U.S. players remain confident in Gold Cup tournament
Let’s see, the U.S. national soccer team is coming off its first-ever Gold Cup loss in group play, is without its top goal scorer in the injured Jozy Altidore and Landon Donovan, the most prolific scorer in U.S. history, spent most of the last game on the bench.
Yet, the U.S. players insist they’re riding a wave of confidence heading into Wednesday’s tournament semifinal game with Panama at Houston’s Reliant Stadium.
“We go into this semifinal with more of a positive outlook that we’re moving in the right direction,” said midfielder Clint Dempsey, who scored the second goal in a 2-0 quarterfinal win by the U.S. over Jamaica. “As the tournament’s progressing, we’re starting to get better and better as a team.”
Midfielder Sacha Kljestan went further, comparing the recent U.S. fortunes with the last two World Cup champions, both of whom stumbled in pool play before rolling to win titles.
“We’ve talked about tournament teams who haven’t started the group phase so well,” Kljestan said. “You look at Spain in 2010, Italy in 2006. They just got better as the tournament went on. So we’re hoping to keep getting better.”
They must if the U.S. hopes to keep their date with Mexico in Saturday’s Gold Cup final at the Rose Bowl. Between them, Mexico and the U.S. have won nine of the previous 10 Gold Cups, splitting the last two finals.
But if the U.S. appears to be peaking, unbeaten Mexico, which plays Honduras in Wednesday’s other semifinal game, may be moving ever so slightly in the other direction, if only because it played at an impossibly high level in the group stage.
Mexico needed two second-half goals to beat a stubborn Guatemalan team in a quarterfinal game and may now benefit from some welcome additions to its roster. Mexico has played its last three games with only 17 players after defender Ricardo Osorio returned home ill and five other players, including two starters, were suspended for failing a drug test.
On Sunday, Mexican Coach Jose Manuel de la Torre was given permission to replace those players, calling in defenders Paul Aguilar, Hector Reynoso and Hiram Mier for the game with Honduras, which advanced by beating Costa Rica in a quarterfinal game determined by penalty kicks.
“The Mexican people don’t expect other outcomes than the victory,” Javier Hernandez, who leads the Gold Cup with six goals, told reporters. “Any other result will be a bitter failure.”
The U.S. feels the same way. In fact, Coach Bob Bradley’s future with the team may be riding on Wednesday’s rematch with Panama, which beat the U.S., 2-1, in group play then had to rally to beat El Salvador in a penalty-kick shootout in the quarterfinals.
U.S. goalie Tim Howard hasn’t given up a goal since the Panama game, a streak of 232 minutes. And the normally conservative Bradley jump-started the team’s sluggish offense against Jamaica by benching Donovan (who played only 25 minutes) and playing a ball-control style in which he started only one striker.
That striker was Altidore, who had an MRI exam Tuesday on his strained hamstring and may be out for the tournament. Expect Juan Agudelo to start in Altidore’s place. And that won’t be the only difference between the U.S. team Panama beat 11 days ago and the one it plays Wednesday.
“As the tournament goes on, you start to build team unity,” Donovan said. “It doesn’t happen right away. You can’t come in and expect after a week or two that everything is going to be clicking.
“You can see guys are starting to trust each other. They are learning how guys want the ball in different spots and we’re starting to play as a team.”
