U.S. Looks Lackluster but Still Wins Group

The defense gave goalie Kasey Keller a relatively easy 90 minutes Tuesday, but the offense ran out of steam.

The U.S. national team, which had scored 12 goals in its previous four games, struggled on offense and settled for a 0-0 tie with Costa Rica in its last group game in the CONCACAF Gold Cup before 15,211 at Gillette Stadium.

The U.S., which had eight shots, won Group B by goal differential over Costa Rica and both teams advanced to the quarterfinals Saturday afternoon in Foxboro.

Both teams were 2-0-1, but the U.S. scored two more goals than Costa Rica.

Costa Rica will play Honduras at 10 a.m. PDT and the U.S. will play the third-place team from Group C at 1 p.m.

Defender Frankie Hejduk will sit out the next game after picking up a yellow card for taking a dive in the final minutes.

“Frankie needs to be a little bit smarter,” Coach Bruce Arena said. “He’s got to learn from that. I don’t know how much he’s going to learn at this point in his career, but [it was] not smart to have to take a card there.”

Other than that, Arena said he was pleased by the defense.

“I thought we had a very good second half,” he said. “We were really good defensively, cutting down any dangerous attacks from Costa Rica.

“We just weren’t sharp in the last third. We didn’t create enough and didn’t take chances well. In the first half, we had a couple good looks and we didn’t get a shot off. But that’s part of the game.”

Costa Rica goalie Jose Francisco Porras came up big late, diving to get a hand on Josh Wolff’s try at the far left post. He made five saves, Keller two.

Arena was especially pleased with defenders Steve Cherundolo and Jimmy Conrad. It was the third game with the national team for Conrad, a former UCLA and Temple City High standout.

“[Cherundolo] has had two excellent games in a row,” Arena said. “We had some concerns with him, because he had had a three-week break since the qualifying games because he had a long year at Hannover [in Germany].”

Galaxy midfielder Landon Donovan again came on as a second-half substitute but didn’t have the same effect as in a 4-1 win Thursday over Cuba.

In that game, Donovan scored the game-winner in the 87th minute and closed it out with a header in injury time.

“It was just a lackluster performance,” U.S. forward Pat Noonan said. “We were a little off. It’s disappointing.”