After trailing 2-0 at halftime in Sunday’s World Cup Qualifying match in Mexico City, the United States Men’s National Team (MNT) needs a much better start tonight against Guatemala in its third qualifying match of the final stage. The MNT, which won its opening match of the stage at Trinidad and Tobago nearly two months ago, has a win and a loss thus far in the 10-match round. Guatemala has a win and a draw, and seeks its first ever trip to the World Cup.
The site for tonight’s (8 PM ET) match is Birmingham, Alabama’s Legion Field, which hosts a World Cup Qualifying match for the first time. While the U.S. was not expected to get any result Sunday in Mexico City, where it has never one and almost never mustered even a draw, it needs to succeed in its first of five home matches in the stage. The job won’t be easy; by all accounts, the Guatemalan team has never played better. The Washington Post reports:
Guatemala has never qualified for the World Cup and was widely regarded as the fourth-best team in the six-nation final round. But an opening 0-0 tie at Panama and a 5-1 home victory over Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday has made the Chapines a serious contender for one of the region’s three automatic berths.
U.S. assistant coach Curt Onalfo scouted the game at Mateo Flores Stadium in Guatemala City over the weekend and came away impressed.
“They were on fire and they couldn’t have had a better game,” he said. “It was a combination of Trinidad not doing a good job closing down the ball and trying to pressure them and, in turn, Guatemala having a majority of the possessions. They sent a lot of numbers forward and they finished their chances. They’re going to be geared up for this game.”
Guatemala is led by Major League Soccer terror Carlos Ruiz, who has scored 50 goals over the last three seasons for the Los Angeles Galaxy. He was league MVP in 2002. Ruiz leads a high octane attack that has little to lose: Guatemala doesn’t need to win this game nor are they expected to, but if they come away with three points on the soil of one of the region’s powers, they’ll be flying sky high with the inside track on one of the three guaranteed CONCACAF spots in the ‘Cup.
The U.S. will be without speedster DaMarcus Beasley, who was shown yellow for the second time in two games Sunday at the Azteca. Beasley should be the only major scratch from Sunday’s lineup card.
“We’re playing on home soil, we’re down at sea level, we always seem to do quite well at home,” said midfielder Eddie Lewis, who scored in the second half Sunday and has two of the U.S. team’s three goals in the final round. “We’ll be able to put our foot on the gas a bit more in terms of the way we’re going to go at them.”
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Whoever is on the field, they will have a majority of the crowd behind them — which isn’t always the case when U.S. teams play at home against Latin American opponents. In 1996, the Arena-coached Olympic squad played two first-round games there, losing to Argentina and beating Tunisia. The national team tied Tunisia in a 2000 game in Birmingham and beat Ecuador two years later.
“We really believe every time we have been in Birmingham, it has been a pro-American crowd,” Arena said. “We’re very comfortable with whatever the crowd is in Birmingham, hopefully it is 30 [to] 40,000 people, that it’s going to be 30 [to] 40,000 people supporting the U.S. team. That’s what we love about Birmingham, it’s just been a great venue for us.”
Update: U.S. wins 2-0
Nathan Novak at 10:25 am
