espnstar.com's football columnist Jesse Fink analyzes the emergence of the USA as a world footballing power.

If there's one thing the final at the Confederations Cup has proved conclusively - lest there were any doubts - it's that football is a game of two halves. USA went into the change-rooms at half-time in Johannesburg 2-0 up against the most storied, dangerous team in the world: Brazil. They were 45 minutes away from one of the great upsets of all time. A triumph for the ages.

Once they had got back on the field, however, it took less than a minute for one of those goals to be pegged back, a shade over 20 for the scores to be deadlocked and, with six minutes to go until extra time, it was all over, the unlikely figure of Lucio the saviour for a Selecao that had been pushed to the limit and proved it had stores of mental strength to match its virtually inexhaustible talent.

Football romantics, and I am one, were aghast. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing the Brazilian national football team put to the sword. It happens occasionally. What is rare, though, is to see anyone match the masters of joga bonito at their own game, and that is what USA did for that first 45 minutes, like Egypt against the same opposition earlier in the tournament.

Landon Donovan's goal, the Americans' second, was a masterpiece of counterattacking, one of the most beautifully executed pieces of football art I've seen in a long time. It's a shame it had to be overshadowed in the final analysis because it was a goal that deserved to deliver victory.

It was hard to believe the same Americans that danced across Ellis Park with such élan in the first half could be reduced to running at shadows in the second. But whatever Dunga had said to his players inside the dressing sheds must have been Pattonesque, judging by the wild reactions that accompanied each goal.

For the first time in a long time Brazil had needed to come from two goals down and do it in a final of a big tournament. That they scored three with such conviction and alacrity - none of them were lucky - is a tribute to their willpower. Clearly they needed to be shaken up a bit to find their mojo. This was more like the side that had crushed USA 3-0 in the group round, with Káka producing an imperious display after the break befitting a player with a GDP-like bank balance.

And so there is order in the house of football again. Even Spain, playing with the enthusiasm of a bunch of blokes who would prefer to be lying on beach towels, managed to survive another scare, this time in the third-place curtain-raiser against South Africa in Rustenburg.

Wedged between them in second place, though, is USA, and to get that far when no one gave them a hope in hell is an achievement worth praising. More than Egypt, USA has emerged from the Confederations Cup as a new world power in a sport whose name it can't even get right.

The ranking no longer looks like a typo. There is substance behind it.

For a guy whose head was on the chopping block after just two group games, Bob Bradley's position going into next year's World Cup now looks unassailable. USA can go a long way.

The only disadvantage his team will have when they return to South Africa is the surprise is gone. But great performers never look back.

USA has got its break on the world stage. Now it's up to them to take it the next level.