CONCACAF Qualifying Wrap

I trust we all watched the US match Sun­day and if you did not see it, you didn’t need to. Bar­ba­dos miss­ing four of their five best play­ers got rolled by a fired up US squad 8–0. While the score­line was impres­sive, many con­cerns still per­sist for the U.S. like keep­ing proper spac­ing between attack­ers on the pitch and play­ers know­ing their respec­tive roles while on the pitch. I’ll save these dis­cus­sions and crit­i­cisms for another day because the US did what they had to do to avoid the pit­falls oth­ers faced in qual­i­fy­ing yes­ter­day. The issues with the US remain today the same as they were last week. How­ever, other nations that we com­pete with such as Mex­ico are show­ing them­selves to be much weaker than antic­i­pated. Player rat­ings are given at the bot­tom of this post.

Argentina and Brazil both strug­gled in their South Amer­i­can qual­i­fiers. Argentina needed a stop­page time goal from Rodrigo Pala­cio to draw with Ecuador at home in Buenos Aires. Argentina looked unim­pres­sive last week­end in a friendly against the United States after crush­ing Mex­ico 4–1 ear­lier in the week. This result is shock­ing as Ecuador has already changed coaches dur­ing qual­i­fy­ing and has been in the bot­tom three of the qual­i­fy­ing table through­out the tournament.

Argentina faces Brazil later this week in a qual­i­fier. Roque Santa Cruz and Sal­vador Cabanas scored goals as Paraguay despite being a man down for much of the match crushed Brazil 2–0. Brazil­ian coach Dunga must be feel­ing the pres­sure despite win­ning Copa Amer­ica last year. Brazil strug­gled to beat Canada in a friendly in Seat­tle last week and then got dumped by Venezuela 2–0 in Foxboro, MA.

Mexico’s per­for­mance yes­ter­day against a team ranked 51 spots below Bar­ba­dos in the FIFA world rank­ings made the rest of CONCACAF look like world beat­ers. Mex­ico used two con­tro­ver­sial calls to notch late goals against the 172nd ranked team in the world, Belize 2–0. In what can only be described as a shock­ing dis­play of foot­ball, Mex­ico was so bad that from minute thirty onward Belize was tempted go for­ward and attack. Par­tic­u­larly bad for Mex­ico from my eyes was Andres Guardado who was repeat­edly dis­pos­sessed and repeat­edly lost his composure.

Mexico’s two goals were con­tro­ver­sial. A late foul call just out­side the box in minute 67 led to a free kick which Car­los Vela cleaned up for a goal, and then deep into stop­page time after a Mex­i­can shot went far wide, The ref­eree stopped play and called a penalty because a Belize defender had clipped the Mex­i­can shot taker on his fol­low through after the show was taken. Jared Bor­getti, calmly booked the PK, and Mex­ico ran out a 2–0 vic­tor. This per­for­mance paled in com­par­i­son to the impres­sive dis­plays pro­vided by Mexico’s likely sec­ond round group oppo­nents: Hon­duras is already through to group stage with an aggre­gate 6–2 win over Puerto Rico, Canada crushed St Vin­cent 3–0 in the first leg even with­out injured Rob Friend, and Jamaica beat the Bahamas 7–0 in the first leg of their series. So in other words, Sven Goran Eriks­son has a momen­tous task ahead of him, as Mex­i­can foot­ball is suf­fer­ing from a cri­sis of con­fi­dence and run of about two years of indif­fer­ent, if not sim­ply poor results.

Trinidad and Tobago has been in a steady decline since thrilling the world in Ger­many 2006. Now T&T is in seri­ous jeop­ardy of being dis­missed from World Cup 2008 qual­i­fy­ing just two years after par­tic­i­pat­ing in the last tour­na­ment. Bermuda went to Port of Spain and won 2–1 yes­ter­day. If Bermuda advances they will be grouped with the US, Guatemala and the Cuba/Antigua winner.

Player Ratings

Brad Guzan 6

Noth­ing to do most of the day

Steve Cher­dun­dolo 6

Some nice crosses

Oguchi Onyewu 7

Was active on set pieces

Car­los Bocane­gra 7

Great set up for Dempsey’s first goal

Heath Pearce 6

Had more dif­fi­culty mark­ing than he should have but served a great ball to Eddie John­son for a goal

Pablo Mas­troeni 6

Injured, after a nice shot on goal which an appar­ently off­side Brian Ching redi­rected into the net.

Lan­don Dono­van 10

Pure qual­ity and and off the ball

Michael Bradley 7

Nice bounce back match

DaMar­cus Beasley 4

Beasley is peren­ni­ally com­ing inside or push­ing out of posi­tion caus­ing the US to lose its shape in the attack. Should be dropped in favor of Eddie Lewis as long as Lewis can go. Beasley isn’t healthy and quite frankly is use­less against bet­ter oppo­si­tion when he is healthy.

Clint Dempsey 7

Two goals and some nice work on the ball in midfield.

Eddie Lewis 8

Has a qual­ity and com­po­sure totally lack­ing in the other Amer­i­can wide players

Freddy Adu 8

Tried to get too cute at times, but his pres­ence is always felt on a match.

Brian Ching 8

Two goals but some ques­tions about posi­tion­ing and work off the ball. I’d still pre­fer a healthy Tay­lor Twell­man to Ching.

Eddie John­son 7

Well taken goal after com­ing on as a sub.