The hardest bit of staying up all night is the hour before dawn. Well, maybe when it is the second time in two days you have reached that hour before dawn which, in Abu Dhabi this time of year, is a bit after 5 a.m.

But that was required of anyone who wanted to watch the U.S. national team play Ghana in the World Cup: The 3 p.m. Monday kickoff in California was 2 a.m. today, Tuesday, in the UAE.

Which produced some drifting in and out, in the second half, while watching the Univision streaming video, but led to these assessments of the 2-1 U.S. victory:

–Clint Dempsey has been involved with several clutch moments, with the U.S. national team and scored some high-degree-of-difficulty goals. His goal 29 seconds into the game seemed to shock Ghana (“Hey, nobody scores in the first 30 seconds! That just isn’t done!”) and then turned into the life raft the Yanks rode for the next 80 minutes.

The other impressive Dempsey goal that comes to mind, in addition to his left-footed, inside the post goal against Ghana, that is, was his redirecting a pass from behind for the first U.S. goal in the 3-2 loss to Brazil in the 2009 Confederations Cup final. I described it at length in this post, a goal which gave the U.S. a 1-0 lead on the way to a 2-0 lead, and to this day — and I have watched a lot of soccer since — I have never seen a goal like that one. As I wrote, five years ago, I’ve never even seen someone try it. Dempsey may disappear from games, and forget he needs to help on defense, but no one in the history of U.S. soccer can score the really hard goals the way Clint does. Not sure anyone in U.S. soccer even considers some of the goals he scores.

–Ghana showed Portugal and Germany how to play the U.S.  Not that those teams need coaching advice, but it doesn’t hurt to see in real time what you, too, probably were planning to do. Ghana pressed the U.S. high, and it was beyond difficult for the Yanks to get out of their own end for much of the game. Much of the “blame” seems to have been heaped on Michael Bradley, who did turn over the ball a lot, but if you were watching closely you would have noted Ghana descended on him en masse, and he had little or no help around him. One guy cannot be expected to get the ball out of his defensive end and into the attacking half, but that appeared to be what Jurgen Klinsmann expected of Bradley. He has to get help in the next two games, or some of those turnovers will turn into opposition goals.

–I love DaMarcus Beasley. Good guy. Upbeat. The pride of Terre Haute. He was great at the 2002 World Cup … but he has been shaky for years in his reincarnation as a left back. That he is on the U.S. national team at the 2014 World Cup while his good friend Landon is not is astonishing — and without question says something scary about the left-back situation in U.S. soccer. He made plays that took me back 20 years in U.S. soccer. Passes nowhere, to no one. Rushed passes. He was unsteady on the ball, and scary when he was 1-v-1 with anyone wearing Ghana’s shirt. That a mistake of his did not lead directly to a Ghana goal was a miracle. How does Jurgen fix that? Maybe there is no fixing.

–Fabian Johnson, one of Klinnsy’s German pets, was nearly invisible. Really. I forgot he was in the game for long stretches. He was at right back and apparently wanted nothing to do with the game, if he could help it. While DaMarcus was involved in a lot of play, because Ghana liked to go up the right side, Johnson was doing nearly nothing on the other side of the pitch. Against Portugal, who stations a guy named Cristiano Ronaldo on their left side (Johnson’s half, to defend), this could make for major trouble.

—-Ghana is good. They probably will not get out of the group now, considering they pretty much have to get four points from games with Germany and Portugal, but I was impressed with them. Not only with the game plan, mentioned above, but with their athleticism and skill. I think they are by far the best of the Africans teams that have played so far. (Algeria starts tonight.) Miles better than Nigeria, which was awful in that unsightly 0-0 draw with Iran, better than Ivory Coast, which depends too heavily on Yaya Toure, and way better than Cameroon, which was dominated by Mexico’s worst team in decades.

–Jermaine Jones might be the second-best U.S. player, after Tim Howard. Another scary notion. But he’s pretty good. He plays like he knows his way around the pitch, and he should by now, and is a physical presence. I would like to see him be a little more assertive, though. This U.S. team is very thin, and it needs the handful of veterans to step up.

–John Brooks might be really good, someday. He scored the winning goal with the crisp header, and being an athletic, 6-foot-4, left-footed central defender often leads to long careers. But he is a child, and he was a bit shaky in his day job (defense, not scoring), his debut in an official international match.

–Klinsmann took advantage of a U.S. soccer trait that existed long before he showed up — the unwillingness to give up.

The Yanks never quit, which is surprisingly rare in world soccer. The weary professionals of Europe’s Big Five soccer leagues know when the chances of a comeback are remote. And play accordingly. Even still, it’s like the Americans don’t know when they are beaten, which makes them both dangerous and perverse to opponents. We saw that again. “Only one point instead of three? Not so fast!” One of our staffers at The National, a Scot named Gary Meenaghan, who is in Brazil for the tournament, mentioned “mental toughness” in his analyses of what went on in Natal tonight.

–Jozy Altidore is out of the tournament. Don’t listen to the “we need to check” stuff the U.S. federation is putting out. Nobody grabs a hamstring the way he did, while at a full sprint, and then get carried off while wincing in pain, and comes back to play in the next couple of weeks — and maybe not the next couple of months, which is going to screw up the start of his European season. Tough break for the big guy.

Which leads to the final note …

–Man, could the U.S. use Landon Donovan right now. Klinsmann’s personal animus towards the greatest scorer in U.S. history has stripped him of an obvious candidate to get post-Jozy minutes at the attacking end. Klinsmann’s choice to come on for Altidore, was Aron Johannsson, who did little or nothing useful in the hour-plus he was out there. Next up, Chris Wondoloski, who was warming up when it looked like Dempsey’s nose was broken, not just badly bloodied. Yes. Chris Wondoloski.

Maybe Jurgen goes forward with a 4-5-1, or a lineup (in whatever formation) with just one real forward, Dempsey. But he has no good options because he was going to ride Jozy. And now that is over.

My first thought, when Jozy went down, was “turn on the Bat-Signal for Landon”. Unfortunately, as I understand Fifa rules, the U.S. no longer can replace an injured player on the roster. So, the U.S. federation calling him for help, and having him rush out of the ESPN studios in Los Angeles and arrive in Brazil later today … can’t happen. Not that Klinsmann would ever do that, but he has cover in the rulebook.

The U.S. may need to score a goal or two, going forward. Landon, who has five career World Cup goals (Messi has two) and has rounded into form in the past month, would be handy to have around.