Before the turning point
Posted on October 1, 2012 12:13 am
What did the U.S. men’s national team do in 1989? That’s an easy one. It’s well known what Paul Caligiuri and his teammates accomplished in Trinidad on Nov. 19, 1989. So what else did the U.S. men’s national team do in 1989? Not as easy.
One reason why the events of Nov. 19 were so stunning was that the United States had been performing unsteadily that year, particularly in a 0-0 home tie with El Salvador two weeks before. The year had started out brightly, with talk that the United States was a good bet to qualify for the World Cup under its new coach, Bob Gansler, who had just led the United States to its best-ever finish in the Under-20 World Cup. Another thing that helped was that Mexico had been removed as an obstacle, disqualified by FIFA for using overage players in an age-group tournament. However, the removal of Mexico meant the addition to the final qualifying series of Costa Rica, which had been paired with Mexico in a first-round series and thus advanced to that five-team final series by forfeit.
The United States’ two games against Costa Rica were its first two in the pentagonal, and the Americans escaped with a 1-0 loss on the road and a 1-0 victory at home. They nearly had to settle for a tie in the home game in Fenton, Mo., on April 30. A Costa Rican shot in the 88th minute was kept out of the net only by an intentional handball, and David Vanole saved the resulting penalty.
Two weeks later, facing Trinidad in Torrance, Calif., the Americans weren’t as fortunate. Again they led by 1-0 into the 88th minute, but this time a startling goal by Hutson Charles tied the final score. Marlon Morris dove at a through ball from midfield by Brian Williams and headed it onto the feet of Charles in front of the U.S. goal. The Americans left the field with their qualifying prospects looking far less shiny than they had just a few minutes earlier.
A 2-1 win over Guatemala in New Britain, Conn., in mid-June helped to revive the American hopes a bit, and they also had been helped by the results of a tournament in New Jersey a few weeks before that. In the final, the United States beat Peru, 3-0, gaining only its third victory ever over a South American nation. In addition to that boost to their confidence, they also found an excellent new goalkeeper at that tournament, Tony Meola.
The United States began the second half of the pentagonal with a 1-0 win over El Salvador on a neutral field in Honduras on Sept. 17. Adding to the celebration was the fact that the American goal was scored by Hugo Perez, who had been born in El Salvador. A month later, the Americans got a 0-0 tie with Guatemala on a muddy quagmire of a field in Guatemala City, a disappointing result. They had been hoping for more, since Guatemala had been mathematically eliminated and was fielding a diluted team. That result enabled Costa Rica to clinch one of the two CONCACAF World Cup berths, and left the United States and Trinidad to battle for the other one.
The United States’ last qualifier before the trip to Trinidad, against El Salvador in Fenton, Mo., on Nov. 5, was a huge letdown. El Salvador was another country that had been mathematically eliminated. It fielded a club team, Luis Angel Firpo, instead of its real national team, and didn’t arrive at its hotel until late the night before the game, after a 15-hour trip. Everything seemed ripe for a United States victory that would leave it needing only a tie in Trinidad on Nov. 19 to qualify. Instead, after the lifeless 0-0 tie with El Salvador, the United States went to Trinidad having to win there (which, of course, it did).
The Americans played another game en route to Trinidad that may have helped. On Nov. 14, Gansler’s team met Bermuda in a closed-door friendly in Cocoa Beach, Fla. It won, 2-1, with John Doyle and Eric Eichmann scoring the goals. The starting lineup included nine of the 11 who started against Trinidad five days later.
“A Costa Rican shot in the 88th minute was kept out of the net only by an intentional handball, and David Vanole saved the resulting penalty.”
Oh, sure, but if Uruguay does it, it’s a huge scandal.
If this had been a quarterfinal of the World Cup, a game that the whole soccer world was watching, maybe it would have been a huge scandal, too. But it was a qualifier between two minnows, a game that most of the soccer world was completely unaware of.
Wasn’t it less of a big deal to do an intentional hand ball back then to stop a goal? I was always taught that if nobody could get to the ball without using their hands, then go ahead and stick your hand out. What have you got to lose. Force the other team to make a penalty and if they miss, you made the right play.
No red card for hand balls back then either.
And if Germany does it, it’s trifling!
Life is hard, Kenn, suck it up!
And if Diego Maradona does it, it’s God’s will.
first qualification since 1950 !
Gansler has, IMO, never gotten enough credit for the enormousness of this accomplishment.
Whenever we get frustrated with where we are now, it is good to remember where we have been. ..great read.
It was so hard to get information about World Cup qualifying back then. Thanks, Roger.
I bet the comments on BITNETSoccer were blowing up in 1989 with that lifeless attack and those 0-0 ties.
Ya know,people bitch about ESPN,but they carried several of those qualifiers,including the last Trinidad game.
Yes,that’s right,a USMNT away qualie was on US TV.
Of coursee,there was no Al-Jazeera sports back then…
I also watched the away qualifier against Guatemala in 1989 (not sure if it was on ESPN or Sports Channel). I watched one away qualifier in 1985, against Costa Rica, on Spanish International Network (which later changed its name to Univision).
The evolution of soccer on American TV would be an interesting blog entry. I know the 1966 final is often referred to as the first WC final broadcast on US TV, but it must not have continued. I remember going to see the ’74 and ’78 finals at pay-per-view events, broadcast on large screens at sports arenas. The first WC for which I remember live home broadcasts, was probably the ’86 cup in Mexico. Even then, US networks broke away for commorcial breaks during play, making us scramble for the remote to switch to Univision. We’ve come a long way.
’90 Italia on tbs also cut to commercials.
I consider SIN (now Univision) to be an American TV network, although they broadcasted in Spanish. I watched all of WC 82 with my dad. Tony Torado was the announcer: http://www.tonytirado.com/biography.htm
SIN was on a UHF channel, so we had to put one of those circular antennas on the back of our TV. They didn’t break away in the middle of games for commercials.
If one counts CBC as “American TV” I recall watching ’82 on CBC out of Windsor
Does the CBC station in Windsor still identify itself on air as “CKLW, The Motor City,” the way it did when I lived in Detroit eons ago?
interesting title. i’m of the opinion that the turning point for the USMNT was a couple years later (1993, perhaps) as that Italia 90 team was *ahem* amateurish. you got to think that history would of had been different if Mexico hadn’t been disqualified.
In the end, the disqualification of Mexico didn’t make a bit of difference from the standpoint of the USMNT. The United States would still have finished second in the final round of qualifying. It just would have been behind Mexico rather than behind Costa Rica. Because Mexico and Costa Rica were paired against each other in the first round of qualifying, they couldn’t have both made the final round.
That U.S. team at the 1990 World Cup may not have been as good as some later U.S. World Cup teams, but at least it was there, which was a vast improvement over 1986, 1982, 1978, 1974, 1970, 1966, 1962, 1958 and 1954. And by the fall of 1990, nearly half of that team had played professionally in Europe. However, 1990 isn’t what I consider the turning point of American soccer. I think it’s Nov. 19, 1989.
we’ll agree to disagree, but you can’t make the assumption that the US would of finished second since you would of have to play a home and away against Mexico instead of Costa Rica. i remember that Mexican team and it was very offensive minded and i remember that US team and it was very deficient in many areas.
good blog, keep up the good work.
You’re right that we’ll never know for sure what would have happened. Mexico would have been very tough. But don’t forget that it’s not only the United States that would have had to play Mexico. Trinidad, Guatemala and El Salvador, the teams that the United States was competing against for the second qualifying spot, would have had to also.
I once looked into this. Basically, the point about Mexico’s having to play everyone else too is an important one.
Here is the final table, courtesy of RSSSF:
1. Costa Rica – 5 W, 1 D, 2 L, 11 pts., +4 GD
2. USA – 4 W, 3 D, 1 L, 11 pts., +3 GD
3. T&T – 3 W, 3 D, 2 L, 9 pts., +2 GD
4. Guatemala – 1 W, 1 D, 4 L, 3 pts, -3 GD
5. El Salvador – 0 W, 2 D, 4 L, 2 pts., -6 GD
(The final two matches between Guatemala and El Salvador were annulled due to political situation in El Salvador.)
So how much better would Mexico have done? At best, eight wins and no draws and no losses. So change the one Costa Rica draw (at T&T) and the two losses (at USA and at Guatemala) into wins for Mexico. That would leave the table as such:
1. Mexico – 8 W, 0 D, 0 L, 16 pts.
2. USA – 3 W, 3 D, 2 L, 9 pts.
3. T&T – 3 W, 2 D, 3 L, 8 pts.
4. El Salvador – 0 W, 2 D, 4 L – 2 pts.
5. Guatemala – 0 W, 1 D, 5 L – 1 pt.
In the end, it would’ve changed the USA’s final match in Port of Spain from
* win and qualify on points
* draw and not qualify due to worse GD than T&T (+2 for USA vs. +3 for T&T)
* lose and not qualify on points (11 pts. for T&T vs. 9 pts. for USA)
to
* win and qualify on points
* draw and not qualify on points (9 pts. for T&T vs. 8 pts. for USA)
* lose and not qualify on points (10 pts. for T&T vs. 7 pts. for USA)
In other words, not much difference. They would’ve been in a must-win game either way. The only real danger that Mexico’s presence in the final round would’ve posed to the USA would’ve been if they had dropped more points to Trinidad & Tobago than Costa Rica did, while beating the USA both home and away.
In any case, the whole “the USA only qualified because Mexico was disqualified” is an urban legend of the highest order. You have to cook up some unlikely scenarios in order to make it true, largely because the USA did reasonably well in their matches against T&T, Guatemala, and El Salvador, only losing once in six matches.
In 89 I was living in Europe and news was that the United States, A COUNTRY WITHOUT SOCCER LEAGUE, had qualified for the World Cup
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