Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Gold Cup semifinal



The tournament resumes as the world's sixth best team takes on Honduras. Ok. Actually I have to go on a little rant here. Of course, we are not the sixth best team in the world (I think we're somewhere around the tenth spot). However, the FIFA rankings are a mathematical formula and therefore it's not perfect. We have an advantage over UEFA teams because our continental championship is played every two years, and we also play many more World Cup qualifying games. Also, let's not forget that the rankings also take into account eight years worth of results. People just don't understand what the rankings are about, and so every month on cue you see people saying that they're ridiculous or whatever. It's so annoying. Yeah, they're not perfect, but they're the best we have (And don't start about Elo, they have the USA's alltime record as 184-186-110, when it's actually 171-185-105. They're probably counting some matches that they shouldn't).

So anyway, Honduras is up next. Even without David Suazo and Amada Guevara they're still pretty decent. Five of their starters from the 1-0 friendly win in February are with their Gold Cup team. They could only manage two shots against a back line of Marshall-Borchers-Albright. They have a stronger team now and a decent attack (Velasquez seems like a threat), but we should be able to hold them to one goal or less.

Once again, Wolff is a key figure for us. We need to score a few and he really should get another with Beasley and Donovan feeding him. Also, Hejduk will be back. This should be a little harder than Jamaica but still not too hard.

Prediction: USA 2-0 Honduras

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