Was the United States’ unprecedented victory over Mexico on Wednesday significant or merely a meaningless exhibition played at the cavernous and half-empty Azteca Stadium?  “I think it’s a confidence builder,” midfielder Brek Shea said in a telephone interview from Salt Lake City, where he was preparing for Saturday’s Major League Soccer match between his Dallas club and Real Salt Lake. “This team went to Italy and beat Italy, which it had never done. It doesn’t matter which players are there, that it might not have been our best team. It’s still a national team game. Now we know if we have to go there we can win. We did it.”  Shea, 22, an early favorite of the national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann, fell out of consideration and had not appeared with the national team since February’s game in Genoa. And to say that his M.L.S. season so far has been tumultuous would be an understatement: he served a three-game suspension after kicking a ball at an assistant referee on May 17; was benched by Coach Schellas Hyndman for arguing when he was pulled from a game July 18; and Dallas is in danger of not making the postseason. Shea was also part of a pre-Olympic debacle that kept the men’s team from going to London.  As Klinsmann took what some people called an experimental team to Mexico City — without players like Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley — Shea (6 feet 3 inches, 180 pounds) got the call.  He entered Wednesday’s game in the 78th minute for Herculez Gomez. Two minutes later, Shea, on the left flank, took a pass from Kyle Beckerman, neatly put the ball through a defender’s legs and centered to Terrence Boyd, who backheeled a pass to Michael Orozco Fiscal, who scored the game’s only goal. Before Wednesday’s game, the United States had never won in Mexico, a stretch of 24 games since 1934.  “I was in like 45 seconds when I got the ball,” Shea said. “All week long the staff told me to take on players, especially all the guys who play in Mexico saying to take on their outside backs. My biggest strength is running at defenders, and that’s all I had on my mind. After I put it through his legs, the ball got away from me, I think it hit my right foot and popped left. I thought I had a shot, but there was no angle, so I put it in a dangerous area.”  There is no guarantee Shea will be back with the national team for next month’s home-and-away World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica. For now, Shea hopes the victory in Mexico can wash away the struggles of recent months.  “I don’t think there’s ever been a friendly between the U.S. and Mexico,” he said. “It’s never friendly because of the big rivalry. The players don’t look at it as a friendly, we look at it as an international game. We’ve done what we’ve never done before.”  Looking back at England the day before the start of the Premier League season, the Red Bulls’ Australian midfielder Tim Cahill sees Robin van Persie’s jump from Arsenal to rival Manchester United for a $38 million transfer fee as sadly inevitable.  “He’s a great player, and it’s just too bad he couldn’t stay the rest of his career at Arsenal because he would have become a living legend,” Cahill, who played 15 years in England, said after training Friday at Red Bull Arena.  “People have been a bit harsh on Wenger; he didn’t have much choice because the player didn’t want to stay,” Cahill said, referring to the Gunners’ French coach, Arsène Wenger. “There’s nothing you can do.”  Wenger’s decision to sell van Persie contrasts with the stance taken at Fulham over the similar transfer demands of the American international Clint Dempsey. Dempsey, 29, wants out but still has a year left on his contract.  “You have to respect our view that we can’t let Clint go on the cheap,” Manager Martin Jol said Friday. “And we won’t.”  In response, Dempsey wrote on Twitter: “There are two sides to the story. The truth will come out soon.”  After losing van Persie, Wenger told The Associated Press: “Time heals all things, and of course at the moment people are hurt, which I understand, but what is important for us is to focus on the season in front of us. Players have gone, life goes on, and the football club is 125 years old, and other big players have left this club and we have always gone from season to season in a strong way.”  At the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Japan, the United States opens play against Ghana in Hiroshima on Monday, then plays China on Thursday and ends the first round with a match against the defending champion Germany on Aug. 27. The American midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo is the daughter of Angelo DiBernardo, who played for the United States in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and for the Cosmos.
The midfielder Brek Shea entered the game with Mexico in the 78th minute and promptly made a smooth move that led to the only goal in a historic victory.