OK, moments before kickoff.

The lineups:

U.S. — Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Oguchi Onyewu, Jay DeMerit, Jonathan Spector, Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley, Ricardo Clark, Clint Dempsey, Charlie Davies, Jozy Altidore.

Spain — Iker Casillas, Gerard Pique,  Carles Puyol, Joan Capdevila, Sergio Ramos, Xavi, Cesc Fabregas, Xabi Alonso, Albert Riera, David Villa, Fernando Torres.

Well, yikes.  To see the names is daunting. Hope the Yanks aren’t daunted.

Carlos Bocanegra back in the lineup, after that hamstring pull suffered back in the Honduras match, June 6. Only two days of training. It’s 37 degrees at kickoff. This may not be a good idea. But Boca giving it a go is a bit less of a health risk, overall, because he can rest his leg for a month or so before going back to France. He won’t play in the Gold Cup.

About to kick off.  And those horrible horns are blaring, same as usual during this tournament.

Also,  Boca is being used at left back, where he plays at Rennes, his club team. So he’s going to have to do some running. But he’s a physical presence there that the latest tryout at the position, Jonathan Bornstein, doesn’t bring to the pitch.

First minute: Spain already coming forward. Yanks having trouble winning the ball. Spain just knocking it around. This is too easy.

As soon as the Americans get the ball, which hasn’t happened 90 seconds into the match, let’s look to see if the Yanks are under the same intense and immediate pressure they felt against Brazil and Italy.

Boca fouls Torres, and the restart leads to a decent shot that Howard knocks away.

Howard has touched the ball twice already. Not a good sign. Not that we expected good signs in this one.

A corner for the Yanks. Davies knocks it off Puyol. Landon taking the corner. Will this be a good day for him on restarts? Not an awful ball, but driven out by one of the Spanish back four.

Fourth minute: Spector with a throw-in and, oops, throws it out of bounds. Ack. Nerves?

Davies and Altidore applying high pressure. Good. Whoa. A decent American chance. Long ball ahead to Davies who almost got to it before Iker Casillas, who came charging off his line.

Fifth minute: Yellow on Landon for tackling Xabi Alonso, and John Harkes is verbalizing what I often think, as well — that the U.S. is judged harshly against elite teams. Alonso tumbled and Landon is carded. And Landon makes really harsh tackles, like, never. Officials, though, think that great players on great teams don’t dive.  When of course they do.

Seventh minute: Charlie Davies not far off from the greatest goal in U.S. history — a bicycle kick from in front of the net on a cross by Dempsey. Not far off the frame. If that goes in, it’s replayed a thousand times in the next 24 hours.

Eighth minute: U.S. actually is getting forward and doing some stuff. A surprise. More important will be not giving up the early goal. … Dempsey hits a hard low ball for the far post from just outside the box and doesn’t miss by much. The U.S. is getting more time on the ball than I expected it would. Is Spain in cruise-control a little?

Oh, and remember, Spain is trying to set world soccer international records for both consecutive victories (16) and unbeaten matches (36). What a win this would be for the Yanks, if they can pull it off.  Unlikely, sure, but weirder things have happened. Like that stuff on Sunday, the two 3-0 matches that put the U.S. into this game.

Dempsey is active so far. So is Landon. Clark, too.

11th minute: Scary moment, Villa crosses for Torres and Boca can’t get to it, and Torres taps it wide.

I like this back four, for the U.S.  Assuming Boca is healthy, of course.  Left back is such a problem. Maybe Carlos is the answer, if DeMerit can carry his weight in the middle. Of course, Carlos won’t get forward as well as a lot of guys. He never had much speed. Don’t look for overlapping runs up the left flank.

We’re about 10 minutes into a stretch here where the U.S. absolutely looks as if it can hang with Spain. We’ll see how long this keeps up. 14 minutes in.

Sepp Blatter at the match.  Nice to know Sepp is in the house. Looks well-bundle. Is he a good guy, an honest guy? I like to think so. He’s the FIFA president. A Swiss guy generally unliked by European soccer honchos who believe he panders to the Third World.

Still thinking about that Davies bicycle shot. My goodness, that would have been huge.

17th minute: Game settling into a measured back and forth. As if both sides expect a low-scoring game. Will the Yanks get sleepy and sloppy?

How did Torres get into the box so quickly? He was offside,  they claim, but he shouldn’t be alone in the box. Howard parried the shot that didn’t count, but still … DeMerit and Gooch shouldn’t have let him run in there alone. 17th minute.

Good crowd. Who are the South African fans rooting for? I assume Spain, but I don’t know. Yeah, Spain, because that makes for a more interesting final.

20th minute: Spain seems to be giving the Americans space in the defensive half. The Yanks can get to about 30 yards out before the resistance gets strong. Interesting. Altidore almost had a chance at a shot just now.

Spain working at the other end, trying to slide one through the middle to somebody on a diagonal run. Hard to track guys making diagonal runs.

21st minute: … Landon carries it a long ways and takes a crack from 25 yards. Rolls wide. Not a great shot, but it was his best option in a 3-on-4.

Dangerous moment. A clearance didn’t clear, and Spain regained it just outside the box, but the Riera cross/shot is weak. 21st minute.

I like the way the Yanks are getting back. Staying very compact in the defensive half. It will hurt their ability to counter, but keeping Spain out of the net is key, for now. All four midfielders are working back and getting in front of the ball. Even Dempsey.

23rd minute: Landon falls down just enough to get a foul call. Good. Yes, even Spain sometimes fouls people.

Not much of a stadium, in Bloemfontein. And this is a World Cup venue? Hmmm. Underwhelming. The lower desk look like about 20 rows.

Bob Bradley has a ski cap on his shaved head. Good call by the U.S. coach, on a cold night. Spain with a corner. Lots of people in the box. Gooch clears it. 25th minute.

How long does it take Carles Puyol to get his hair like that?  Curls upon curls!

U.S. GOAL! Altidore. 27th minute.

Davies and Dempsey in a nice combination over on the left. (Dempsey had flipped over to the left, changing up with Donovan). Dempsey fed it ahead to Altidore.

Oh, man, chicken-feed yellow card on Altidore by the ref for taking his shirt off, briefly, and waving. After scoring against Spain. I guess it’s a silly rule. Like celebrating in college football.

Altidore got the ball before the defender on him, his teammate in Spain, Capdevila, could cut it off by using a sort of awkward, reach-around-with-my-leg move, and Altidore went into the box alone. Casillas came out, and Altidore let it go, low, on the ground, toward the left post and it went off Casillas’s right hand and into the side netting.

Very very nice goal, and in the run of play. Against the best team in the world. Wow.

30th minute: No sense of Spain being worried, never mind panicked. Now let’s see if the U.S. can keep its shape on the defensive, with the eight guys dropping back.

31st minute: Spain with consecutive corners. Not good.

32nd minute: Dangerous moment, Ball falls to Villa at his feet on a deflected ball, but the U.S. collapses on him quickly and he skies it over the bar.

Can we expect the Yanks to score again? No. Not realistic.  So if they’re going to win, they need to shut out this team. Somehow. Doable?

Spain applying some pressure now.  Maybe the U.S.  forwards are dropping too deep, because when the U.S. wins the ball there is no one ahead to pass the ball to to get out of the defensive half.

For the U.S. to win, it’s going to have to put in a lot of miles. And this is the team to do it. After three matches by the eight teams originally in this competition, the three guys who had done the most running were all Americans — Bradley, Dempsey and Donovan, in that order. Those three will have to run a marathon again to 1) get back and 2) support some occasional forays into the attacking half. In that order.

Bradley and Clark not doing much so far. All the play is up the sides, for the Yanks.

Landon with a restart in the 36th minute (40 yards out, from a foul on Altidore), puts a nice ball toward the far post, and Dempsey gets his head on it and knocks it over wide. Boca, behind him, would have had a better shot, as John Harkes points out on the ESPN broadcast.

Nice to spend some time in the Spanish half.

Wow. How did Fabregas and Torres get open in the box? With eight Yanks back? Torres misses a shot from close range. Man. Part of it was Dempsey not working back on the right. Fabregas was wide open for the cross.  Bad. Scary. Dempsey may run a lot but it certainly seems like he doesn’t get back. A lot.

This is the deal: If you go forward as one of the U.S. mids, you have to be ready to SPRINT back on defense. No cruising today.  And if you want to err,  err on the side of caution and don’t get caught trailing the play at the other end.

David Villa throws down Landon Donovan just outside the box.  I guess if you’re Spain you can get away with that. That’s bull. Short free kick, just outside the box on the right. Landon breaks it up.

Man. Getting scary at the Spanish attacking end. Another near goal. Another corner. Be nice to get out of the half with the lead. It’s the 43rd minute.

Spain definitely controlling the pace of the game. Which you expect when you’re trying to nurse a 1-0 lead. Great clearance by Onyewu just now, with a really strange back kick into the air. Hmm. Just believe me, a very athletic move. 44th minute. Just get to halftime.

45th minute: Spain pressing massively.

MAN. Another very scary moment. Torres turned the corner on Boca (did I mention he’s not fast?), and puts a shot on the near post that Howard gets a foot on, but it knocked around some more before it got cleared. Geez. This is nerve-racking.

45th minute: One minute of stoppage. Boca probably shouldn’t be in this game. He is rusty, he has that balky hammy and he is too slow. Which is why he ends up in the middle normally. Where his intelligence and size help and his speed isn’t so important.

Halftime. USA 1, Spain 0. Forty-five minutes from one of the biggest victories in national team history.

That’s about as well as the Americans can play.

But I’m sure Spain can play better.

Then again, when does Spain start to get a little nervous about losing to some second-tier squad like the Yanks? 70 minutes? 75?

Spain won’t have to worry, if it keeps getting this many chances.  Seven Spanish corners to just one for the Yanks.

Oh, and ESPN just rolled out some arcane stat about the U.S. leading at halftime. Like 88-1-6, or something. But one of the losses happened all of 10 days ago, up 1-0 at half against Italy only to lose 3-1. Of course, the Yanks were down a man for an hour in that one.

Second half about to start.  Got to keep it compact in the back, with eight guys defending in front of Howard, but there’s that fine line they shouldn’t cross too often of letting Spain walk it up to 35 yards out, or down either flank, without resistance. Spain will score, eventually, if that keeps going on.

Second half on. No changes for either team.

Harkes has fallen in love with Donovan. Who did, yes, trap a nice ball near the box and knocked it off a Spanish defender for a corner. Remember in 2006, when Landon couldn’t do anything right, according to the electronic media guys? I mark that tournament as the point when Landon stopped playing with quite the same joy in the game. He was trashed more even than Bruce Arena.

48th minute, and Spain already has had three good chances. Wow. No way this they can stand 45 minutes of this. Villa just misses.

Spain dominating play almost totally. 50th minute. Hunkering down for 45 minutes is almost impossible. But the one harder thing? Going forward and having to withstand counters with decent numbers. So yeah, hunkering is better than spreading yourself out haphazardly.

Another corner for Spain. Geez. Pressure is enormous. How long can they resist? Another corner! 52nd minute.

Howard is going to have to play out of his mind, and the guys in front of him have to at least limit the opportunities to, like, 20.

Pressure, pressure,  pressure.  Only occasionally relieved. The Yanks will have to be extremely lucky, as well as better than this, to hold this lead. Or could they score a second goal on a counter? Don’t count on it. 55th minute.

I wonder what Bob Bradley’s pulse rate is, about now? Can’t be much lower than his son, Michael’s, and Michael is out there running.

A rare foray by the Yanks into the attacking end. Landon and Spector working up the right side. A throw-in, and Altidore works a corner out of it. Nice. Landon on the corner kick. Not a bad ball, but Spain gets to it, and Clark takes a wild crack that is high and wide.

58th minute: Spain coming forward again.

Boca is becoming a liability on the left. He got out late on Sergio Ramos, and Ramos’s cross deflected off Boca for a corner. More pressure. More and more. Man.

Harkes stroking Landon again. When did Landon become a U.S. hero again? He was a bum a month ago. Funny, how things change depending on the last 10 minutes.

61st minute: A half-hour to go. Pretty soon I’m going to want Bornstein instead of Boca at the left back.

Dangerous moment. Spector goes forward, turns it over, Spanish counterattack that DeMerit breaks up. Another scoring chance. Riera is in there, and DeMerit gets a foot in before Riera can score.

Harkes suggests the Yanks are exhausted.  He might be right. Another Spain corner.

A decent counter chance for the Yanks, a 3-on-3, but Davies holds it too long instead of crossing it to Landon. I’m not sure Davies is a passer of any competence.

67th minute.

Cazrola in for Spain, replacing Fabregas in the 68th minute.

Benny Feihaber in for Davies in the 69th minute. Another defensive-oriented player. Good, at this point. Presumably Dempsey becomes a sort of forward, like in the Egypt game. Davies is fast. Did I mention that? He looks faster than anyone in Spain’s back four.  But technically kind of raw.

70th minute: Ball being knocked around at midfield. This could be dangerous, with a counter. Instead, the Yanks counter, and Dempsey doesn’t do much with it, and it goes back over.

72nd minute.

I wonder if Spain is getting nervous? A few hand gestures. Cazorla just missed running down a pass up the right flank, and turned around and gestured, and then there was a shot of the Spanish bench, and the coaches making Latin shrugs of disgust and looking unhappy.

73rd minute: Can Riera get forward up the left any time he wants? Apparently so. Another cross that DeMerit clears.

U.S. GOAL!!! 2-0! 75th minute.

Donovan gets it wide, from Feilhaber, probably should have shot it, but he believes in another pass, and he crosses it and Pique gets a foot on it, but only knocks it a foot or two, and Dempsey taps it in from the far post, taking it away from David Villa — who apparently didn’t know Dempsey was right behind him.

Feilhaber made it all possible, and also didn’t make the mistake of trying to pass it forward to Altidore, who was in an offside position, instead going for Donovan wide right.

Nice, nice, nice.  Now the pressure really IS on Spain. 76th minute.

This game is getting physical. Spector just threw down Torres in the box. No call,  luckily.

Spain sub: Mata for Riera in the 78th minute. Riera may be exhausted from jogging into the final 20 yards about 30 times and crossing the ball.

Spain gets a restart from about 10 yards outside the box, nearly middle of the field. David Villa takes it, rolls it into the box and Howard smothers it. Howard has to be huge now.

Mata is now the guy running loose up the left flank. Creates a corner. Nothing comes of it. Man, if Spain was good at corners, it would be up 5-2.

JP Dellacamera reminding us that Spain hasn’t lost since November of 2006, 1-0 in a friendly vs.  Romania. Won the Euro Cup since then. Gone unbeaten in World Cup qualifying, as well.

81st minute: Can Spain score twice? Sure it can.

Lots of time in the box, for Spain.

83rd minute: U.S. actually holds the ball for most of a minute. That helps. Spain goes forward again.

U.S. sub: Conor Casey for Altidore. 84th minute. Nice match for Jozy. But Casey is fresh, and maybe he can work back and help on defense. Run a bit.

It’s getting late. Even for a Spain.

RED CARD! On Michael Bradley! 87th minute. Sure Bradley fils is reckless and has a horrible temper,  but it didn’t look like a red. Can the Yanks hang on a man down for 5-8 minutes?

Hard to imagine, but the Spanish attack is even more frantic and more insistent. How can they not score? Gooch and DeMerit having great games, for starters.

88th minute!

U.S. sub: Bornstein for Dempsey in the 88th minute. Good call because it kills 25 seconds and Dempsey has nothing left. Nothing. He couldn’t be bothered to jog onto a pass from Donovan that could have led to a counter, a few minutes ago.

89th minute: A yellow on Pique. So Spain does commit cardable offenses.

JP Dellacamera can feel it. He’s talking about how big this is … uh, would be.

90th minute!

Conor Casey holds the ball for a fair amount of time in the attacking end. That’s why he’s out there.

The fourth referee is showing an-extra-how-many minutes? Three. Three minutes to hold on.

Howard scrambles off his line for a nice save in the 91st minute. Even he looks tired. A bit over two minutes to go, playing with 10 men.

Man. What a great victory this would be. And the amazing thing? The U.S. played as well as Spain. This is not a fluke. The U.S. deserved it. If it can make it another 90 seconds.

Even if you’re tired,  it helps to have eight guys in the box, just to get in the way of things.

U.S. goal kick with 30 seconds left.

THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN!

It’s over! The U.S. players dash onto the field. Gooch trades jerseys with Fernando Torres. Great souvenir.

Man. Amazing. Astonishing. That was SPAIN! One victory away from setting world records for most consecutive victories and consecutive unbeaten matches — 16 and 36, respectively. And the U.S. wins on a nice goal by Altidore off a pass from Dempsey, and a Dempsey goal from a deflected pass from Donovan.

OK, sure, they probably get Brazil in the final on Sunday, and that may be ugly, given the energy the Americans have spent in these 10 days (four matches) … but it can’t hurt to play one of the world’s elite teams — for the fourth time in two weeks.

Stay tuned here for an overview/analysis. Coming up next.