HexagonalBlog

Pan-Pacific Championship a flash in the pan

I wish I could care about the Pan-Pacific Championship going on in Hawaii, but I just can't.  Another attempt by MLS/SUM to allow its clubs to "measure themselves against foreign competition" (without having to leave the country) is really nothing more than a pre-season tournament.   And for one of the teams, it's just another game to play after getting knocked out in the end-of-season playoffs.  Aloha stadium is too big and the playing surface is not at all conducive to soccer, not to mention the football lines.  Perhaps we know two things from these matches: Houston still have a strong squad despite the loss of some key personnel; the Galaxy still have a lot of work to do.  But didn't we know that already?

Maybe the WAGs can take advantage of the PPC to get some great deals at the Saturday flea market in front of the stadium.

Emmanuel Sanon, RIP

Former Haitian striker Emmanuel Sanon has passed away in Orlando at the age of 56.  He was one of the best players of Haiti's golden era in international football, and the only Haitian player to score a goal in the World Cup finals.  Scoring on Dino Zoff in Munich -- the opening goal at that! -- was like slapping Mike Tyson in the face and made Sanon a national hero overnight.  Haiti went down to three Italian goals, and later lost to Argentina and Poland, but his legacy in Haitian football was secure. 

The Haitian football site foutbol.com has more on Sanon's life.  RIP, Manno.

Jack Warner betrays CONCACAF

Jack Warner never ceases to amaze.   I'm sure that Sunil Gulati and Justino Compeán had to be stunned at the news that Warner would endorse England's World Cup 2018 bid.  What is a continental president good for if he is not going to back a World Cup bid from one of his member federations?  Or at least remain silent and say England's bid would be a strong one and nothing more, given that CONCACAF may have one or two countries interested in hosting? 

I think he's trying to ingratiate himself to the English FA so that T&T can get a friendly match with the English in June. 

News from around the region

Okay, I have some free time to blog, so here's a summary of what's been going on in the region beyond the USA and Mexico:

• Bermuda's home draw against Cayman Islands has unleashed a wave of criticism, fierce debate and introspection by the Bermudan football fraternity.  The assistant coach of the national side, Jack Castle, has already been dismissed, and the technical committee chairman at the Bermudan FA has also been fired (although it's not clear if that decision has anything to do with the qualifier match).  Castle took his case to the media and the BFA on Thursday, and if the picture of the national team's preparations is accurate, it's not complimentary to Keith Tucker's management.  Tucker is facing growing criticism of his leadership from within and without, as former players such as Shaun Goater (ex-Manchester City) and Clyde Best (ex-West Ham) have taken opposite sides.  Bermuda's shock result in football was also accompanied by some poor displays by the national cricket team, sparking some chest-beating in the local press over the past week.
• Barbados' domestic league was supposed to start today, but will not because of a dispute between the Premier League and one of its clubs.  Haggatt Hall is claiming that they should not have been relegated last season because another club in danger of relegation played their final match with an ineligible player, and the resulting forfeit would have relegated that club instead of Hall.  This has implications for the national team because the dispute will be settled by an arbitrator instead of a civil court.  A civil court case would have surely drawn FIFA into the dispute and led to sanctions against the Barbados national team.
• Francisco Maturana is the new coach of Trinidad & Tobago, and his first test will not be an upcoming friendly, but the match of wills with Jack Warner.  T&T will play England in Port-of-Spain on June 2, and Warner is lobbying hard for Dwight Yorke and Russell Latapy to feature in the Soca Warrior lineup.  Never mind that Yorke is 36 and Latapy 40!  And never mind that Maturana has aggressively pursued a youth policy since he took over.  The end result of this dispute - and the way it is resolved - will go a long way to determining how long Maturana will stay on the job.  Even if Jack Warner is "only" an adviser to the T&TFA, he still wields a lot of power in the federation.
• Hernán Gómez  resigned as Guatemala's national team coach last week after the side's 0-5 result against Argentina.  His departure brings to an end a strange tenure to say the least.  After coaching Colombia and Ecuador, one doesn't expect the move to coach Guatemala to be a lateral move, much less a step up.  And Gómez's comment that the string of losses can't be a failure because Guatemala has never achieved anything is pathetic -- Guatemala might have achieved something in this cycle (they were close in '05, after all), and if the goal is to qualify in 2010, why depart in 2008?  Anyway, the 0-5 gave Gómez a good excuse to leave and return, possibly, to Ecuador.

UPDATE: The dispute in Barbados between the local league and the relegated club was resolved in less than 20 minutes, so the national federation will not have to worry about FIFA for a while.

And I should clarify that England hasn't confirmed the friendly against Trinidad & Tobago on their website.

Back later

Real life is interfering with my ability to blog -- I'm a little busy at work, and Valentine's Day actually has some significance this year, so I won't be back until the weekend.  Some interesting things have been going on in CONCACAF beyond USA and Mexico, and I hope to blog on some of them when I have time.

The aftermath from last night's qualifiers

I plan on writing a post on the USA-Mexico match, but the other big event in CONCACAF were the first-round qualifying matches for South Africa 2010.

In Roseau, Dominica obtained what I felt was a good result in 1-1 draw with Barbados.   Dominica's goal was scored by Richard Pacquette, who has been a star forward with Havant and Waterlooville in England's Conference South.  You might remember H&W from their recent FA Cup run.  Barbados equalized through Jeffrey Williams' goal three minutes from halftime, and now they hold an away goal advantage going into their home leg in Bridgetown next month.  Dominica were able to recruit seven overseas-based players, but Barbados were unable to get the services of two Premiership players with Bajan roots.  Despite the draw, the Bajans still hold the advantage.  (And the writer at the Dominican newspaper has the qualification procedure totally wrong.)

Going into the match against Belize, the St. Kitts/Nevis striker Atiba Harris (who knew he was an all-star?) said that he was confident of a victory.  It turned out that he was a little too confident as St. Kitts/Nevis failed to take advantage of their possession and Belize took full advantage of their few chances as the Central Americans cruised to a 3-1 victory.

The biggest result of the night was El Salvador's 12-0 thumping of Anguilla.  Anguilla is really weak, even by Caribbean standards, and the goalscoring came early and often.  The Anguillans did a good job of restricting the Central Americans to four goals at the half, but Ronald Cerritos' goal just after the interval opened the floodgates. He scored a hat-trick; Aguila's Rudis Corrales scored five.  It's safe to say that El Salvador is going on to the next round -- Anguilla's poor display made El Salvador "look like Pelé's Santos".  But before people get too far ahead of themselves, El Salvador will play Panama in the next round, who will be a much tougher team to unlock than Anguilla.

In the other matches... Gavin Glinton scored as Turks and Caicos defeated St. Lucia 2-1 in their first-ever home qualifier,  Antigua and Barbuda cruised to a comfortable 3-0 away win over Aruba, and the Netherlands Antilles defeated Nicaragua 1-0 in Managua. 

So El Salvador is certainly through to the next round, and Antigua and Barbuda are almost certain to be there as well.  Nicaragua and St. Kitts/Nevis have to turn around first-leg deficits, but Nicaragua seems to have a much tougher task.  All of the other ties (Barbados-Dominica, Cayman Islands-Bermuda, St. Lucia-Turks/Caicos) are finely poised, and I would not be surprised to see away goals decide the outcome of at least one of the matches.

MORE:  The Barbados Nation also has a summary of the Dominica-Barbados match.  The Saturday edition has the national team manager bemoaning a common problem of the smaller Caribbean sides: a lack of friendly internationals.

The blog Football in El Salvador (an English-language blog devoted to Salvadoran football!) had a podcast two weeks ago devoted to Anguilla's football federation and squad.  It's a little dated, but it gives an indication of just how outmatched the Anguillan side was.  And to think that some were worried about El Salvador's attacking problems.   (That might still be true, but Anguilla was no more than a sparring match.)

The Caribbean Net News has a story on the TCI-St. Lucia qualifier.  In addition to Gavin Glinton, there were a couple of faces in the crowd who would be familiar to American audiences.

I had thought it odd when FIFA scheduled Belize's home qualifier in Guatemala, given that Guatemala has long considered Belize to be part of their territory.  The Belizean government had called on the national team players to boycott the match, but that, of course,  didn't happen. 

The game tomorrow

So apparently there's some game between the USA and Mexico tomorrow.  I really don't understand why Mexico's away record against the USA (since '91) has been so poor.  In theory, it's much easier for Mexico to win in the USA than it is for the USA to win in Mexico, especially when Mexico plays so many matches here. 

Anyway, if you read the Mexican press, you'll hear the players and coach say that it's just another game, there's no urgency to beat the USA, that the real rivals are Argentina and Brazil, etc.  I don't believe a word of it. 

Hugo Sánchez is bringing another strong team to the match, one that is definitely talented enough to
win the game.  I think they'll draw, which probably means that Mexico will lose.

Caymans with a real chance

The Cayman Islands defied the odds and are in with a real chance of advancing to the next round of World Cup qualifying after their 1-1 away draw against Bermuda.  The match seemed to follow a familiar template: Bermuda score early, dominate play but cannot convert numerous scoring opportunities, and Cayman Islands snatch a late equalizer.  Now the advantage is all on the Cayman side; a goalless draw on March 26 will see them through.

FIFA.com has a match report here, and there's a preliminary article from Bermuda's Royal Gazette.  There should be more reports in the morning.

CORRECTION:  Actually, that sigh of relief was from the Eastern Caribbean, because the winner of Bermuda-Cayman Islands plays Trinidad & Tobago.  Costa Rica plays the winner of Grenada-US Virgin Islands.  I've deleted the erroneous sentence above.

UPDATE:  More from the Bermudan papers here and here.  If I find something from the Cayman Islands papers, I'll post links.

Let's get it started

While some of you watch the Uper-say Owl-bay tomorrow, more important things are going on in the CONCACAF region, like the start of World Cup 2010 qualifying.  Bermuda host the Cayman Islands tomorrow afternoon, and the big worry on the Bermudan side is the loss of Khano Smith due to a groin injury.  But because the return leg in Georgetown isn't until late March, he could recover in time to reenter the starting lineup.  In the meantime, Bermuda's strategy will be to take the game to the Caymans through John Barry Nusum, but the proposed 4-5-1 formation doesn't seem to be consistent with Keith Tucker's objectives. 

With regard to the Caymans, they arrive in Hamilton with an almost exclusively domestic squad (one player in the Irish Premier League, and the other in the USA, but not playing soccer).  The players look at themselves as ambassadors for football in their country, but they must know the difficulty of their task.  In their recent tour of Jamaica, they played five matches against National Premier League sides, drawing one, losing four, and scoring only one goal.  That's not a good record, and while Bermuda is mostly a USL Division Two side the results are not encouraging for the qualifiers. 

When the draw was made, I predicted a Bermuda win.  I'm sticking with that prediction, even though the loss of Smith will reduce Bermuda's attacking power.