Thank goodness the Gold Cup is over

(I meant to publish this last night.)

First of all, congratulations to Mexico on winning the Gold Cup, and finally breaking their long winless drought against the USA away from Azteca.  I felt the USA were more consistent during the tournament, with the shocking exception of the final, but Mexico got better as the tournament progressed and peaked at the right time.   I said around the time of the 2007 U-17 World Cup American soccer fans would be hearing a lot more about Giovani dos Santos and Carlos Vela for years to come.  Today, dos Santos and Vela played perhaps their best matches in a Tricolor shirt, and almost certainly played themselves onto the roster for the big August 12 qualifier.  Mexico put a high priority on the Gold Cup, put forward the strongest possible side, and won.  Full credit to them.

That said...

I am so glad that this Gold Cup is finally over.   The Gold Cup is only half-decent tournament during a non-World Cup year.  It becomes downright mediocre when it falls in the same year as the World Cup qualifiers.  It is good that there are no longer guest countries participating in CONCACAF's national team championship, but the quality of play is lacking even in a twelve-team tournament.  I wasn't able to see all the matches on TV, but I saw about four in their entirety as well as the two I saw in person, and the group stage matches were not very compelling.  USA-Panama in the quarterfinal round was a good match, but the tournament only became interesting in the semifinal round.  All of the semifinalists were the top four teams in the Hexagonal, so they should feel some satisfaction for making it that far in the tournament.  But it took to long to get to this point, and no one else in the tournament were able to prove themselves capable of knocking off the top four.  In my opinion, the Gold Cup should be an eight-team tournament played every four years, but I know that such a proposal will never survive 30 seconds in a CONCACAF ExCo meeting.  

So after a two-month break, it's back to the Hexagonal.  Thank goodness.

Comments

[J]

I disagree the Gold Cup is a great way for other weaker countries to get stronger and measure themselves against the best in the region. If we make it an 8 team tournament then we will always have the same few countries vying for the cup and CONCACAF will never grow. We need the region to be stronger and slowly we are starting to see more parity in the region because other countries are getting better.

[Eric]

I also disagree about the 8 team tournament. But I DEFINITELY think it should only be every 4 years.