U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati ranked Wednesday's 2-0 victory over the world's top-ranked team alongside the 1989 victory at Trinidad and Tobago that earned the U.S. its first World Cup berth since 1950, a first-round win over Colombia at the 1994 World Cup, and wins over Portugal and Mexico en route to the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals.

"I think people generally agree that this would be in that same group. I wasn't around in the 1950 game," Gulati said, referring to what many regard as the No. 1 U.S. win, the 1-0 upset of England at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil. "What would be very, very unique would be to win the trophy here and have two of those games in a row. Then I think you can certainly say it's been the best week in the history of U.S. soccer."

After opening with losses to 2006 World Cup champion Italy and 2002 World Cup winner Brazil, the U.S. advanced by defeating Egypt 3-0 as the Azzurri lost to Brazil by the same score.

Gulati said the victory over Spain has created water-cooler talk, people at work gathering around the water fountain and talking about a current event.

"We haven't convinced the world that we're better than Spain. What we convinced the world was we can beat Spain," Gulati said. "I don't think we convinced anyone that we're now ready to beat Spain every week. That's not the case, but we proved we can, and hopefully we'll prove the same with Brazil [tomorrow]."

"The players will tell you that they've been getting texts, e-mails, Twitters and Facebooks and whatevers and all this stuff from the people they know back home telling them that they're proud of us," coach Bob Bradley said.

"Nobody is ready to crown us world champions. Nobody is ready to say that in 10 games we would beat Brazil in seven or eight of them," Gulati said. "But our players know what they are capable of. They know they were better than what they showed against Brazil, and the reality is we've got a pretty good team." *