U..S. men's national team had no shot against Spain in its warmup prior to the Gold

Just four days before its Gold Cup schedule begins against Canada, the U.S. men's national team was embarrassed in a friendly against Spain in New England.

 The United States men’s national got completely dominated by a deep Spain squad and suffered a 4-0 loss at Gillette Stadium on Saturday afternoon, just four days before it opens up its Gold Cup schedule against Canada in Detroit. 

"Spain's a great team. It's a tough test to play them any time and it's probably an even tougher test to play them right on the eve of the Gold Cup," U.S. coach Bob Bradley said. "But we take these challenges of playing the best teams because we feel along the way it's the best to see what the game is about and the best way for us to improve."

As expected, the world champions controlled the action early and often, forcing the U.S. to get its only opportunities by counterattacking. Unfortunately, by the time the Americans got anything going offensively, the game was already far out of reach.

Spain scored three first-half goals to quickly dismantle the Americans, who surprisingly defeated the Spaniards 2-0 in the Confederation Cup two years ago. Santiago Cazorla knocked in his first of two goals 28 minutes into the friendly, while Alvaro Negredo and Fernando Torres also slipped ones past U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard.

"When you challenge yourself against the best teams, you have to understand that this is the way it could be on some days," Bradley said.

Top-ranked Spain, which has lost only four games since 2006 and claimed the 2010 World Cup, had a total of nine shots in the first half alone as the U.S. continued its trend of conceding early goals. The U.S. recorded just one shot in the first half.

Spain’s scoring spree began at the 28-minute mark when Cazorla received a nice feed from David Silva and fired the ball into the side of the net. Just four minutes later, Negredo continued the harassment on the American backline as he drilled one in from the top of the box.

After Cazorla knocked in the third goal following some creative ball movement in the box right before halftime, Bradley decided to bring in his big guns to start the second half. Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley were able to help the midfield, but they couldn’t completely turn things around.

Torres, a second-half sub for Spain, scored the final goal of the night. Borja Valero set up the play that left disappointed fans headed for the exits.

"Hopefully there are things that we can take from this game that not only will help us in the next three weeks but could help us as we just keep trying to move forward," Bradley said.

Although he would have liked a victory, Bradley clearly did not care too much about the result of this friendly when he created a starting lineup that featured Robbie Rogers and Juan Agudelo, while keeping Dempsey and Michael Bradley on the bench in the first half.

"We are trying to figure out who are the guys who can potentially play 90 minutes," Bradley said. "We had enough of them on the field in the beginning that you have some options and have everyone ready to play. We think of different ways, but today we felt that would probably be the best way."

source: www.goal.com