Brazil is the best team in the world, says Luis Bueno, writing for the Press Enterprise, and it’s not often that both the U.S. and Mexican national teams get a chance to play the five-time World Cup champions mere days apart. The U.S. already turned in a respectable performance against the world No. 1 on Sunday; Wednesday night it’s Mexico’s turn.
El Tri may have beaten the Copa America champions in the same tournament earlier this summer, but that wasn’t Brazil’s “A” team. That’s right, Ronaldinho and Kaka make that much of a difference — just ask the U.S. national team. However, as Bueno points, out Wednesday’s match will also be memorable because it should mark the second appearance of 18-year-old phenom Giovanni Dos Santos, a Mexican born to Brazilian parents. As Bueno says, Dos Santos “figures to be one of Mexico’s key players for the next decade-plus.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. men can hold their heads up high. “We were able to compete with one of the best teams in the world and we were in it for almost the whole game,” said U.S. man-of-the-match Clint Dempsey, scorer of the Americans’ second goal. “That’s always a positive.” Those two goals, by the way, were the first two scored by the U.S. against Brazil since 1930.