GETTING A KICK OUT OF SOCCER’S ENDLESS DRAMA
U.S. men booted from World Cup qualifying round just sport’s latest unexpected twist
We are technically past the Thanksgiving season in this country, and with hockey season underway and the baseball playoffs and whatever madness is happening between the NFL and the White House, there is a lot going on.
But let us just pause for a moment to appreciate something that does not get appreciated much in these parts.
Soccer, you are an absolute hoot.
The United States men’s team crashed out of World Cup qualifying on Tuesday night, which is the kind of thing that only happens in soccer. The U.S. is, duh, a big, wealthy country, and while soccer is hardly its most dominant sport, it was still expected to breeze through CONCACAF qualifying, so much so that former coach Jurgen Klinsmann was fired two games into the latest qualifying round — the idea was there was still plenty of time for a new coach to come in and sort things out long before the World Cup in Russia next summer.
And in Bruce Arena’s first match at the helm this past spring, the United States pounded Honduras 6-0. All well. The team still had some hiccups, but after dusting Panama 4-0 last week, all the mighty U.S. had to do was not fall on its face against little Trinidad and Tobago and it would have been through to Russia.
How unlikely was such a collapse? Trinidad and Tobago, an island off the coast of Venezuela with a population about the size of Memphis, had a 1-8 record in this qualifying stage with a goal differential of minus-13.
And yet, collapse it was, with the Americans committing an own goal on the way to a 2-0 halftime deficit and an eventual 2-1 loss. This wasn’t David over Goliath, it was Goliath getting clipped by David’s little brother, Ted.
The U.S. exit also happened in the most soccer way possible, as the team still would have survived if either Honduras lost to Mexico or Panama lost to Costa Rica. Mexico is unbeaten through nine games and Costa Rica had lost just once; both teams were already qualified for the World Cup. Both also took early leads in their games, with Mexico even taking a lead twice, and yet both lost by a goal. Costa Rica even lost on a blown call, as a ball that rolled around on the goal-line was mistakenly ruled a goal despite never crossing the line.
In an era where North American pro sports in particular are absolutely nuts for replays and challenges and reviews and anything else that could eliminate the possibility of human error, even if it maddeningly takes away from the emotion of the game, here comes soccer to ignore the most basic of reviewable calls — did the ball cross the line? — and affect the World Cup fortunes of two countries in the process.
Soccer has an undeniable knack for such weirdness, in part because it’s the only truly global sport, and in part because the nature of the game at high levels limits scoring chances and thus creates the greater possibility of a statistical outlier. Wacky results happen with some regularity.
Iceland qualified for Euro 2014, its first major tournament, then made it all the way to the quarter-finals, beating England in the first knockout stage. England! Now the plucky Icelanders have done it again, winning their UEFA group stage to qualify for the World Cup. Iceland, the whole country, has a population of less than 340,000, which is about the size of the southern Ontario city in which I reside. I’m pretty sure Markham would have a tough time qualifying for the World Cup, although I’m willing to try out for centre-back, or whichever position involves the least running.
Iceland isn’t the only unlikely World Cup contender, either. Panama’s Tuesday win qualified it for Russia despite a negative goal differential in the latest round, while Honduras is still alive — it will face a playoff against Australia — even though it gave up six more goals than it scored in the last CONCACAF round.
Then there is Burkina Faso, the African country that has a shot with one game to play. Burkina Faso has never played in a World Cup and only twice finished in the top-three at the African Cup, both times in the past four years. They could yet be edged out by Senegal, which should have one game left but instead has two, both against South Africa. Senegal lost 2-1 in November against the South Africans, but FIFA ruled the decisive penalty was awarded on a non-existent handball and the referee was banned for life for match fixing. Drama!
South Africa, despite one win in four games, could yet leapfrog Burkina Faso and Senegal if they beat Senegal twice next month. Meanwhile, Senegal’s best attacker, Sadio Mane, who plays for Liverpool in the English Premier League, suffered a hamstring injury on the weekend — as an 89th-minute substitute — that will likely keep him out of the qualifiers. Even with that injury, the prospect of a pair of South African wins to jump into Russia seems highly unlikely.
But then, this is soccer.