FanHouse CopaAmerica

The South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) has decided to rip into the U.S. Men's National Team for supposedly disrespecting their tournament by not sending its best players.

"We like for the continent's most important competition to be respected with the best players," CONMEBOL general secretary Eduardo Deluca told The Associated Press on in a telephone interview on Wednesday. ...

He said the Americans "opted to send a team with some players who aren't their regulars. That doesn't please us," Deluca told the AP.

Look, I get why CONMEBOL is upset. The USA's performance in this tournament was horrid -- three straight losses, a -6 goal differential, shocking performances all around. The team might have been much more competitive with guys like Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, DaMarcus Beasley there, or even kids like Freddy Adu, Danny Szetela, Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore, who have looked fantastic at the FIFA U-20 World Cup.

But the head honchos at CONMEBOL needs to get it through their heads that Copa America is not the United States' tournament.

...and that's pretty much the thumping you expect when you throw your second-stringers out against Argentina, but it almost wasn't. Maybe not "almost". But it 2/3rds wasn't? Eddie Johnson drew a ninth minute penalty; Argentina responded with a set piece chip that bobbled around the box until Hernan Crespo slammed it home, and from there a stalemate settled in until Leo Messi did his Messi thing, found Crespo, and staked Argentina to a 2-1 lead, at which point things disintegrated.

Despite the constant exuberant praise heaped upon the US defenders by GolTV's shockingly not Scottish color guy (he's apparently from Newcastle, which is so close to Scotland it might not be total crap), it always seemed a matter of time before the Argentines got a grip on the knobbly oyster shell that was the US defense, inserted the knife, and prised it open to devour its meaty goodness. Tortured, shellfish-themed metaphors aside, this is exactly what happened in a deflating final half hour that firmly established that yes, Virginia, they're Argentina... and we are not.

It's not all bad. For 60 minutes the US played with one of the top teams in the world, and though they lacked the cutting edge near goal the Argentines had, large parts of the match were impressive soccer. The last 30 minutes, though, was another demonstration that the United States lacks the lethal quality of the world's best sides. Boxes post jump.

The USMNT's plan this summer was always to win the Gold Cup, get a bid to the '09 Confederations Cup, and then throw a bunch of kids and marginal performers to the wolves in the Copa America, hoping that two or three would establish themselves in the cauldron of South America's championship maelstrom. Step one: accomplished. Now, step two is operation gravy.

The USA released its Copa roster at the last possible moment, seemingly taken aback by the Argentine menace. Most observers had assumed the Argentines would bring a second-string squad of their own; they did not. Leo Messi, Carlos Tevez, Juan Roman Riquelme, Pablo Aimar, and Javier Mascherano, all guys even Americans might have heard of, were all called up. What faces the USMNT this Thursday is virtually identical to a hypothetical Argentina World Cup squad. It would be an intimidating mountain to climb if Donovan, Dempsey, Beasley, and Onyewu were around. They aren't. The only holdovers from the Gold Cup squad are methuselan goalkeeper Kasey Keller, underwhelming strikers Taylor Twellman and Eddie Johnson, and some kids: Jonathan Bornstein, Ricardo Clark, and everyone's favorite new toy Benny Feilhaber. The remainder of the squad is youth fighting for a place in World Cup qualification.

OPPONENTS

The aforementioned Argentines will be an enormous test. A loss is expected. The other members of the group, Columbia and Paraguay, will be more manageable but neither is anything approaching a pushover.