HexagonalBlog

World Cup Qualifying 2010 Review: The Hexagonal

[This is the fourth in a multi-part series on the 2010 World Cup qualifiers.]

The CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers started out with a preliminary round of 22, then another round of 24, followed by a group stage for 12.  We now reach the final group of six - USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Trinidad & Tobago.  I expected this Hexagonal to be the most competitive and closely-matched of all the previous Hexagonal groups.  It did not disappoint in the slightest.  The bare facts say that USA and Mexico clinched places in the World Cup finals with a round to spare.  In reality, everyone had to sweat as the fortunes of each participant swung on finely poised matches decided under dramatic circumstances.  How much closer could you get than a goal scored on the final kick of the final game in the final matchday that would change the destiny of two national teams?

Honduras-USA now available online

That thrilling Honduras-USA qualifier is now available online from the closed-circuit provider that showed it earlier this month.  You'll have to pay for it (big surprise there), but it's only five dollars.

Hat-tip to Steven Goff at Soccer Insider.

Hexagonal 2009: Round 10

Trinidad & Tobago 2-2 Mexico

Not too many cared about the match.  T&T go out of the World Cup in a blaze of glory and maintain their unbeaten home streak over Mexico.  It's incredible that Mexico have never won a World Cup qualifier in Trinidad & Tobago.

The final worm chart

I have updated the worm chart for the Hexagonal teams.  It illustrates really well just how tight this edition of the Hexagonal was. 

Back with some more posts tomorrow.

Honduras unites and celebrates

It's taken a while to get access to the sports websites in Honduras, but I finally found a working link, and you can see for yourselves the celebrations all across the country as Honduras return to the World Cup finals. 

An advisory

My review of the last matchday of the Hexagonal will be late because of a take-home midterm that I have tomorrow and Friday.  I need to finish preparing for it tonight, so I won't be able to write it tonight.  Unless I finish this exam earlier, don't expect anything to be posted before Friday night.

Round 10 of Hexagonal 2009 and Round 18 of CONMEBOL as they happened

This is it -- the final matchday of the 2009 Hexagonal.  It's also the final matchday of the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers, and I'm going to do something different tonight.  I'm going to liveblog the matches involving the three South American teams in contention for the playoff place -- Argentina, Uruguay, and Ecuador.  Argentina have to cross the Río de la Plata to renew the oldest national team rivalry in world football in a must-win match for both teams.  Ecuador have to travel to Santiago to play an already-qualified Chile.

As for CONCACAF, the situation is simpler.  There's just one automatic qualification spot to be decided between Honduras and Costa Rica.  By approximately 9pm Eastern time, we will know CONMEBOL's representative in the playoff.  By 10pm Eastern time, we will know who between Honduras and Costa Rica will have confirmed their place in South Africa, and who will have to play a home-and-away playoff against CONMEBOL's fifth-place team. 

The South American matches in question kick off at 1600 1500 Arizona time (GMT -7).

Chile 1-0 Ecuador F
Uruguay 0-1 Argentina F

All Hexagonal matches kick off at 1705 Arizona time (GMT -7)

Trinidad & Tobago 2-2 Mexico F
USA 2-2 Costa Rica F
El Salvador 0-1 Honduras F

Commentary after the jump.

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Davies seriously injured in fatality accident

This is one of the most distressing posts that I've had to write on this site.  I'm sure you all know the news by now that US national team striker Charlie Davies was a passenger in a SUV that was in a horrific one-car accident this morning on the George Washington Memorial Parkway just outside of Washington DC.  The crash killed one of the passengers, 24-year-old Ashley Roberta, and left Davieswith a lacerated bladder, a broken leg in two places, facial fractures and a broken elbow.   The crash was truly horrific; the SUV was split in two and upon looking at the pictures it's hard to imagine how anyone could have survived the accident.

Needless to say, Davies faces a very lengthy recovery period, and will miss next summer's World Cup.  But that's much more preferable to not being able to see the next day.

My condolences to the Roberta family and my prayers go out to the families of all affected by this tragic event.

In praise of US steel

With the understandable joy and relief among the US players, administrators, and supporters to seeing the US men clinch a sixth consecutive qualification to the World Cup finals, it's a good time to take a step back and look at what has been accomplished.  I have had my critiques of the US national team, some of which illustrate the challenges involved with taking a team from second-tier to truly world elite.  But I want to point out just how resilient this team has become in this qualifying cycle.

In this Hexagonal, the USA have fallen behind in six of their nine matches played.  Of those six matches, they have come back to win three of those games and snatch a draw in another.  Two of those four comeback results were against El Salvador, and the other two were against Honduras.  In the two matches against Honduras and the home match against El Salvador, the USA was able to score a tying goal either relatively quickly or just before the half. 

It's the away match in El Salvador that was the most impressive.  Even though they were badly outplayed and fell behind by two goals with fifteen minutes to play, the USA kept pressing and searching for a goal to get back into the game.  They found it through Altidore, then grabbed the equalizer off a set piece.  The USA have made dramatic comebacks before in previous cycles (the away match against Honduras in 2001, the away match to Panama in the 2004 semifinal round, among others), but not with any kind of regularity. 

This recent development is part of the maturation of the national team, but much of the credit for this kind of resiliency has to go to Bob Bradley as well.  We can debate how much credit he really deserves, but under his watch the USA are gaining points from matches that they would have lost in prior qualifying cycles.  Landon Donovan has especially flourished during this cycle with the national team, and the US have some players up front who can become international-caliber strikers.  I am still not convinced that he is a good enough coach at this level, at least not in terms of selection and tactical formation, but he has achieved his major objective, he will be on the US touchline in South Africa, and he deserves credit for getting them there.

The next task in the US team's upward progression is to close out matches that they lead, which is something they don't always manage to do.

How the worm turned

Now that the Hexagonal is drawing to a close, perhaps it would be interesting to show how the teams' performance has progressed during the final round.  Below is a graph charting the point history of the six teams (horizontal axis is matchday number).

 

Costa Rica's early run of good form has kept them in contention for the top three.  USA had a hot start, leveled off during the most difficult part of the schedule, and hit their second win in the latter third of the Hexagonal.  Mexico and Honduras surged during the second half of the Hexagonal, but Honduras have stalled at the wrong time.

There will be a lot more analysis of the Hexagonal here and on my Soccermetrics website.