Argentina got off to a best possible start to their Copa America campaign, coming from a 1-0 deficit to defeat USA 4-1 at the Maracaibo stadium on Thursday.

But it was not a walk over that many expected, an opinion largely boosted by the fact that USA had fielded an extremely young line up against the pre-tournament favorites. In fact it was not until the hour mark that Argentina managed to take the lead in the match.

USA took a shock lead in the 8th minute when Eddie Johnson converted a penalty after he was brought down in the area by Gabriel Milito. However it was not long before Argentina settled down and started to control the match and imeediately pulled level.

Juan Roman Riquelme's free kick was met by Gabriel Heinze whose shot was parried away by keeper Kasey Keller. But the ball went straight to Hernan Crespo and the Inter Milan striker made no mistake in scoring the equalizer.

Though Argentina managed to control large parts of the game, it was unable to break a stubborn USA defense and had to go into the half at 1-1. The second half started in the same way as the first ended, with USA determined not to make any mistakes which could have been exploited by the star studded Argentine line up.

However Argentina finally took the lead in the 63rd minute through Crespo when he latched on to a superb through ball from Lionel Messi and drove in the ball low past Keller and into the net. Pablo Aimar, who was introduced in the 58th minute, extended his team's lead in the 77th minute when he headed home a Heinze cross from the left after a patient build up, while Carlos Tevez completed the proceedings with a superb finish in the 85th minute.