Mathis, McBride Are Powerful Pair
The United States scored a laughably easy 4-0 soccer victory over Honduras in Seattle on Saturday in a game in which Clint Mathis and Brian McBride made a powerful claim to being the starting forwards in this summer’s World Cup.
Mathis scored twice and might have had a third goal if his 20-yard free kick in the second half had not banged first off the crossbar and then off the right post.
McBride didn’t add to his 18-goal tally for the U.S., but he did play a significant role in creating three of the four goals, the other two coming from an increasingly confident and daring Landon Donovan.
With only seven more games to play before the team leaves for South Korea, where it plays Portugal, South Korea and Poland in the first round of the May 31-June 30 world championship, the U.S. starting lineup is beginning to take shape.
Certainly, the return of Mathis and McBride after lengthy injury layoffs and their obvious comfort at playing together have put to rest any doubts about who the two U.S. front-runners should be.
The pair worked so well together and were so well supported by midfielders Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and Chris Armas that the U.S. might have scored six or seven goals had it taken advantage of all the chances that were created against an admittedly second-rate Honduran team.
Honduras Coach Ernesto Luzardo elected to start only two of the players who had beaten the U.S., 3-2, in a World Cup qualifier in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 1.
Instead, he gave the next generation of national team players a chance to show what they could do.
It wasn’t much.
Honduras’ only scoring chance, in fact, came when Saul Martinez managed to get behind the U.S. defense in the 28th minute, but goalkeeper Kasey Keller came alertly off his line to smother Martinez’s shot.
The Americans had taken the lead in the 14th minute when defender Jeff Agoos floated a long diagonal ball to the far post, where McBride headed it back across the face of the net to Mathis, whose downward header sneaked inside the left post beyond the reach of Honduran goalkeeper Victor Coello.
The U.S. scored again a couple of minutes before halftime when Armas made a surging run up the middle before threading a perfect pass for Donovan to run onto, lure Coello out of his net and then slide the ball past him from a sharp angle.
The second half was largely one-way traffic, to the delight of the 38,534 fans at Safeco Field, as the U.S. continued to run at its overmatched opponent.
An interchange between Beasley and second-half substitute Eddie Lewis in the 59th minute resulted in Lewis crossing a ball that McBride dived low to head, deflecting it into Mathis’ path. The former Galaxy forward stabbed it home to make it 3-0.
Five minutes later, Mathis hit the woodwork with his free kick, but Donovan soon made up for the miss with an excellent goal in the 67th minute.
Taking a pass from McBride, the teenager from Redlands--he turns 20 on Monday--accelerated past two defenders, kept close control of the ball at high speed and beat Coello with a cool finish.
Like Mathis and McBride, Donovan has inked his name on the 2002 World Cup roster.
The U.S. has two more games this month: against Ecuador in Birmingham, Ala., next Sunday and against three-time world champion Germany in Rostock, Germany, on March 27.
