The Gold Cup is Golden

Before I became one myself, I used to pity soccer fans because their signature event only occurs once every four years. I couldn't imagine having to wait four years between Super Bowls.

Now that I am a soccer devotee myself, I have discovered that there is plenty of meaningful, enjoyable soccer played in-between World Cups at the international level: every region of the world has its own soccer confederation under the FIFA (who administers the World Cup and is the final authority in the soccer world) umbrella, and each of these confederations has their own championship. And to my surprise they are, in the words of Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

Each confederation's geographical boundaries are not perfect. CONCACAF, which you can think of as the North American confederation, includes Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana from South America. Asia's confederation recently took Australia into their fold. Israel competes in Europe's confederation, UEFA, because too many of their geographical neighbors refuse to play them.

What makes the confederation championships special in a way that not even the World Cup can boast is that they present the best opportunity for bitter rivals to square off on the pitch with something on the line. While USA and Mexico would have to be very lucky to get drawn together in the World Cup (although they did clash in the second round in 2002), they can almost count on meeting in the CONCACAF Championship, the Gold Cup. Japan gets a chance to play Korea, Brazil gets a chance to play Argentina.

This summer, three such confederation championships (also generally held every four years or so, although each confederation may vary), occur back-to-back to back: CONCACAF, CONMEBOL (South America), and AFC (Asia). UEFA's championship is next year.

The Gold Cup is ongoing now, and it's a treat. CONCACAF may not be the strongest confederation, but it might be the most competitive.

A word on qualification for the Gold Cup: two sub-regional tournaments, the Caribbean Cup and the UNCAF (Central American) Cup, give us most of the field. The top five Central American countries (out of just seven) qualify for the Gold Cup from the UNCAF competition, and four (out of a lot) qualify from the weaker Caribbean Cup zone.

That leaves Mexico, the United States, and Canada. It's easy to grant Mexico and the U.S. byes straight into the Gold Cup, as they are clearly the class of the region and head-and-shoulders above the competition. Canada's a bit different, though. They probably don't deserve a ticket straight to the Gold Cup on merit, but they are obviously an awkward candidate for the Caribbean or Central American Championship. Luckily for them (and for the bigwigs of CONCACAF), the Canadians went on a magical run in 2000 to win the Gold Cup after only getting out of the group stage by winning a coin toss against teams that they were tied with, including every tiebreaker.

Hence, CONCACAF grants them entry straight into the Gold Cup by virtue of being "former Champions," something only the United States and Mexico can also claim (although other countries have won the Gold Cup's predecessor, the CONCACAF Championship). It will be interesting to see what CONCACAF does if and when a country other than those three wins the Cup at some point.

This year's Cup competition had a group stage consisting of three groups of four countries each. Let's have a look at each one.

Group A is Costa Rica, Canada, Guadeloupe, and Haiti.

Costa Rica consistently demonstrates that it is the third best team in the region behind the U.S. and Mexico, and the conventional wisdom going into the tournament was that Costa Rica was given a ridiculously easy draw into the knockout stage (read: playoffs) of the tournament. Canada's ranked 90th in the world. Guadeloupe, which is essentially a province of France, is thusly not even eligible for the World Cup and is not a FIFA member. Haiti is a bit of an unknown quantity, having upset Costa Rica to win the Caribbean Cup, but having nothing of note on their resume for the prior two decades.

The first surprise, however, came on the opening game of the competition, where Canada beat Costa Rica 2-1, but it wasn't really as close as the score indicated. Canadian soccer fans on the forums I prowl were euphoric, and excitedly wondered if they were on track to displace Costa Rica as the third-best team in the region.

Two days later, however, they came crashing back to earth after losing to Guadeloupe. To me, Guadeloupe is the most interesting, enigmatic, divisive team in this competition. On one level, it's sort of embarrassing to have a non-FIFA member in the competition at all. What does it say about us North Americans if they do well, or win? That we can't even beat what amounts to a small province of France?

On the other hand, who doesn't love an upset, and a Cinderella story? Plus, the presumptions about their talent level isn't really accurate. Guadeloupe has more players playing their club football in Europe than any other team in the competition.

Ultimately, the group turned out to be evenly matched to the extreme. The last game of the Group A action was Canada/Haiti, and were that to end in a 0-0 draw, then once again we'd see three teams (all in the group except Haiti) tied even after tiebreakers, and the final order of the group would need to be determined by flipping coins or drawing lots.

Instead, Canada won the match 2-0 and won the group. Costa Rica rebounded from their opening loss to finish second. Guadeloupe qualified for the knockout stage, as well. The Cinderella/embarrassment story continues.

Group B is the United States, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, and El Salvador.

On paper, this too seemed like an unbalanced group that the U.S. should dominate. Guatemala is decent, but Trinidad's best players (all but one from their 2006 World Cup team) are not playing due to a salary dispute, and El Salvador was the last team to qualify from the UNCAF competition.

The tough part of being the big fish in the small pond of CONCACAF, as the U.S. and Mexico are, is that you get everybody's best shot. The other teams eagerly await their chance to slay the dragon and come home heroes. No one throws parades for teams that beat Nicaragua.

Since the 2006 World Cup, the United States has not lost a match. Each match that they have won came from by at least two goals, and most were against higher-ranked European and South American teams (albeit on American soil). The lone exception was a 0-0 draw in March against Guatemala. The Guates dug in, played great defense, made it clear their goal was a tie, and they got it. It was impressive performance.

So who should the U.S. draw first in the Gold Cup but Guatemala. This time, the United States managed to break through in the first half and take a 1-0 lead into half-time. But Guatemala came out chomping at the bit in the second half and put the U.S. on their heels for the first time I have seen since ... well, the last time they played Guatemala. The Guatemalans played better defense and created more scoring opportunities. The U.S. started to play flustered and frustrated. I started yelling at the refs on TV, whom I felt where allowing the Guates to play more physically with the U.S. than the other way around (must be my bias: the consensus after the game was that it was well-officiated). The Americans were getting whistled for fouls and drawing yellow cards left and right, and the game was being played more and more in their half of the field.

When the final whistle blew, however, Guatemala had not managed to cross the U.S. goal line; the Americans had hung on for the 1-0 win. It's been a very long time since I saw the U.S. players celebrate as they did when it was over. To say the Guatemalans had earned their respect would be an understatement. The texture of the second half made it feel, to the American players and fans, like the U.S. just won a big game. And the Guatemala coach Hernan Dario Gomez, when asked about the American's rough play in the second half, responded with a comment that made me want to fly to L.A. to shake his hand: "I like it when they lose their composure. It means they don't want to lose. And I want to see the Americans do well."

After that, things got easier for the Americans. They beat Trinidad 2-0, but Trinidad was never able to mount much of a threat the way Guatemala did. The Americans' opus was a 4-0 annihilation of El Salvador, where they were just able to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. They seemed to get markedly better from their first game to their second game to their third game ... although the impressiveness of the third game may have partially been a result of the team feeling emboldened by the happenings of Group C.

Group C was easily the toughest group: Mexico, Panama, Honduras and Cuba.

Cuba's nothing to write home about, but Honduras is basically on par with Guatemala and Panama consistently challenges Costa Rica for the title of best Central American team.

The third group turned out to be just as tight as the first two, and the parity in the entire tournament has been remarkable. With just Panama/Cuba and Mexico/Panama left in the group state at this writing, everyone except the U.S. and Panama have tasted defeat, but no one has gone without at least a tie. Save America's games, and Canada's 2-0 win over Haiti, every single game to this point was either a tie or was settled by the margin of a single goal.

Like you would expect, Cuba gave Mexico everything they had, even scoring first, but were ultimately defeated 2-1. Then it was Honduras' turn against Mexico. Like Guatemala against the U.S., Honduras tried to be aggressive, assertive, and frustrate their opponent. Unlike Guatemala, Honduras went for a particular edge that was strictly mental.

All game long, Honduras back Jorge Caballeros had been harassing Mexican star Cuauhtemoc Blanco with ... wait for it ... kisses. Not literally planting one on him, but making little kissy noises in his face, by his ear, with an accompanying derisive facial expression that even made this Mexican-soccer-team-hater want to punch him. Early in the second half, with Mexico up 1-0 thanks in part to a Honduras missed penalty kick, Blanco finally snapped early in the second half, elbowed Caballeros in the gut, and earned a red card for it.

Mexico hence played the rest of the half a man down, creating a dream opportunity for Honduras, and they grabbed the brass ring. Carlos Costly scored both goals for Honduras, the second coming late in extra time on a spectacular header. If I was naming a group stage MVP, it would be Costly, who has been amazing from start to finish. Honduras 2, Mexico 1. It's the first game that Mexico has ever lost to a CONCACAF team in the group stage of the Gold Cup era.

As I write this (and it will have happened by the time you read this), Mexico has one group game left, against Panama, who leads the group after a win over Honduras and a tie against Cuba. If Panama beats Mexico, too, which would really only be a mild upset, and Cuba defeats Honduras, also only a mild upset, Mexico is, unthinkably, out. As it stands, Mexico is in third in the group and hanging on to the last knockout stage spot.

For this first time perhaps in history, in the horse race for CONCACAF superiority, the U.S. has pulled a full length ahead of Mexico. The U.S. is playing with near video-game-like efficiency, complete with a full quotient of stamina and momentum points. They are the only team in the group stage to go undefeated and untied. With two games left yet, America has the most goals and have surrendered the fewest (none). Mexico, on the other hand, is reeling, and it's not just because of the Honduras loss: most of their recent results have been suspect, most notably a 1-0 loss to Paraguay in Mexico City, where the Mexicans never lose.

It can only take one game, though, to turn everything around, and if things stay the way they are at the time of this writing, the U.S.' quarterfinal opponent will be Mexico. They win that one, and their semifinal opponent, should they get past Canada as expected will be, for the third time in four months, Guatemala.

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Postscript: Two days after the Gold Cup ends, Copa America, the South American Confederation tournament, begins in Venezuela. Why should you care? Because CONMEBOL invites two teams each year from outside the confederation to participate (as did the Gold Cup organizers until this year), to achieve an even number of teams in the group stages. This year, those two are Mexico and the U.S. The Americans' first game is against Argentina, followed by a game against that Paraguay team that beat Mexico in Mexico, and wrapping up against Colombia, who will basically be at home, with the game being a short hop from the border. Making matters still tougher, the U.S. Soccer Federation has decided to devote their strongest team to the Gold Cup, so it will also be a less battle-tested U.S. team playing there.