half and against such a quality team, it's very very difficult if you don't score this one goal to get back into the game and then equalize it.
"Overall, we were totally even," Klinsmann said. "Obviously when you open up against them, you risk a counter break here and there, which is their strength. Overall I was very pleased with the performance of the team."
Klinsmann's take on the match was flattering at best. Yes, the U.S. did create chances, led by an inspired Dempsey, but he was the only American player who ever really troubled Colombia's defense.
The early Cristian Zapata goal was a gut-punch for the Americans because it gave Colombia a level of comfort. The South Americans sat back and waited for the U.S. to produce something that could trouble their defense, but it never came.
Dempsey finally broke through with two great chances in the second half, but by then it was already 2-0 after James Rodriguez a scored penalty kick that came from a completely legitimate handball call on DeAndre Yedlin.
Clearly, Dempsey disagreed with the penalty call, saying it changed the game.
"What do you do when you have that penalty called against you, in your home country," Dempsey said. "We’re used to getting those type of calls, even if it’s kind of close, but we keep fighting. We’re used to dealing with these situations."
Could the referee have ignored the fact DeAndre Yedlin's hand was raised, and a Colombian cross struck it clearly? Sure, but the call was a good one. The U.S. was punished for a pair of mistakes on that play, the first being Michael Bradley's poor turnover that sparked the Colombian break.
Though the U.S. found its best chances in the second half, Colombia did turn on the style at times, and the U.S. couldn't cope. One stretch of play saw Colombia knock the ball around at will, leaving the Americans chasing shadows. The Colombians also had some dangerous looks, including one Carlos Bacca shot that blasted off the crossbar.
For all the positive outlooks on the U.S. performance, Bradley had the most pragmatic, and realistic take on Colombia's performance.
“Obviously, tactically, they were very organized. Closed space, made things very difficult," Bradley said. "Certainly, the fact that they get the early goal off the corner kick plays into things for them and really reinforces the way they wanted to go about it, which was to wait for us at midfield, make sure their lines were very tight, and when they won balls, looked to go quickly. Obviously then the penalty right before halftime made the game that much more difficult."
As for the idea that the U.S. played evenly with Colombia, Bradley focused more on the fact that the U.S. could have been better on the night.
"In the first half there were some good moments. We weren’t quite sharp enough, or quite good enough to be able to take some little advantages or some half-chances and really punish them," Bradley said. "Obviously they, on the night, were ruthless in terms of their ability to know what the game was going to need, and again, close space and make things very difficult and take chances when they came."
DEMPSEY WAS STELLAR, BUT DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH HELP
Clint Dempsey played like a player who wanted to win, and who was good enough to play on either team, but unfortunately for him, there weren't enough of his teammates playing on that level on Friday night.
Dempsey had three great chances, sending one just wide, and having two others saved dramatically in the second half. David Ospina had to go full stretch to keep out a Dempsey free kick that could have sparked a comeback, but nobody else on the U.S. emerged to trouble Colombia's defense.
"Clint was a warrior out there. He gave everything he had," Klinsmann said of his best player on the night. "He was fighting that fight very positively until the last second, so we wish that sooner or later, one goes in, and you build on that one."
The U.S. goal never came, but not for a lack of trying by the 33-year-old Texan.
"We’d like to create more chances, but at the same time it was just kind of one of those games where they kind of sat back when they had that two-goal lead and it’s kind of difficult to break things down like that," Dempsey said.
Dempsey had been a bit of a forgotten man heading into Copa America, with all the talk of new faces like Christian Pulisic and Darlington Nagbe, as well as Bobby Wood. On Friday Dempsey showed that he remains the U.S. team's most dangerous attacking weapon, but will struggle to carry the U.S. forward without some help.
THE BRIGHT SIDE
U.S. fans won't want to hear about silver linings after a loss like Friday's, but there were some positives for the Americans to hang their hat on.
You can start with the defense, which held its own in the run of play against a very dangerous Colombia side. Sure, Bacca did hit the crossbar, and Juan Cuadrado did terrorize the left side of the U.S. lineup in the first half, but the U.S. never let the Colombians through aside from a blown assignment on a corner kick and a penalty kick.
The John Brooks-Geoff Cameron central defense tandem showed real promise, with Brooks holding his own and looking like he's ready to keep the job previously held by Matt Besler. Cameron's blown assignment on the first Colombia goal was bad, but he was outstanding the rest of the match.
Dempsey was excellent, as mentioned earlier, while Darlington Nagbe showed very well coming off the bench. Nagbe could force Klinsmann into a decision on Jermaine Jones, who was poor against Colombia.
- Goal