United States miss out on World Cup after Trinidad loss

Late Tuesday evening, the word “embarrassing” was getting bandied around quite a bit on the Internet.

USA’s shock 2-1 defeat to Trinidad and Tobago, coupled with Panama’s 88th minute victor from Roman Torres to beat Costa Rica, meant the team from Central America finished third in the North/Central American qualifying and have booked their place in Russian Federation.

Trinidad and Tobago defeated the United States 2-1 on Tuesday night, at the Ato Boldon Stadium in Couva – a result which saw the United States finish in fifth-place in the six-team CONCACAF Zone Final Round (ahead of TT).

Panama trailed 1-0 to Costa Rica at halftime and Honduras was behind 2-1 to Mexico, but both rallied against nations that already had clinched berths.

The loss immediately touched off criticisms and calls for changes in the U.S. Soccer system.

“The reality is we lost two games at home in qualifying. and we lost a game in Trinidad against a team that had nothing to play for, and that’s the reality of the situation”, Donovan added. Overseas stars will not be put off joining Major League Soccer.

“They will continue to undermine (the World Cup in) Qatar for 2022, but they will not succeed”.

Since he broke into the national team’s plans previous year, Christian Pulisic has made a difference on the attacking end of the field.

T+T had previously lost six straight games and had gained only three points during the final phase of the road to Russian Federation, but played inspired soccer to hand the U.S. a devastating loss that can only serve to dampen the game’s growing momentum in the country. Combine that with the 52nd minute “phantom goal” and American football fans and media have
been left feeling aggrieved.

USA broadcasters now expect fewer of those millions of Americans to watch the World Cup than they anticipated when the Fox network upped their bid for the U.S. rights to the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to US$400m (Dh1.47 billion), against fierce auctioning from ESPN.

“There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing”, he said. And that’s the kind of moment we could really use right now.

“Every time you have a setback you have to look at things, re-evaluate and get better”, 38-year-old goalkeeper Tim Howard said. “At that point we started to get into the game and it was going to be OK”. “What are we doing?”. This team failed themselves, they failed the sport and they failed their country. At least many TV viewers, plus more who saw the clip online, could take comfort in knowing that frustrations had been vented on their behalf, and then some, on ESPN’s national platform.