Concerns About Playing Panama in DC - Post Oly Qualie Possible [R]

I don't think there are that many Panamanian Soccer fans in the US to fill a stadium. Remember, Panama is still a baseball country. Soccer tradition in Panama is in the infancy state.

 

Huh. My screen says this forum is about the youth national teams.

Go figure.

 

no offense tom but...

take this shit to it's own thread...

 

I agree with some of your research. Except that most of the 160K Panamanians living in the US(Zonians and regular Panamanians) don't care much about soccer. I doubt they'll travel to DC for a game of soccer.

Also, even though Panama is in Central America, I doubt fellow Central Americans would cheer for Panama. Panama to them is more like Jamaica, PR or Dom Rep. Picture this, would a Honduran cheer for the US or Puerto Rico? US or Jamaica? US or Panama? My guess is that Central Americans would cheer for the US. Central Americans don't have any cultural or historical ties to Caribbeans or Panamanians. The region is usually called "Centro America y Panama", Panama is never grouped together with the rest of Central America.

My point is: A qualifier in DC between USA and Panama will be pro-USA.

 

I tend to agree with Horizon.

Culturally and historically, Panama is as distant from Central America as is the Dominican Republic.

The Central American countries do not have a tight soccer history with Panama. I remember a qualifier in which Honduras played Panama on a baseball field. I couldn't get over my amazement that such an important game could be played in such conditions. Basically, we do not give a damn about Panama. Plus they talk funny.

 

I don't wear a tin foil hat so it helps me understand things better

Least I'm smart enough to put my random, baseless speculation in the right forum.

 

Let's see what is wrong with this post?

1) Wrong forum

2) Hondurans like soccer more than baseball and have a long soccer history. I don't believe anybody said otherwise. (I mean, they started a damn war over it )

3) 35,000 catrachos blew us off the field? Well no wonder the beat us. 35,000 to 11. Wow (insert smilie here).

4) "Keep in mind that other Hispanics will show up in DC and cheer for Panama" - where the hell do you get this from? Panama is very mixed and not really part of Central America. And you treat Central America as some homogenous area when each country has their own little petty rivalries.

BTW, how many catrachos are in the US now anyway? More than 160,000 I guess. Did your research show you that?

Thanks for wasting my time

On topic - very concerned about possibly losing Zak Whitbread.

 

That's a crock. I was there - the lower bowl was almost entirely red - that's 28,000, the upper bowl was probably one-third red. The entire stadium holds about 53,000.

Don't believe me? Look at the picture (thatnks to Sam's Army). What color do you see?



When the US scored it was as loud as when Honduras scored...the catrachos just know how to keep up the noise for 90 minutes and they had a roof right overhead.

Speaking of Honduras, if their U-23's play in the same style as the Sr. team, we could have real problems. This is a midfield that is thinking about attacking and is likely to be very vulnerable to the counter.

 

I'll add to the thread drift. Canada got laughed at for being held to a draw in Panama in 02 qualifying, but it's a tough place to play. Tougher than Jamaica or T&T. I was enjoying all the Panama is crap stuff after the draw.

Crowd was loud, 25,000 or so all in red and they were hostile. Not quite the piss heaving levels of some of their neighbours, but unpleasant. The biggest thing was the conditions. Ask the players and of our four away trips: Cuba, Azteca, T&T and Panama, they said the conditions in Panama (heat and humidity) were worse than Azteca's smog, heat and altitude. To top it all off, they're not a half-bad team. They stunk in Winnipeg, but played very well in Panama and by many accounts out-played Mexico at home as well.

Now all this was three years ago, but they won't be a push over. As for the travelling fans debate, they sure didn't bring any up here, but stick them in DC and maybe there would be a presence. Would it be anything like the Honduras game? Not a chance, but I think it won't be any fun playing in Panama, but I do think you'll win both games.

To get back on topic, is there any fear that telling the D to stay back and telling the mids they all need to be more offensively responsible will play into the hands of the underdogs and help them gain confidence. Presuming that's what Myernick wants to put into practice. If the Americans play more patiently and don't put Canada under loads of early pressure, won't the Canadians confidence build as they hang around?

Just a thought.

cheers,
hobbes

 

Who got to the quarterfinals of the World Cup? It was a blip. They got humiliated on national TV when we won there.

It's a real shame that you have to pull out such a racist statement like this. Every Honduran fan I encountered was nothing but fun, both on the way in, in the stands (I was in the temporary bleachers which had a mix of fans from both countries) and after the game.

Holy hyperbole, Batman. I think the missed penalty by Earnie was more of a problem than the fans.

But it didn't. So deal.

Who ever said we would take Panama lightly? Your imferrence that the coach and players will is an insult to them. Only a bad fan would think that our coach and fans don't take this seriously.

Ticket sales control is much more important than the venue.

 

Good point. Second point is, that was the best game I have ever seen live, it was epic, it was frenzied, I can't see how any team involved in that game could have been humiliated in any way.

I'll second that...and I was sitting deep in catracho country in the upper deck. Everyone was very nice and I got to trade my US flag for a Honduran flag at the end

If that was our worst day, we're living a charmed life.

And thanks to the mods for pulling this out to a thread of it's own

 

Sam's Army™ had absolutely nothing to do with that picture. Photo by Scott Bales/YCJ.

 

Really? Do we need a physics lesson? 'Cause we can talk about wave dynamics. If you had been sitting 15 rows down from that roof you would have no doubt about how it affected the sound.

 

...as was not having Reyna in the lineup.

Just checked our lineup for that game. I forgot how injures we were going into those two games. No Reyna, McBride, Wolff, Mathis or O'Brien. We had to drag out Chris Henderson and Preki.

But yeah, a bunch of cheering Hondurans was responsible for losing the game.

If that's the case, how do you explain 3/28/2001, Tom?

 

Sorry Andy, meant to give Sam's Army props for having it on their site, didn't mean to infer that they took it.

 

I would like to know "which people" said Honduras was a baseball country and which famous Honduran baseball players there are.

As far as I know, there are none. Besides Panama, the Central American country that has produced some Major League Baseball players is Nicaragua. Other than Nicaragua and Panama, I don't think any Central American countries are producing baseball players.

(And, please, don't confuse Central America with the Carribean and South America, where the Domincan Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Aruba, Venezuala, Curucao and even Colombia are sending players to the Bigs.)

I'll stop with the baseball now and let Thomas go back to screaming into the wind.

 

That's correct. According to baseball-reference.com, in addition to Panama, (44) and Nicaragua (8), there has been one player from Belize, then known as British Honduras, and one player from Honduras.

 

Huh? Hostile Hispanic fans is a racist statement? It's not like he said those good for nothing vocal Spics took over the stadium....

 

Come on guys, this is starting to sound like an excuse the Texas a&m aggies would use after losing to the University of Texas (my alma mater).

After one of their many losses to UT, they claimed that UT had watered down the football field and the aggie players could not get solid footing. In their minds, that made them lose the game. Never mind that there were countless people walking by the stadium all night, and no one saw any Texas Longhorn standing out there all night holding a water hose. No one saw the sprinkler system come on either.

However, many Aggies will swear that this conspiracy theory is true. They will give all kind of pseudo-scientific explanations and reasoning to prove their point. They just don't want to admit that they got beat fair and square.

Believe me, you don't want to be compared to the Texam a&m aggies.

 

Hey, I don't think we lost 'cause it was loud, I think it was loud 'cause we lost