Wow. Was that fun! Show up with a vastly inferior team, smaller, slower, less-creative and less-skilled, withstand all but one of about 50 scoring chances, get a fluke goal that slips through the keeper’s Mickey Mouse mitts and trickles across the line at about 1 mph … and escape with a point in the World Cup while making England groan in pain.

Those of you back home in the States … party like it’s 1776!

Didn’t see this one coming. (I called it 3-1 England, earlier in the week.) Especially didn’t see it coming four minutes in, when the English used a sublime, four-touch, blink-and-you-missed-it combination from throw-in to Steven Gerrard goal.

First thing I thought of? Two semi-recent examples of the Yanks giving up early goals in the first match of the World Cup … and melting like ice cubes in the Abu Dhabi summer.

To wit:

The fourth-minute goal Germany scored in 1998 at Parc des Princes in Paris that spelled doom for the U.S. … the sixth-minute goal by the Czech Republic in Germany in 2006 that also augured a quick exit by the Americans.

This time … it was different.

But only just.

You saw the match, right?

England was all over the Americans for nearly 90 minutes. High pressure, middle pressure, pressure everywhere. No room for the Yanks to play. No speed to escape. When the U.S. put together as many as three passes at a time … it was a good sequence.

England plays so fast. The time they need from winning the ball to going on the attack … is about 0.5 seconds. And they went forward with numbers. Again and again and again and again.

Some attacks broke down because a Yank got a foot on a pass. Some sputtered out because this or that Englishman failed to convert a golden opportunity. Several more were saved by American keeper Tim Howard, who finally translated his club-team reputation into national team results. The Man of the Match, for sure.

The U.S. had two half-chances in the first 35 minutes, both on restarts off the foot of Landon Donovan. The first was dropped just in front of the goal, but Jozy Altidore got only a glancing header on it … and the second was from distance that Oguchi Onyewu hit with a bit more authority, but off target.

But it was otherwise just about all-England-all-the-time.

Till the 40th minute.

Clint Dempsey, who is both lucky and good in big matches, had the ball about 10 yards outside the box. He went right, pivoted as a defender went past him, shuffled left, and let go a left-footed shot from just outside the area. And why not? It was as good a look as he was likely to get all night, with the ball at his feet. It had maybe a 1 percent chance of going in, but as Wayne Gretzky used to say, “you can’t score if you don’t shoot.”

Dempsey’s ball was not hit particularly hard, but it was on target, a few feet in the air and to the left of England keeper Robert Green, by far the most obscure player in England’s First XI.

And then fate intervened for the Colonists.

The ball did not spin as it flew … on replay, you could almost read the writing on the ball. No rotation. Like a pitcher’s knuckleball … floating and (I’m guessing) doing weird aerodynamic things. Perhaps the result of that goofy technology of Adidas’s new “Jabulani” ball (yours for only $122.49 at amazon.com) that so many players — especially goalies — have complained about.

At any rate, Green got over to his right in time to get both hands on the ball, but he was not in the classic goalie defensive position — with his entire body between the path of the ball and the net. Bad goalkeeping? Bad soccer ball? Both?

The ball hit his hands, striking his right a bit more heavily than his left … and trickled off his mitts … and behind him … and rolled ever … so … slowly … over the line.

Gooooooooooal! (I would have loved to hear Andres Cantor’s call, instead of the nondescript Italian guys we got on the national carrier here in Italy. (Who we think were amused by England’s bit of bad luck, but our Italian isn’t good enough to be sure.)

At the time, in the bar area of a hotel just outside Rome, where four of us held a USA-England vigil, we thought, “great moment, but it can’t possibly be enough.” (Which is almost exactly what the Kenyan guy at the hotel’s reception desk said. “You need another goal or you do not win.” And that seemed sensible … with England playing keep-away in the American half with minimal difficulty.

But the Yanks made it to halftime still tied. That was key. Time for coach Bob Bradley and the lads to talk about not taking unnecessary risks, and controlling the ball whenever possible and, if all else failed, just booting it toward the other end of the pitch.

England had so many more chances. Speed and power, coming forward, again and again. Like the Redcoats at Bunker Hill. But the Yanks fought them off with pluck and luck, and when England coach Fabio Capello’s last substitute, the 6-foot-7 forward Peter Crouch, showed he would have no impact on the game … something seemed to snap inside the Eleven Lions on the pitch.

The team that just powered over the field for 80-plus minutes … seemed to collectively reach exhaustion, and Capello had burned all his subs — including a fairly arrogant switch in the 31st minute to get Shaun Wright-Phillips in for James Milner simply because the latter had an early yellow card.

Anyway, the formidable England team suddenly wasn’t coming forward in waves, like before. It was two or three guys, out of sync, out of luck, perhaps realizing this just wasn’t going to be their day. Like General Pakenham at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

This is a big deal for the Americans, who were wearing, in case you didn’t hear it, replica jerseys of the sort they wore in 1950, when they staged the epic 1-0 shocker over the self-styled Masters of the Game at Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

This result wasn’t as shocking as that one. These guys aren’t semi-pros, as the Americans of 1950 were. The 2010 deserved to be on the field with England. Not that any of them — with the notable exception of Howard — could start for Coach Fabio.

That draw was big. As big as a victory, which it what it felt like in the realm of American soccer.

Losing in the first match of the World Cup almost always means doom. You could look it up. Even to a good team. The defeat sews doubt and heightens pressure. Now, a victory over either Slovenia or Algeria could be enough for the U.S. to make the second round. Thanks to that tie.

And this is the best part: We still barely care about soccer. Yes, soccer. Not football. Soccer. It still doesn’t make the top 10 of “sports Americans are good at.”

As nervous as some of you were, those last 45 minutes … it doesn’t begin to compare to the angst generated in England. They suffered. I guarantee you. And all that optimism and self-congratulation Team England had been wallowing in for months, the oh-so-premature chatter about their easy path to the semifinals … now a seed of doubt has been planted. “Maybe we won’t make it! Maybe we will choke! Again! Like we just did against the bloody Yanks!

“What’s next? They take the title of world’s premier superpower from us, too? Oh, yeah, that happened 65 years ago.”

Savor it, soccer fans back in the States. Savor that final score:

United States defeats England, 1-1.