Brazil Defeats US in Confederations Cup Final

After the dra­matic 3rd place match, no one expected the FIFA Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup final to fol­low the same script. How­ever, this match­day in South Africa was spe­cial as was Brazil’s amaz­ing come­back per­for­mance against a United States side with mas­sive heart.

The U.S. did to Brazil what they did to Spain as the Amer­i­cans jumped out to an early lead on Clint Dempsey’s fab­u­lous twist­ing shot from a Jonathan Spec­tor ser­vice into the box to shock the Brazil­ians and give the Amer­i­cans the 1–0 lead in the 10th minute.

The car­ry­over from the Spain game con­tin­ued in the 27th minute when the gave the Brazil­ians a bit of their own med­i­cine when the Amer­i­cans quickly turned a bad pass to a counter attack with Lan­don Dono­van giv­ing a pass to Char­lie Davies and then receiv­ing it back just out­side the box. The U.S. num­ber 10’s 1st touch lost his marker and then Dono­van slot­ted it past Julio Cesar for the eye-rubbing 2–0 lead.

Some excel­lent goal keep­ing from US keeper Tim Howard kept the 2–0 lead safe going into half­time as the world was 45 min­utes away from wit­ness­ing a mas­sive upset. How­ever, Brazil is Brazil and in the 1st minute of the 2nd half Luis Fabi­ano woke up and scored on a twist­ing shot that went between Jay Demerit’s legs and got past Howard to cut the lead to 2–1.

A Kaká header in the 61st minute looked like it crossed the line but Howard knocked it out as the ref­eree said to play on. Unfazed the Brazil­ians con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate pos­ses­sion and attack the US goal. The equal­izer finally came in the 74th minute when Kaká sped down the left side into the box and cen­tered to Robinho who’s shot bounced under the cross­bar and out to Luis Fabi­ano who headed in the rebound.

The dag­ger in the heart of the Amer­i­cans came off the head of the Brazil­ian cap­tain. With the final seem­ingly mov­ing toward into extra time Lucio rose above the US defense to head in the tro­phy win­ning goal.

3–2 Final Score: Brazil­ian come­back com­plete, US heart­break begins, Seleção solid­i­fies its place as the world’s best foot­balling nation.