Sacha Kljestan helped the US move into the HEX with momentum. That’s a good thing, because this will be the most difficult HEX to date.
Neil W. Blackmon
The United States routed Trinidad and Tobago 4-0 Tuesday night at Everbank Field in Jacksonville, Florida. The result helped the United States advance to CONCACAF’s final six team qualifying round, colloquially known as “The Hex”, for the sixth consecutive time. CONCACAF moved to the format in 1998, when the World Cup Finals expanded to 32 nations.
The US have finished as champions of the Hex in the previous three World Cup cycles, with qualification rarely in doubt. In fact, since a scare in 2002, the US have come closer to being eliminated in the World Cup qualifying tournament in the round preceding the Hex than in the final qualifying round itself.
Mostly, this is because there’s an unspoken, unwritten rule in CONCACAF that the six team, play everyone home and away twice format is set up as much as possible to help the nascent footballing region qualify its two “giants” and ward off Cinderellas. There’s nothing wrong with that– fans love a Cinderella at the World Cup and makes for good copy, but the soccer too often suffers at their expense. The favorites should advance.
Recent cycles have demonstrated the format isn’t “upset proof”, however.
The US were nearly bounced in 2002, rallying for a critical victory in the final two matches to place third and reach the World Cup finals. Without the late stage victories, there would have never been a run to the World Cup quarterfinal, a 2-0 Round of 16 win over Mexico, or, for better or worse, a Torsten Frings handball to haunt American dreams.
Trinidad and Tobago became the smallest nation in history to qualify in 2006, but needed two goals from Stern John in a famous win over Mexico just to place 4th over a goal-scoring machine of a Guatemala team. The Soca Warriors defeated Bahrain in a playoff to get through.
Mexico were the most recent team to nearly fall victim to the HEX. Within minutes of being eliminated entirely from the World Cup finals, they were rescued by the United States in the waning minutes of the HEX when Graham Zusi’s header leveled a game against Panama in Panama City. In an instant, Los Canaleros went from securely in a playoff to qualify for their country’s first World Cup to eliminated. Mexico were redeemed, thanks to their rivals.
In other words, navigating the global footballing backwaters of CONCACAF’s qualifying is more complicated than it seems.
“Should the US qualify from the HEX? Of course. But it isn’t a birthright.” Carlos Bocanegra told TYAC in Jacksonville.
Sacha Kljestan agreed with the former American captain’s assessment. The Red Bulls midfielder was capped for a third consecutive World Cup qualifying cycle Tuesday, scoring a goal in the American win.
“Last cycle, it was more grueling than the prior cycle. This time, we expect it to be harder than last time. CONCACAF is better. The standard of play is higher. You have to perform at a high level or you’re vulnerable. It’s harder now,” Kljestan told TYAC.
Kevin Molino is one of the many players who has benefitted from an improved MLS. And a better MLS has improved CONCACAF.
There are a host of factors that have combined to make the HEX tougher.
Better coaching, improved federation development programs and the growth of MLS have all helped facilitate more healthy regional competition, making for a higher quality, less predictable Hexagonal round.
Trinidad and Tobago coach Stephen Hart explained MLS’s role to TYAC earlier this week in Jacksonville.
“For a small nation like ours or others in CONCACAF, MLS has been a tremendous asset. We’d love to send all our players to MLS. The competition level is so much higher than all the other domestic leagues in the region, save Mexico. And the saying about better competition breeding more quality is true. Better players enter the league and the league improves. These things are related and it’s the smaller CONCACAF nations that stand to benefit the most,” Hart said.
Tim Howard agreed. “When the standard of play in the CONCACAF domestic leagues improves, especially the way MLS has, it’s going to improve the region as a whole. That’s what has happened.”
Coaching has facoilitated better soccer in the region too. In the case of Costa Rica and Honduras, two of the six teams in the upcoming HEX, better soccer has been a byproduct of hiring one coach.
Employing a defend first, defend second and frenetically counter system Jorge Luis Pinto took a scrappy Ticos side with a handful of technically gifted players to a World Cup quarterfinal in 2014. He left Costa Rica in the aftermath, a contract dispute and the usual ego machinations leading him into the waiting arms of Honduras, who, having qualified for consecutive World Cups, are thirsty to stay longer than a group stage. Pinto’s revolution has taken a while to take hold in Honduras, but the young core of the nation’s footballing future just finished fourth under Pinto at the Olympics, and the Catrachos have the look of a side that will improve dramatically in the HEX.
Clever managers like Pinto have improved CONCACAF’s quality of play.
The Ticos struggled in the immediate aftermath of Pinto’s departure, but Óscar Ramírez appears to have stabilized the program, as they blazed unbeaten through a talented qualifying group featuring Panama, Jamaica and Haiti. And while the team and federation weren’t thrilled with their group stage exit at last summer’s Copa América (a crushing 4-0 defeat to the US was particularly painful), the Ticos closed the tournament with an impressive reminder of their top end quality with a thrilling 3-2 win over group favorite Colombia.
Mexico, a team with immense technical quality that has lost just one competitive match this World Cup cycle, are an unlikely footballing nation to find long-term stability in a manager.The notion of a two-cycle manager, like the US have seen in Bruce Arena and Jurgen Klinsmann, is culturally foreign.
The country’s passion for El Tri often clouds reasoned judgment, and the FMF is prone to rash decisions and quick trigger managerial changes. But Juan Carlos Osorio, who has seen El Tri lose only once under his leadership, appears to have as good a chance as any Mexican manager in three cycles in surviving the HEX. That he’ll have to do so still under intense fire for the side’s 7-0 quarterfinal loss is a testament to Mexico’s fanaticism and the toll that wreaks on the country’s manager.
Panama are an example of what happens when increased investment in the national team, tactical stability and a team with players who challenge themselves in multiple global leagues abroad intersect.
The country’s failure, by a heartbreaking and paper thin margin, to qualify for a playoff for the 2014 World Cup finals, did result in the sacking of the internally popular dely Valdes brothers, the national team manager-assistant combo so well respected in soccer circles.
It was an odd termination: the duo’s achievements included Panama’s first-ever victory over the USA in group play (2011) and two wins over Mexico (2013). But the last gasp defeat to the US prevented the story from having a fairy tale ending.
“Julio Dely Valdes is the best coach we have ever had,” said Panamanian soccer federation president Peter Chaluja, “and he deserves our thanks.”
While the dely Valdes brothers may be gone, their “controlled anarchy” style of soccer remained. Heavily reliant on disciplined defense and talented CB’s, Panama are a defend first and break fast team and they are so good at executing it they don’t need much of the ball to be effective. Hernán Darío Gómez was brought in to add a dash of possession to the chaos- and the improvement yielded dividends in a brutal fourth round group that included a talented Jamaica and Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, Panama’s players play in MLS and throughout South America- almost none of the team’s core remain in Panama- and since the failure in 2014, the Panamanian government has invested 12 million dollars in training facilities and soccer-specific development infrastructure.
A World Cup is going to happen for Panama. It’s a matter of when.
Trinidad and Tobago round out the group.
The smallest nation to ever qualify for the World Cup, the Soca Warriors are a team with dynamic, proven attacking talent. In Orlando City playmaker Kevin Molino, future Atlanta United forward Kenwyne Jones, AZ Alkmaar youth star Levi Garcia and Seattle’s Joevin Jones- Trinidad and Tobago have the pieces to trouble any CONCACAF defense. Questions exist as to whether they can defend enough to threaten in the HEX- but they have only dropped one match- last Tuesday’s contest in Jacksonville- in qualifying.
Estadio Nacional, seen above, is one of many challenging CONCACAF venues.
A combination of these factors assures the US will enter the HEX at greater risk of failing to attain qualification than ever before.
And that’s before you get to how hard it is to get points away from home.
Home field or home court advantage is uniquely celebrated in American sport. Venues transform into noise cauldrons on gamedays, stadiums becoming subjects of nicknames and lore, whether apocryphal or true.
Whether it’s the NFL, the NBA or college football and basketball, the daunting challenges of achieving victory away from home are a common narrative, and often an objective way to separate good teams from average ones. It takes quality to win away from home.
The same is true in CONCACAF, with venues like Azteca in Mexico City and Estadio Olimpico in San Pedro Sula that make many of the more feared American venues- such as the storied stadiums of college football’s SEC- seem like peaceful, cosmopolitan settings, not anarchic hamlets on the edge of the world.
The US will open at home, in a setting that has vexed Mexico for over a decade- Mapfre Stadium in Columbus, Ohio.
Following that match, the Americans will take to the road, with a match at Costa Rica. Costa Ricas stadiums have been to the US what Columbus is to Mexico. Whether the Americans play the Ticos at storied haunt Saprissa with it’s wired cages and seating on the edge of the field, or the more modern Estadio Nacional, the result has been the same. The US are outplayed thoroughly and fail to earn a result.
Trips to Azteca and Honduras await the US in the HEX as well.
Michael Bradley sees this as another test in a region constantly improving itself.
“Are we a better team than we were a year ago?,” Bradley asked rhetorically, before answering his own question. “We’ve performed better. But we want to win games. When we went to Trinidad last fall and earned a point, maybe people were disappointed with how that happened. But those results are hard. The travel is hard. The venue is hard. The fields are different. It’s a unique constant in this region. And the teams that handle the road, that perform best on the road, they’ll end up in Russia.”
It will just be harder this time.
Neil W. Blackmon is co-founder of The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.