I can only imagine. Barf. Not true. Our sporting director let his own son go on a free...so there’s that.
Damn not one mention off the disgraceful referee? I can't describe how bad he was, surprised more of our players didnt get hurt.
I didn't get a chance to watch in real time, and I'm about 70 minutes in, and I can't believe there hasn't been a Costa Rican red card yet. Brutal. As an aside, it's CONCACAF games like these when I enjoy a comprehensive victory the most. A lot of this tournament was spent beating down terrible teams. There's little joy in beating USVI 11-0, or what have you. But when we stomp a Costa Rican team that's hacking the crap out of our players (and, like clockwork, the ref is not giving them a yellow until they've committed 4-5 yellow-card offenses), to make it to the U20 WC, I am ecstatic. Let's finish things off by beating Honduras and then beating Mexico!
I would like to play him 1v1 for 90 minutes under the same rules. Inside a cage. The total gape of a human being he was.
No doubt. I'm not sure we're going to have any players left when we face Mexico, though. What we're continuing to see in our youth programs is the building of depth. We just blew a good CONCACAF side off of the field with a "B" team. Costa Rica isn't typically one of the teams that resorts to the type of physical tactics we saw in this game. Their frustration level led to that. If a proud team like Mexico, Costa Rica, etc. go down they want to go down with a fight. For the bazillionth time, the CONCACAF referee lost control. That's so expected at this point that it has to be planned for. Many kudos to Tab Ramos and his staff. This was the easiest U20 qualification I can ever remember. The way we blew past the competition belies the fact that there were potential pitfalls along the way. T&T and Costa Rica aren't St. Lucia and Nicaragua.
Talent and depth continues to get better each cycle. Costa Rica, traditionally the third best team in our region, looked hopelessly overmatched. Our ever-increasing investment in scholarships, scouting networks, residential academies, better coaching and improved competition is really starting to pay dividends. Ref was trash as expected. This game would have been 8-0 without our players feeling they had to get rid of the ball extra quickly or risk getting hurt. Unfortunately, Honduras is probably going to be even worse.
The U-20's just had to spoil the party by actually doing well. We want all levels to fail miserably especially MLS so the USSF can be ousted and replaced with something better and functional.
Dudes just bounce off McKenzie at this age level, he’s an ox. And made a hell of a pass that set up Mendez’s golazo.
That was the best game Akinola has played in a while. Accurate passes, didn't try to do too much, and had a nice goal. Hope Uly is well enough to play over him for the next two games, but it was still nice to see.
Wow! That was cathartic and hope filling. No hesitation now on my part. Costa Rica is a decent team that knows how to handle the ball and defend but has scoring issues. The boys made plenty of mistakes but they were skilful and connected to each other against a team that was prepared to bunker. Even better, for the second cycle in a row we look like we have the best talent in the region.
That point about travel perhaps being a factor with his performance is a reminder that it may be premature to judge players on one game. Beyond travel there are so many other factors that affect players and that we just don't know about. I hope Soto shows his stuff against Honduras and then hopefully against Mexico.