US International Soccer vs. Trinidad & Tobago

[Sharpieman]

On ESPN2 right now. its 0-0

[Axxon]

On ESPN2 right now. its 0-0

Cool. Who's winning?

[rkmsuf]

I'm trying to figure out how they have all three out there at once. Maybe it's a new and exciting format.

[JeeberD]

The Bears

[Sharpieman]

GOAL! Eddie Johnson 1-0 US

[weinstein7]

Gooooaaaallllllll!

[Radii]

woot! keep me posted please :) no ESPN2 at work.

[Axxon]

The Bears

First one to get the reference. :)

[rkmsuf]

Hey batter, batter, batter, batter.

[Ajaxab]

England-Holland is also on FSC (formerly FSW). Unfortunately, I'm stuck here at school.

[Desnudo]

I dig those funky Caribbean beats.

[Coffee Warlord]

If the US does not win, I'll cut my balls off.

[MrBug708]

So had they tied...?

[Sharpieman]

GOAALL!!!

[Sharpieman]

Eddie Lewis with the left foot

[Sharpieman]

2-0 US

[Desnudo]

If the US does not win, I'll cut my balls off.

Shouldn't you save one for the return leg?

[Sharpieman]

goal...T & T 2-1 US leading in stoppage time

[moriarty]

Did we win or what?

[GoldenEagle]

US won 2-1.

[PilotMan]

That seems to be closer than I would have expected, but I didn't get to see the game either.

[wbatl1]

Was it at home or away

[JAG]

The US dominated the game almost start to finish. At the end they wilted a bit which is why T&T scored (can't remember when, 80-something minute).

[JAG]

Was it at home or away

Away.

[weinstein7]

In Trinidad

[RPI-Fan]

Got to see this from work... don't think The Bruce could have put out a better lineup.

Great coaching, great effort, great win!

[Eaglesfan27]

I was at work, but am glad to hear the result went well.

[RPI-Fan]

The encouraging thing, was The Bruce didn't play a "safe" lineup.

I think it was:


------McBride--Johnson---------
-----------Donovan-------------
--Lewis----------------Beasley--
----------Mastroeni-------------
-Bocanegra--Pope--Gibbs--Cherundolo
----------Keller-----------------

Nice, balanced lineup.

[GoldenEagle]

The one weakness I saw was that we were getting beat down the flanks in the late part of the game. I am not sure what we were doing but we gave up that flank two or three times and it cost us once. Gibbs got burned a couple of times and I am not sure what happened on the goal. I also thought Keller needs to be more aggresive in third goal situations.

[Chief Rum]

England-Holland is also on FSC (formerly FSW). Unfortunately, I'm stuck here at school.

Was Downing in the eleven?

[ice4277]

Any win on the road is a good result in World Cup qualifying. We needed to take at least 3 points from our first two matches, so this is a pretty good result IMO.

[Desnudo]

Any win on the road is a good result in World Cup qualifying. We needed to take at least 3 points from our first two matches, so this is a pretty good result IMO.

I think we've moved past the point where the US team should be satisfied getting a draw on the road against minnows. I expect them to win pretty much anywhere outside of Mexico. With the talent on the team, there is no reason to look for anything less. As long as El Supremo keeps playing the young talents, I don't think that's unreasonable to hope for.

[Chief Rum]

I thought this was a good read for U.S. footy fans out of the local paper, the Orange County Register, on Sunday.

*****

Team USA not just hated but favored now
It's a new role for America's men's soccer team in CONCACAF qualifying.

By SCOTT M. REID
The Orange County Register


CARSON – A stadium-filling chant of "Osama! Osama! Osama!" welcomed the U.S. national soccer team to Panama last September.

In Mexico City its bus is routinely pelted with bottles, rocks and cups full of urine as the Americans travel to and from Estadio Azteca.

The pitch is even more dangerous at Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in San Jose, Costa Rica, where U.S. players are regularly bombarded by cups, bottles, batteries, coins, bodily fluids, animal parts and firecrackers. During a late-1990s match at Saprissa, U.S. defender Paul Caligiuri was struck by acid that burned away a strip of skin across his back.

The welcoming committee for Team USA at Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on Wednesday afternoon promises to be every bit as hot and nasty as the upper-90s temperatures forecast for kickoff.

But the often-violent hatred directed at the U.S. national team is no longer simply a reflection of anti-Americanism in the region.

The United States opens the final round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying against Trinidad and Tobago this week favored for the first time to win the six-nation, nine-month, round-robin tournament that will send at least three teams from North and Central America and the Caribbean to the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

"Clearly the all-out favorite," former U.S. striker Eric Wynalda said.

The United States has not only pried loose Mexico's more-than-seven-decade grip on the region, but it has gone from easily-dismissed international wannabes, dead last in the 1998 World Cup, to a team that nearly upset three-time world champion Germany in the quarterfinals of Japan/Korea 2002.

"America has always been the team everybody loves to hate for a lot of reasons," said Wynalda, the national team's all-time leading scorer with 34 goals in 106 matches. "But the one thing the rest of the world always had on us was that they were better than us.

"Now we're better than most teams in the world, and that's not been welcomed with open arms around the planet."

Especially not in this region. The United States takes a 29-match unbeaten streak against CONCACAF teams into Wednesday's match and hasn't lost since Sept. 5, 2001.

"The element of surprise is gone now," U.S. defender Eddie Pope said. "We don't have that to our advantage any more."

The 2002 World Cup put an end to Team USA's underdog days. Upsetting star-studded Portugal in the teams' opener and Mexico in the second round, the United States became the first CONCACAF team to reach the tournament quarterfinals in a World Cup outside the Americas. The United States also was only the third non-European or South American team to reach the World Cup quarters outside its region in 68 years.

"We get a lot more respect from the rest of the world now," U.S. midfielder Clint Mathis said. "In the past that was not always the case."

The United States' rise to global respectability is largely the result of Major League Soccer and a developmental system that allows U.S. Soccer to capitalize on its one advantage over the rest of the world: sheer numbers.

There are 17.6 million active soccer players in the United States, according to a 2003 study by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. That's 10 million more than China, which has the world's second-largest group of players (7.3 million) or as many soccer players as Brazil, Germany, Argentina and England combined. While the latter four countries have 11 World Cup titles among them, the U.S. numbers until recently did not translate into international success.

Wynalda led the United States to a 3-0 upset of Argentina in the 1995 Copa America. But a lack of depth at the national team level deprived the United States of any staying power a decade ago.

Then came MLS in 1996.

"We have more quality and more depth than we had 10 years ago," U.S. coach Bruce Arena said. "What has helped us the most in the last decade is having a domestic league to increase our pool of players.

"We were always behind Mexico and Costa Rica and Guatemala and El Salvador, until MLS started. Now we're starting to reap some of the benefits."

Wynalda estimates the United States currently has a pool of about 50 players "who can help out" in World Cup qualifying. During qualifying for the 1998 World Cup, Wynalda said the pool was "13, 14, or 15" players deep.

The newfound U.S. depth is also the product of Project 2010, a $50 million development program designed to capture the World Cup by 2010.

But for all of U.S. Soccer's and MLS' commitment, Wynalda is just one of many who says the failure of the U.S. men's under-23 team to qualify for the 2004 Olympics is the latest example of an American game that continues to "take two steps forward and one step back."

Wynalda and others also see MLS as a double-edged sword. While the top European leagues play from August to May or June, the MLS season stretches from April to October. All but one of the U.S. team's 10 qualifying matches will occur during the MLS exhibition and regular seasons, increasing the physical and mental burden on MLS-based players.

Others pass the league off as merely a farm system for top European leagues. Seven U.S. players who started against Germany in the 2002 World Cup now are playing in Europe. In recent years American players have started for some of the world's biggest clubs - Manchester United, Liverpool, Ajax, and PSV Eindhoven. Americans have won the last two Goalkeeper of the Year awards in England's Premier League, arguably the world's top league.

"With the U.S. players now starting to play in Europe, they are mentally and physically now many times better and stronger," Mexico coach Ricardo La Volpe said.

Having so many players in Europe could prove beneficial in qualifying in another way. The contract dispute between U.S. Soccer and the U.S. Men's National Team Players Association dramatically reduced the pre-qualifying training camp for MLS players, leaving them short on fitness and match experience.

"If we didn't have the guys in Europe, we'd have a lot of problems right now," said Arena, who might start as many as nine foreign-based players Wednesday.

[Desnudo]

I had no idea about the goal to win by 2010. That's very ambitious, although not out of the realm of possibility with a little luck.

[Mr. Wednesday]

That's a misstatement of the goal of Project 2010. The goal is to be able to compete for the title in 2010, and I don't think it's out of the question -- especially when you consider that if the U.S. can advance out of their group in Germany (and especially if they can follow that up with a win in the round of 16), they may have a decent chance at getting a seed in the following cup. Plus, at the time that Project 2010 was conceived, the folks in charge thought the U.S. might have a shot at hosting again, which didn't come off due to the 2006 hosting decision debacle.

[ISiddiqui]

Was Downing in the eleven?
He came on in the 2nd half for SWP.

[JAG]

I had no idea about the goal to win by 2010. That's very ambitious, although not out of the realm of possibility with a little luck.

I remember reading an SI article about it in 1992, back when the US had a respectable showing in the World Cup before losing 1-0 to Brazil.

Thanks for the article Chief Rum. I found the following two excerpts from the article to be most incredible:

"The United States also was only the third non-European or South American team to reach the World Cup quarters outside its region in 68 years."

and

"There are 17.6 million active soccer players in the United States, according to a 2003 study by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. That's 10 million more than China, which has the world's second-largest group of players (7.3 million) or as many soccer players as Brazil, Germany, Argentina and England combined."