Crash Course
The road to hell, so they say, is paved with good intentions. But what about the road through hell?
Bob Gansler remembers his U.S. soccer players being kept awake all night in El Salvador by an endless parade of horn-honking vehicles circling the team’s San Salvador hotel. He also recalls his players being locked out of practice at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City and being told there was no one in all of Mexico with the power to open it.
Frustrate.
Lothar Osiander remembers his U.S. players being pelted with rocks by an angry mob through the bars of their squalid locker room in Port au Prince, Haiti. He also recalls the U.S. team bus being driven by a Haitian man bleeding profusely from his head after being hit by a rock thrown through the vehicle’s windshield, and how fans lynched a referee in effigy and hung it from the stadium fence in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, during a U.S. game.
Intimidate.
Steve Sampson remembers watching his U.S. players dodge thrown bags of urine and animal blood, with bits of metal, batteries and debris of all sorts in San Jose, Costa Rica, where hand-painted signs in the stands questioned the U.S. players’ virility, not to mention their ancestry.
Violate.
Gansler, Osiander and Sampson--three former U.S. national team coaches each with a suitcase full of horror stories about life on the road during qualifying for the Olympics and the World Cup.
All of which leaves Bruce Arena, the current coach, wondering just what is in store in Guatemala this weekend and in Costa Rica the weekend after as it opens the 16-month, 16-game endurance test that is the CONCACAF regional qualifying for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
Soccer, as anyone south of San Diego or east of the Everglades will argue, is not supposed to be a U.S. sport. So, the better the Americans get, the greater threat they are perceived to pose in a game that is a way of life, almost a religion, in Mexico, Central America and parts of the Caribbean.
And, as defeating the U.S. on the field becomes more problematic, others step in to help their country. There are games within games when the U.S. is on the road.
Bus drivers inexplicably lose their way. Hotel front desks fail to have rooms ready. Training fields turn out to be rock-strewn or devoid of grass. Team meals become an adventure in new tastes, with sometimes horribly liquefying results. Games are planned for the worst heat of the day, and situated at high altitude whenever possible. Remote, difficult-to-reach stadiums are selected. The visitors’ locker room somehow fails to be cleaned, or to have hot water, or any water at all. There is noise wherever the U.S. team goes, day and night.
Mind games of all kinds precede the actual game.
Then there is the intimidating atmosphere of the stadiums themselves, often crumbling concrete edifices at the end of dusty roads in desperately poor neighborhoods, with fans jammed together behind wire restraining fences and ringed with machine gun-toting paramilitary figures in army, guardia civil or police uniforms.
In short, the whole scene can bring wobbly knees and thumping hearts to the uninitiated, just as it is intended to do. It’s more than sport, it’s national pride at stake.
“You have to prepare yourself, to be ready for the unexpected,” Gansler said. “ Things that are automatic, that are second-nature in the U.S., are not so down there [in Central America]. You have to be able to deal with that.
“Just accept that you can’t make it better, or you’re going to lose your focus and concentration.”
Gansler, who coached the U.S. team that qualified for the World Cup in Italy in 1990, knows what sort of players it takes to deal with such intimidating conditions.
“Psychologically, they have to be extremely tough because it’s going to be tough, it’s not going to be smooth,” he said. “There are no ‘Welcome’ mats for the U.S. team, or for any other team, but less so for the Yankees.”
Osiander’s U.S. team qualified for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, surviving the rigors of such places as San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
“It was 104 degrees, kickoff was at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the people were ready to lynch us,” he said. “It’s a different world.”
His advice for Arena as he heads into Central America?
“He will have to explain it to the players. ‘This is what will happen to you. They [fans] will spit at you, they’ll throw things at you. Don’t let it get to you. The referee’s going to be intimidated. There are mind games from the minute you get there.’
“What they did to us in San Pedro Sula was they had an Easter parade [outside the team hotel] at 5 o’clock in the morning. I’ve never seen a noisier Easter parade in my life. These are the things to expect.”
For the U.S. opener on Sunday, Guatemala already has caused a stir. It switched the game from Guatemala City to the town of Mazatenango, a three-hour drive on a two-lane road. That has hampered Arena’s plans to get into and out of the country as quickly as possible.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some odd things happening on the way [to Estadio Carlos Salazar],” Osiander said. “A staged accident, maybe.”
Sunil Gulati, chairman of U.S. Soccer’s professional council and director of soccer for the San Jose Earthquakes and New England Revolution, has attended every U.S. World Cup qualifying game in the last 15 years.
“The thing about it is that this is the World Cup and our competitors treat it like life and death,” he said. “They do everything they can to assure the best possible result for their team.”
Gulati cautions, however, against taking every mishap as intentional. “The gamesmanship falls somewhere between reality and folklore,” he said. “Clearly, the decision by the Guatemalan federation to play Sunday’s game two or three hours outside Guatemala City is based on one thing: a competitive issue. But I don’t think some of the things we’ve faced on the road are intentional.”
Sampson, whose U.S. team qualified for the 1998 World Cup, has been to Estadio Carlos Salazar.
“It’s very intimidating,” he said. “The fans are right on top of the players and the players are in these bunkers. They’re called benches, but they’re actually bunkers. You get no sight line at all to the field from a coaching perspective.”
At Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in San Jose, Costa Rica, where the U.S. will play July 23, the visitors’ locker room is directly beneath the end of the stadium holding the most vocal and combative fans.
“That’s intentional,” Sampson said. “For 45 minutes to an hour before game time they’re stomping on top of the locker room. You can’t even hear yourself think.”
But, as Osiander points out, the U.S. players have to be prepared for such difficulties.
“If you can’t handle it mentally,” he said, “you won’t be able to handle it physically.”
This time around, Gansler, Osiander and Sampson can sit back and watch. It’s up to Arena to navigate the qualifying minefield.
“We will be ready for whatever we have to face,” Arena said.
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On the Calendar
United States’ World Cup 2002 Group E qualifying schedule:
*--*
Date Opponent Site Television Sunday Guatemala Mazatenango, Guatemala ESPN2, 10 a.m. July 23 Costa Rica San Jose, Costa Rica ESPN2, 10 a.m. Aug. 16 Barbados Foxboro, Mass. ESPN2, 5 p.m. Sept. 3 Guatemala Washington ABC, 11 a.m. Oct. 11 Costa Rica Columbus, Ohio ESPN, 5 p.m. Nov. 15 Barbados St. Michael, Barbados TBA
*--*
* The winner and runner-up from Group E advance to the six-nation final qualifying round in 2001 featuring the winners and runners-up from Group C (Canada, Mexico, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago) and Group D ( El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica and St. Vincent & the Grenadines). All times Pacific
*
WORLD CUP QUALIFYING
United States at Guatemala,
Sunday, ESPN2, 10 a.m.
SOCCER/GRAHAME L. JONES
Too late, but FIFA discusses rotating World Cup sites. Page 6
