You are most welcome. Any time to talk about the nuances of the game.
In the Calcio thread, I bantered that too much of the Spanish game is played mainly in the brain. It seems like the U.S. has the exact opposite problem, with players lulled into thinking that they are safe when they actually are about to get baited into a trap.
And while I'm quite dismayed at the way the U.S. played, the saving grace is that it seems that a few Canadian players are also deficient in the tactical nous side of things. Look at the Canadian dude most adjacent to the Canadian #3. He's running toward and behind CAN #3, instead of into the U.S. half, where there's acres of unguarded space he could run into.
This reminds me of one of the quotes by the great Johan Cruijff (
see video here, in Dutch but with English caption), who said that if he has the ball and his teammate is trying to help, the teammate should run away from Cruijff (as opposed to toward him), as that would really open up the options.