Clint Dempsey’s Wednesday goal sealed a potentially watershed victory in the history of United States soccer. When the 26-year-old attacker put a wayward Sergio Ramos touch past Iker Casillas, Dempsey tallied the shocking culmination of events that included a horrible Albert Riera pass, three fifty-fifty balls won by the U.S. within three seconds, some lazy defending by an all-world back and two fortunate bounces from an ill-advised cross.

In this Anatomy of a Goal, we look at all the events that led to Dempsey’s fifteenth international goal – the goal which sealed the United States’ 2-0 victory over Spain in the semifinals of the Confederations Cup.

Shot #1: Jonathan Spector’s throw-in goes straight to Spain

We pick up the match early in the 74th minute. A Tim Howard goal kick towards Dempsey is put out of play by Spain center back Gerard Pique. The United States, protecting a lead earned by a Jozy Altidore’s first half goal, are regularly keeping eight players within 25 meters of their own goal. Spain’s playing at a high pace that sees them taking all their corners and throws quick and short, trying to wear the United States down.

It’s working. You can see select Americans open-mouthed, having played the last forty minutes of clock time with the tension of protecting a one goal lead over the world’s best team.  They’re countering less, exhaling when clearing out of their own end instead of showing ambition. The goal kick allows the United States a break – a chance to push forward and reestablish some semblance of a formation.

The subsequent throw-in allowed them to push their formation farther into the attack.

In Shot #1, you see the United States has Dempsey and Altidore high, about ten meters beyond the box. The blur challenging the ball is Landon Donovan, playing right midfield. At the top of the screen, you can see Benny Feilhaber, who had just been subbed-on for Charlie Davies.  That substitution allowed Dempsey to move from left wing to a supporting striker’s role.

For Spain, you see Carles Puyol (top, back) and Pique at the far right. Left back Joan Capdevilla is playing the ball to left wing Albert Riera. In the middle of the pitch is Xavi Hernandez (directly above Riera) and Xabi Alonso. The shadow barely visible under the score graphic is Sergio Ramos.

Two things to note: the position of Capdevilla; the positions of the two Spanish central midfielders. Capdevilla may be a little high on the pitch, but he’s in the perfect position once Pique comes and wins the Spector throw (that was targeted at Altidore). The Villareal left back collects the ball and keeps it on Spain’s left rather than moving it towards Alonso.  With the play (and particularly Pique) having shifted to the left, Spain is still slightly exposed in the middle, with only Puyol and Ramos to cover.  Unfortunately, as we see in Shot #2, Riera immediately plays towards this weakness.

Shot #2: Riera makes Spain’s first mistake of the sequence: a poor touch to a poor spot on the pitch

In Shot #2, Riera has played the ball back to the middle. Given (what was) Spector’s impending challenge on Riera, it is an understandable (if exposing) decision; however, if Riera is going to touch it towards the middle, he needs to play the ball to the closer Xavi Hernandez rather than the deeper Xabi Alonso.

Making it worse, Riera’s touch is terrible. The ball is popped into the air. You can see Alonso preparing to play it off his chest, a play he will never get a chance to make. By the time the ball is close enough to be played, Clint Dempsey has come back and gotten a foot to the ball, creating the turnover.  There’s no reason why that ball is not on Alonso’s right foot, where he can let the ball into space and avoid Dempsey’s challenge.

Riera bad ball is Spain’s first failing of the sequence, creating the first of three critical fifty-fifty balls the Spaniards would lose in the next three seconds. The play from Pique to Capdevilla to Riera happened so quickly that Alonso did not react to Dempsey’s imminent challenge. If he had sensed it, he would not have stopped to receive the ball flat footed. He would have kept running through the ball to head it back towards Riera (or out of bounds). It would be too strong to suggest Alonso is as culpable for the turnover as Riera, but Alonso could have read the play better.  He missed his chance to mitigate Riera’s mistake.

The reason we know Alonso could have read this play better:  Clint Dempsey immediately reacts correctly to Riera’s bad ball.  Looking back at Shot #1, we see about three meters of space between Dempsey and Alonso when Capdevilla plays to Riera. Dempsey looks to be tracking back towards Alonso and Hernandez, belying the fact that he had a number of other choices. He could have just maintained his high position, as we see with Altidore. With Altidore as the nominal lead striker, Dempsey could have gone toward ball and support Donovan. Instead, he’s moving to account for Alonso (and to a lesser extent, possibly Hernandez). He read the play’s development and reacted instinctively.

This may seem the obvious or natural play for a player in Dempsey’s position, but look at Altidore, who is at a similar spot on the pitch yet is straight-legged and neither anticipating nor reacting to the play. Few would fault Altidore in this spot. At this point, it’s a fairly innocuous situation, but there is something about it that’s tipped-off Dempsey. With two-and-a-half seasons experience in the Premier League, Dempsey has seen this play (at this speed) develop many times. Maybe he isn’t certain the ball is coming to Alonso, but he sees Riera is set to touch it back towards the middle. Dempsey knows that if the balls goes to Alonso, he can get there first. As the ball is leaving Capdevilla’s feet, he is already moving to intercept Spain’s next move. It’s a subtle read for which 83 games at Fulham has prepared him.

Lest you think that analysis makes too much out of Dempsey’s read, there are two other points in this sequence where you can see Dempsey’s experience help his reading and reacting to what happens. As much as Sergio Ramos’s two major failures, Dempsey’s instincts were the key to this goal.

Shot #3: Bradley wins Dempsey’s ball from Xavi Hernandez

Those instincts won Riera’s ball, with Dempsey poking it back toward Xavi Hernandez. Note in Shot #2 that Michael Bradley has decreased his distance from the Spanish playmaker. Continuing what may have been his best game in the defensive midfielder’s role, Bradley wins the second fifty-fifty ball in the sequence (as can be seen in Shot #3), putting the ball back through the middle towards Ramos and Feilhaber (Shot #4, below).

In interviews after the match the Spaniards would express surprise with the intensity with which the United States played. That intensity’s most evident manifestation was the ability to win contested balls in the midfield, allowing the United States to overcome a large possession deficit that had the Spaniards playing much of the match in the States’ third. As Xavi, Cesc Fabregas and David Villa tried time after time to find an active Fernando Torres, Bradley and Ricardo Clark’s ability to pounce on any small, mistaken touch was critical to the States’ overcoming deficits in speed and skill.

Shot #4: Bradley’s challenge results in another 50/50 ball, this time contested by Feilhaber and Ramos

That intensity led Bradley to win the challenge with Xavi and explains why Benny Feilhaber is able to beat Sergio Ramos to the next fifty-fifty ball. Though Shot #4 hints that Feilhaber was closer to the ball, you can see from the position of the players in Shot #3 that Ramos had just as good (if not better) chance at winning this ball. For whatever reason, the Spain right back, not known for being short on speed, is beaten by Feilhaber, whose first touch back towards the middle will beat Ramos, leaving the Real Madrid player behind the play.

This is the first of two critical mistakes Ramos makes.  In the wake of Dempsey’s goal many highlighted Ramos’s touch within the box as the play’s critical error. As discussed later, that touch was somewhat understandable and a much more debatable error than getting beaten by Feilhaber then compounding the mistake by failing to be prepared for Landon Donovan’s cross. The touch in the box may have been an error, but if it was, it was an error of judgment made in a split second. The two errors Ramos makes at the beginning of the sequence are errors in effort – much harder to excuse.

Shot #5: Feihaber has beaten Ramos, forces the Spanish defence to collapse on him

Shot #5 is only two seconds later, yet Feilhaber has already won the ball, gotten by Ramos, and created eight meters of space from the Spain right back. Ramos’s second failure forces both Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique to react. Notice the speed with which Pique is pursuing the play and think back to seconds ago, when Pique was at the far left winning Jonathan Spector’s throw-in to Jozy Altidore. Both he and left back Joan Capdevilla are in desperate pursuit of the play, trying to compensate for Ramos. As a result, Pique is going to overrun the ball when Feilhaber continues cutting to the attack’s right. Capdevilla then has to help Puyol and leave the whole left of the defence exposed.

As we will see in Shot #6 (below), Pique’s momentum will carry him to Puyol’s right.  He puts himself in position to help at the back (rather than resume his normal role to Puyol’s left).  This need to reorganize shows how off-guard Spain’s defence is in the wake of Reira’s turnover.

To this point in the match, Spain has made only one mistake on defence:  Capdevilla’s misplay against Altidore that led to the first United States goal.   Even now, when they are scrambling to compensate for a series of small failures, Puyol, Pique and Capdevilla are making the right choices. In this case, it will not be enough to prevent a goal, as the left side of defense is completely exposed, allowing Feilhaber to put Donovan into the box and on goal.

A couple of other important things to note from Shot #6: the positions of Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, and Sergio Ramos.

Shot #6: The last stand for Spain’s back line as they force Feilhaber’s decision

In Shot #6, Altidore is four or five meters offside, much farther than he was moments before (in Shot #5). Had Feilhaber tried to play the ball through to Altidore at that time, the play would have been dead with the States called offside. That is a pass and an offsides call you see all the time. Feilhaber makes the right decision in holding onto the ball, waiting for the play to develop rather than forcing what would have been an obvious pass.

That is not to say Altidore’s run was bad. Look at where Capdevilla ends up. A big reason why Capdevilla ends up exposing this flank was the need to track his club teammate’s run. If Altidore doesn’t continue into that offside position, Capdevilla is able to either mark Donovan or more readily challenge Feilhaber.

While Spain’s back line has stopped collapsing, forcing Feilhaber into a decision, Dempsey is providing another display of the subtle instincts he’s developed from playing in the Premier League. Dempsey is cutting left, away from the play, going between Pique and Ramos towards the far post. This movement is of particular note considering a United States attack in the first half when Jozy Altidore failed to create width for a Landon Donovan counter, allowing the man marking him to (essentially) play both attackers, forcing Donovan into a non-threatening 24 meter shot. Though Dempsey’s run does not have the same benefits as Altidore’s would have, he is creating width. As the ball moves to the right of attack, he’s forcing Spain’s disorganized defense to account for a greater area. This will pay off when we see Spain out-of-position as they try to address Donovan’s cross.

Dempsey’s movement also brings us back to Sergio Ramos. He is still a non-factor in the play. If a ball were to be played into the space in front of Dempsey, Ramos would not be able to help. By this time, Ramos should have been back, level with Puyol and Pique, in position to help with a cross or rebound. He can still get back and help if the play moves to the attack’s left, but when he does, he will have his options limited.  He’s pursuing the play rather than preparing himself for it.

Shot #7: Feilhaber springs Donovan for a golden opportunity on goal

We see this in Shot #7. Ramos is now sprinting, but it’s too late. Capdevilla’s need to support in the middle has allowed Feilhaber to spring Landon Donovan to Iker Casillas’s left.  Donovan has enough time and space for two touches before blasting it on goal – what he should do. In this shot, he can beat Casillas high and to the near post, and after a touch he should be able to open up the far post. He could cross the ball towards Dempsey, too, though Gerard Pique (the deepest defender, in Shot #7) is better positioned to address the cross than Dempsey is to receive it.

Donovan did not shoot. Instead, Donovan took a touch before trying to put a low ball across the goal mouth in hopes of hitting Dempsey.  If he was going to try and hit Dempsey, he needed to put ball between Casillas and Pique with the hopes of curling back towards a sliding Dempsey, and he needed to do this with his first touch. That would have been a highly ambitious pass, but if he was intent on crossing the ball, it was the only way to make it work. Once he takes a touch and allows Pique to close off the passing lane, he has to shoot. He can still go far or near post, but there is no way of finding Dempsey. The most capped player on the pitch for the Americans, Donovan has been in this position enough times to have made a better choice.

Shots #8 and #9: Donovan’s poor decision to cross for Dempsey almost ended the attack

As is the case with most remarkable moments, fortune intervened. In Shots #8 and #9 we see two Spaniards, including the late trailing Sergio Ramos, are able to get in the way of Donovan’s pass. Pique is in dead sprint and only able to slow up enough to get his left heal on the cross, but the fact that he can deal with it relatively easily underscores Donovan’s error. Fortunately for the U.S., the ball meekly rolls across the box in a manner that prevents Sergio Ramos from doing anything but put his right foot to it. That touch stops the ball, setting up Dempsey for the goal.

Ramos is being blamed for this touch. It was the immediate reaction on the broadcast, and it has been echoed in virtual print in the match’s wake. It is a criticism I have difficulty accepting.  Implicit in the critique is the idea that Ramos could have or should have done something different. Ramos could have worked harder in the seconds leading to his touch (putting himself in position to do more than stick out a foot), but given that he was only in a position to sprint back into the defence, he had no other reasonable choice. By the time he closes the gap between him and Dempsey, Pique’s deflection puts the ball behind him. When he turns to try and play the ball, all of his weight is on his left leg, making it impossible to do anything with the ball.

At that point, Ramos has two choices. First, he can let the ball roll past him. Beyond the fact that his defies instinct, the choice makes no sense, considering he had just caught up to and passed Dempsey. Ramos’s most reasonable assumption: letting the ball roll sets up Dempsey for an easy goal. Second, he can try and play the ball. Perhaps he knows all he can do is trap it, or maybe he thinks he can poke the ball away from goal. Perhaps he thinks he can stop it so Puyol can clear it. In his mind, all of these options are better than the first.

Shot #10: Dempsey scores the biggest goal of his career

Though there was no way for Ramos to know at the time, with the wisdom of hindsight we know letting the ball roll would have been the best choice. In Shot #9 we can see that Dempsey is behind Ramos. He would not have been able to get to the deflection. Still, Dempsey has stopped his run and prepared himself to react to whatever happens in the box. It’s another example of Dempsey’s experience leading to a good, instinctive decision, a decision that creates a nightmare for Ramos.

In Shot #10, we see Dempsey immediately reacting to the trapped ball. He curls around Ramos, puts his right foot to it, and scores the United States’ second goal.

Ramos has been roasted for allowing this goal, an easy judgment to make in light of the results. The touch itself, however, is defensible. Ramos’s failures came seconds earlier, when he allowed Feilhaber to gain possession in midfield and then failed to put himself in position to better handle the deflection. Had he worked harder to get back, he would have been in position to put a stronger touch on the ball. But he hasn’t in position.  He could only touch it. Blaming that touch without blaming the circumstances ignores the play’s context. While it is true that this goal does not happen if not for Ramos’s mistake, the mistake(s) occur long before Dempsey’s goal.

As with most goals, there is no sufficient condition for Dempsey’s score; rather, there a series of necessary events, the absence of any making the tally impossible. If Dempsey, Bradley, and Feilhaber don’t all win balls in the midfield, there is never a bad cross to ricochet off Pique and Ramos. Without those two somewhat lucky bounces, the United States spends the last  fifteen minutes of the match with their stomachs in their throats.

More than the bounces, the goal was defined by the successes and failures of two players. Sergio Ramos had a number of chances to prevent the goal.  He didn’t, and in failing to do so he fed all the criticisms accumulated since his move to the Santiago Bernabeu.  And then there’s Clint Dempsey, who in the span of ten seconds managed to show all his supporters and detractors everything he’s learned in the Premiership – everything that makes him the United States’ most accomplished and talented player.

Richard Farley is a U.S.-based contributor to World Soccer Reader, focusing on the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga. He also hosts WSR Radio, the site’s regular podcast. He can be reached at richardfarley at gmail dot com and followed on Twitter, username “richardfarley.” Richard also hosts a regular (if informal) podcast at pointoneohradio.com.

Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed to get the latest breaking news and analysis!