Late goal hands US 1st in group

CLEVELAND — Alejandro Bedoya can watch the rest of the CONCACAF Gold Cup after helping the U.S. avoid an embarrassing secondplace finish in its group.

Bedoya set up goals by Joe Corona and Kelyn Rowe , and Matt Miazga’s close-range header in the 88th minute from Graham Zusi’s free kick gave the United States a 3-0 win over Nicaragua on Saturday night, just enough to leapfrog Panama for the Group B lead.

Bedoya is among six players on the 23-man roster who will be replaced for the knockout phase. His second child is due early next week.

“It’s tough, but this is something we have talked about,” Bedoya said.

Goalkeeper Tim Howard and midfielder Michael Bradley watched from the stands and are among the players U.S. coach Bruce Arena plans to add along with forwards Clint Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, midfielder Darlington Nagbe and goalkeeper Jesse Gonzalez — whose approval to switch affiliation from Mexico to the U.S. was granted in late June.

“Alejandro is a very good player,” Arena said. “In this three- or four-week period that we’ve been together he continues to demonstrate that. He can play a number of positions and he’s a really versatile player.”

Panama’s 3-0 win over Martinique in the first match of the doubleheader meant the U.S. needed a three-goal win to move back into first. But the Americans struggled for long stretches against Nicaragua, a team ranked 105th by FIFA. They squandered opportuni- ties when Dom Dwyer and Corona took poor penalty kicks in the second half.

“Give the goalkeeper for Nicaragua some credit — two penalty-kick saves in a game isn’t bad — but we didn’t do well with our kicks,” Arena said. “It was a game where we wasted some opportunities and made it pretty difficult on ourselves.”

Miazga, a 21-year-old Chelsea defender playing his first international match since May 2016, made a diagonal run from the outside and had an open 4-yard header to score his first goal in three national team appearances.

“It was kind of too good to be true,” Miazga said. “I wasn’t really marked. The player who’d been marking me all game got a red card, so I was kind of free and Graham played a phenomenal ball. He floated it in, and I saw it all the way and guided it into the goal.” —