Colombia Reaches Gold Cup Final, 2-1
If a Peruvian defender falls down in a Gold Cup semifinal and there is no one there to see it, does he make a sound?
A weighty question, which the national soccer teams of Colombia and Peru pondered mostly in silence Wednesday night inside a cavernous Qualcomm Stadium, left virtually vacant by the conspicuous absence of Team USA.
The turnstile killers from Colombia, who gutted the gate receipts for this game by eliminating the United States last Saturday, kept rolling through the tournament, defeating Peru, 2-1, in front of dozens of spectators.
Announced attendance was 3,402, which appeared to be exaggerated by half.
One thing is certain: On a wet night with freeways snarled, Southern Californians have a limited attention span when it comes to two South American teams--neither of them named “Brazil”--playing for a berth in the game that will determine the 2000 champion of North and Central America.
Confusion, thy name is Gold Cup. Colombia now moves on to play Canada or Trinidad and Tobago in the final Sunday at the Coliseum, as has been scheduled for months, although promoters issued a statement Wednesday to quell rumors that the final was being moved to Miami.
According to the statement, issued by Inter/Forever Sports, which holds the television and marketing rights to the Gold Cup, a Mexican news agency “is reporting that the final game of the Gold Cup is being moved from Los Angeles to Miami on Sunday February 27 because of a lack of interest in the potential finalists in the Los Angeles area.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. The Final of the Gold Cup will take place as planned.”
The statement goes on to concede that “it is true, quite obviously, that Southern California’s most popular team, Mexico, is no longer in the competition and that this will adversely affect the crowd.”
So Colombia will still need only a bus and not a plane to make it to the title game. The Colombians booked passage with a sizable assist from the Peruvian defense, which hand-wrapped both of the winners’ goals--the first an own goal by Peru’s Marcial Salazar.
In the 40th minute, Colombia’s Faustino Asprilla headed a corner kick hard toward the Peru goal. Salazar stepped in to try to block the ball, but instead deflected it into his own net.
Colombia scored again in the 52nd minute when another Peru defender, Juan Reynoso, tried to chest a ball back to goalkeeper Oscar Ibanez ahead of Colombia’s Victor Bonilla, rushing in from behind.
However, the ball slipped through Ibanez’ hands and fell in front of an empty net for Bonilla, all alone for an easy tap-in.
Peru scored in the 75th minute on a 20-yard strike by Roberto Palacios.
