SOCCER NATIONS CUP : After Missing Big Chance, Murray’s Aim Improves

Standing over the ball for a free kick from 25 yards out in the final minute of Tuesday night’s game at the Coliseum against Mexico, needing a goal to tie the game, U.S. midfielder Bruce Murray could not help but think about the last time he had such an opportunity.

Late in a World Cup game against Italy last summer in Rome, the force of a Murray free kick from about the same spot stunned goalkeeper Walter Zenga, who barely managed to deflect the ball. If forward Peter Vermes had converted the rebound, the United States would have earned a 1-1 tie in a result that would long have been remembered as one of the most incredible in soccer history.

But, this time, Murray’s kick was too high by inches for goalkeeper Hugo Pineda to stop, and the United States tied Mexico, 2-2, in the first game of the North American Nations Cup.

“In the locker room after the game, the guys were telling me, ‘If you had done that six months ago, you’d be making a million dollars a year in Italy,’ ” Murray said. “They said, ‘You’d be sitting on the bench, but you’d still be making a million dollars.”’

Instead, Murray, who is from Germantown, Md., plays for something less than a million dollars a year with the U.S. national team, which faces Canada today at 1 p.m. at El Camino College in Torrance in the tournament’s final game.

As the all-time leading goal scorer for the United States with 12 in 53 appearances, Murray, 25, said he received offers after the World Cup from Sparta Prague, which plays in Czechoslovakia’s first division, and a fourth-division English team. But he decided against Czechoslovakia for personal reasons and England for professional reasons.