After nine days of sport that convinced some of us the beautiful game had a chance to breathe again at this World Cup, the Italians and the Americans bludgeoned the theory by fighting out, too often literally, a drawn contest. There were 34 fouls, some of them disgraceful. There were three red cards, all of them justified, and three more yellow cards that might have turned the deeper colour. There were two goals, two memorable saves from either goalkeeper, and a match of shame petered out. This turned into the first brutal and calculatedly ugly affair of the tournament. The...