By the way, great showing by the Pumas fans! Fun to watch and very fun to listen to. Easily the best showing of all the preliminary round games so far. I'm glad to see that there's some fans supporting the CCL after all. Hopefully a few more of the group stage games will look like this one.
That was the game where they sent all their good players and their coach back to the US for the A-League all-star game, no? That was an excellent Cruz Azul team though, managed to win two continental championships within the space of five weeks
Pumas so far gives the impression of being a team that has a lot of trouble finishing. Also despite the fact that Harbour View won the Caribbean Championship, so far Joe Public seems like a better team. Then again, to be fair, Harbour View is playing with 10 men.
You really think Pumas are all that great? I'm of the opinion that these small CONCACAF teams have become good enough to pull off such results against anyone in CONCACAF. I've been surprised by how organized those Caribbean teams have played. Regardless of whether MLS makes a profit or not, this tournament really was a necessary addition for the CONCACAF minnows
That's because some people don't want to give anything new a chance. They want everything to stay the same always. This is a great little tournament and it will get better in the late group stages and the elimination rounds. This tournament is needed at the least to provide exposure to the small nations in concacaf, there's some great talent in those little leagues. Talent which can be extracted to improve our own situation. Everyone will win, it just takes time.
10 man HV (down to 10 for most of the match) is losing 1-0 to Pumas at the 76' The game will open up now b/c HV needs a goal, and it might end up 5 or 6-nil.. but make no mistake HV did themselves proud.
I'm not willing to complement the announcers. They're really mistreating the great job Harbour View is doing in this match with one man down.
I didn't like it when one said "If Harbour View get a goal right now they will have a very undeserved tie." Pumas gets the win, with another goal just now, but I don't like such comments.
I'm pretty sure they did. Don't have the numbers for tonight but considering that Saputo has a capacity of 13 to 14 k fans and that tonight at the Olimpico there were at the very least 25k (on a stadium with a capacity for 65k), and probably more, most of the crowd concentrated in the upper east and west sides of the stadium where the visibility is very good, the tickets are cheap and there's a lot of room for fans.
So then, the 16 teams in the group stage are finalized: 4 - Mexico 2 - United States (MLS) 2 - Panama 2 - Honduras 1 - Costa Rica 1 - Guatemala 1 - El Salvador 1 - Canada (USL-1) 1 - Trinidad 1 - Puerto Rico (USL-1) The showing for Panama is doubly impressive, since they both had to make it through the Preliminary Round.
Props to Harbour View.. they gave up a couple of really late ones there because they had to open up and go for a goal, but considering they were down a man for pretty much the entire match, they were impressive. Good job HV. And congrats to Pumas !!
How is playing with a 10-0 formation and parking the team bus in front of the goal a "good job", if anything it shows the real level of this competition. Granted the Harbor View were no as abysmal as the Hankook Verdes but far from making CONCACAF proud. The moment they received a goal the inevitable happened...they received more goals since bunkering wasnt an option anymore. The caribs play like all the minnows, bunker, hang for dear life and hope for a miracle...a goal in a counter or a set piece and then bunker some more and pray for the clock to run faster. This tournament stinks
You're right. They should have started off attacking more. Because when they did attack in the second half, down a man, they showed how abysmal the Pumas defense is. They could have scored if they had attempted to attack early on. Hankook Verdes was by far the worst team in the tournament, being the only completely amateur team. Cruz Azul lucked out facing them. I still consider them one of the best teams here, but I won't be expecting them to score 6 on any team in the group stage. Did you watch any match not involving Mexican teams? I think you should wait until the full tournament is over before talking.
If they had attacked from the beginning they would have been slaughtered like the Hankook Verdes, the jamaicans had nobody who could actually hold the ball or even send a decent pass, and as discreet -to put it politely- as the Pumas defense is; they had 3 men around the Jamaicans strikers every time the dared crossing the half field line. And while I dont expect Cruz Azul to crush everybody 6-0, you must remember that they fielded the bench against the belizeans with a couple of first team members ( Villaluz, Chavez and Vigneri in the second game), it could make you dizzy to think what the first team looking for blood would have done to the Verdes