Football Sunday
by Jon Worley

This was one of those blessed weekends. The Missouri Tigers played a team from the MAC Saturday night (stomping Eastern Michigan 44-24), and the Chiefs don't play the Raiders until Monday night. So Sunday was free to watch soccer. And as luck would have it, both my beloved Tampa Bay Mutiny and the U.S. National team were in action on national TV.

And as all of you are well aware, any Sunday that the Cowboys lose is a great Sunday, indeed. But enough about that loutish pastime. On with the real football.

My wife Barbara insisted on watching Martina Hingis wail on Venus Williams, so we missed the first 15 minutes of the Mutiny match, coming into the game just as "El Tanque" Hurtado plowed in a goal to put the Galaxy up 2-0. As something of an excuse, almost half of the regular Mutiny starters were playing for their respective national teams and thus unavailable for the game, but the score was to get terribly embarrassing. Indeed, seconds later, with the score 3-0 Galaxy, I was pleased to note that it was just about time for the national team's home match against Costa Rica, and I knew I wouldn't have to check back on that ghastly display in L.A.

The signs for U.S. Coach Steve Sampson's boys weren't good. Top goal scorer Eric Wynalda couldn't play, team captain John Harkes was serving a suspension for yellow card accumulation and would have to sit this one out, and Alexi Lalas did something that caused his relegation to the bench. On the plus side, midfielder Tab Ramos (he of Snickers fame) started his first qualifying match since he sustained a devastating knee injury last November.

A side note, if you'll allow. Many of you have probably seen those commercials whereby Lalas and buddies proceed to wreak holy terror on an unassuming French chalet, and you might assume that our boys in blue (or white, as was the case Sunday) have already qualified for World Cup '98, or are at least in the driver's seat for a spot. Before Sunday, this was not the case. They stood third in the CONCACAF (which somehow stands for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, though I'm not sure how that acronym works exactly) standings, leading El Salvador on the thin margin of goal differential (both sides have 6 points). Costa Rica, who had played one more game than the U.S., stood in second with 8 points, and Mexico leads the group with 11. The point here is that the U.S. was by no means assured of a spot in France, and the game on Sunday was a definite "must-win".

So with two Roys up front (Wegerle, who is so old he can barely recall his 30th birthday, and Lassiter, the Mutiny man and '96 MLS scoring leader who hasn't found that magic touch this season), the U.S. squad took the field against Costa Rica, playing its first game for its third coach of this World Cup qualifying tournament. The U.S. played some nice possession ball in the first half, and defender Eddie Pope (he of Champs Sports fame) came forward to create quite a few good scoring chances, but the ball didn't find the back of the net. Costa Rica seemed content to play for a scoreless draw, and the game found halftime without a goal.

The stadium in Portland has artificial turf, so the U.S. Soccer federation laid out $100,000 to put in real grass for this game. There were lots of seams in the field, and the water used to settle the turf down hadn't quite drained off, leading to some really messy footing. The U.S. players who started the game without screw-in cleats (this allows for longer studs) changed boots at the half (as did the Costa Ricans) and the second half had much fewer slipping incidents.

A key moment came at about midway through the second half. A vicious tackle on U.S. midfielder Claudio Reyna put him out of the game minutes later. Sampson brought in Mike Burns, and then a couple minutes later replaced the Roys with Cobi Jones and Preki Radoslejivic. This paid off in the 79th minute, when two of the oldest players on the field, Preki and defender Marcelo Balboa, combined to serve the ball up to Ramos, who blasted a gorgeous shot into the lower right-hand corner of the net. A 1-0 lead, which stood up for the next 10 minutes until full time.

Thus, my Sunday of football ended reasonably happily. The Mutiny have been playing well, and a silly 6-1 loss doesn't bother me too much. The victory by the U.S. national team does put them in the driver's seat for a place in France (they now stand in second place in the region, a game in hand on everyone behind them), with a match in D.C. against Jamaica coming up in a month. I plan to be there in person.

And, of course, that late-night OT win by Arizona over the Cowboys didn't hurt, either. Now it's time to prep for Monday night. My Raiders hatred has already begun to bubble.

Anyone who wants to sell New York to Paris tickets for June 1998 can find a buyer by e-mailing jworley@cent.com. Jon figures a World Cup would be worth putting up with a few French types.

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