COMMENTARY : U.S. Victorious in Gaining Respect by Way It Lost to Italy

ROME — Defeat with honor is one of those concepts that will take some getting used to for the average American sports fan, but soccer has never been a game in a rush to impress people overnight.

Still, in one match Thursday before a wildly noisy crowd of 73,423 almost exclusively Italian fans, the U.S. soccer team raised itself to a new level of international respect.

Whether it will stay there for more than one game is the question that will be answered Tuesday in Florence when the United States meets Austria. But this night, the kids from the States got a glimpse of what it takes to compete with the best in the world.

Humiliated 5-1 Sunday by a Czechoslovakia team of which little is expected in the 1990 World Cup, the United States stepped into the lion’s den--across town from the real lion’s den where they used to feed Christians to the hungry beasts at the Colosseum--Thursday night and battled ferociously in a 1-0 defeat to Italy.

It was a match that sent reporters to the record books beforehand seeking all-time World Cup margins of victory--10-1 and 9-0 were the answers--because most of us thought this team’s cause was hopeless after its awful performance four days earlier.

“There were some people who said we didn’t belong here, that we didn’t deserve to be in this field of teams,” U.S. Coach Bob Gansler said. “ . . . Some of those same people who said we don’t belong are saying now that we need to attack more, that our style is too cautious. It’s contradictory; you can’t have it both ways. We are young, we are learning and we are improving. We should have at least shown that tonight.”

The U.S. players showed in the defeat to Italy that they have an understanding of their relative level of ability, an element totally lacking in their first World Cup game. A team cannot play at this level without understanding what it can and cannot do, and the United States seemed ignorant of its abilities against the Czechs.

On Thursday, a different team took the field.

It was a backs-to-the-wall defensive game plan the United States tried against the Italians. Fully nine players were packed back against the attack in front of goalkeeper Tony Meola while only Bruce Murray was truly playing forward.

To be kind, it lacked for offensive ambition. Others would say it was flat inelegant.

But it was the only hope the United States had to come away from this confrontation with some respect--and maybe a point.

In the 68th minute, the United States came inches from achieving a result that would have stunned not just the Italians but the entire soccer world. On a free kick about 20 yards in front of the goal, Tab Ramos ran up to drive the ball, stepped over it and Murray delivered a wicked shot that keeper Walter Zenga was barely able to deflect. It went to the feet of Peter Vermes who barely missed a second attempt at tying the game.

“I was about 10 feet in the air on those shots,” U.S. defender Desmond Armstrong said. “I thought both of them were going in. It would have been heaven.”

It wound up more earthly than that, but for a team that had so embarrassed itself in Florence on Sunday, it felt like a victory.

It was, in the sense that before you win games at this level you must learn to keep teams from beating you easily.

If that was the lesson the United States learned Thursday, soccer in America may be showing signs of waking up to the ways of the world.