After dropping the first leg 3-1, Nicaragua comes back to beat Haiti 3-0 and qualify for The Gold Cup. All 3 goals were in the final 10 minutes
Daaaamn, I hadn't realize how AWFUL Honduras's remaining fixtures are. At home to USA and Mexico. Away to Mexico, Panamá, Trinidad and Costa Rica. Not many ways to make that worse. Uphill is a severe understatement.
Wow. Nicaragua's fans, team, announcers... They really want to play in the Gold Cup! and Goooooooooooooool, Coca-cola? edit - Seriously, everyone should watch this. Nicaragua, damn.
Hope they have a great GC. The Nicas have the potential to become the next Panama. That can only be good for the region. That Juan Barrera is pretty decent, btw. I wouldn't mind him at Saprissa.
Barrera is going to be their Pescadito. Nicaragua is not even a soccer-mad country, They're a baseball land. But as they say, there are two types of countries: soccer-mad ones, and the ones waiting for a Golden Generation to turn soccer-mad.
Actually, football has been steadily gaining popularity in Nicaragua. You see packed bars for Real Madrid - Barcelona matches, Real Estelí plays with capacity crowds (and so does their NT), Nicaraguan-born Tico NT player Oscar Duarte is a major celebrity over there, and they even follow the CR league pretty closely. Football and Baseball are more level in popularity than their sporting success might lead you to believe. I think that CR has a lot to do with that. As you might or might not know, we have TONS of Nicaraguan immigrants/sons of immigrants in here (around 1/5 of our total population). They of course end up loving football, because it's a basic part of blending into the Tico society. Then they go back to their country, to visit or for good, and end up influencing the rest. Give them 10-20 years. They'll give the confederation something to talk about.
Walter Ferretti as well - I remember them packing the Estadio Nacional for their CCL game against América.
You're being too generous. My little brother is Nicaraguan and played for Esteli last season. Futbol in Nicaragua like in Panama is just simply out entertaining baseball and boxing which as we all know is their main sports. Baseball is simply being phased out(like in Panama) just because of how unexciting the sport has been since the early 00's(Also Nica's baseball team has been bounced from WBC Qualifying early every time), while futbol has crept in with their television stations and media outlets playing non-stop La Liga fixtures where as a decade ago it was MLB 24/7.
Not quite - Nicaragua wasn't even invited to participate in qualifying for the first two editions, because MLB clearly does not give a f' about soccer taking over Central America. Maybe when the Spanish-speaking Caribbean starts converting, they'll finally get around to caring...
There were no qualifying rounds for the first two iterations of the WBC--they just preselected 16 countries. But yeah, the automatic inclusion of a non-baseball country like South Africa over a place like Nicaragua was an insult. As an aside, the big revelation from this year's qualifiers is that Colombia is producing a lot more baseball talent than before.
This is one of the most Concacaf videos I have ever seen. Late goals (seriously did Haiti defenders lose their mind or what), extreme time wasting, dirty play (the Haiti player taking out the keeper), late brawl, red card, ecstatic announcers, rabid crowd...checks all the boxes. This is Concacaf.
The Panamanian police have arrested seven people so far - hopefully they can get to the bottom of this.
The game winner Mexico allowed was pretty bad, lol. ⚽ | #UDAmistoso GOOOL Croacia anota el segundo tras error defensivo de México: pic.twitter.com/xTTTvxBHJM— TUDN USA (@TUDNUSA) May 28, 2017
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
That was Croatia's C-team at best, just local kids thrown together. Mexico started with a B+ team. Mexico should have turned it around once their missing starters came in, but the Croatian keeper had a good day. Overall, not a good day at the office for them.