the shrewdness of apes

World Cup 2006 is a little more than a year away, but the qualifying rounds are well underway and i hope to provide some commentary on them from time to time. the US has entered the final round of qualifying for the CONCACAF region (if anyone can tell me why Guyana and Suriname are in this reagion as opposed to South America, i'd be interested to know) which will send 3 teams to Germany next year and possibly a 4th depending on the results of a play-off against the 5th place Asian team.

having already planned a personal day off of work, i was able to watch yesterday's opening game against Trinidad & Tobago in Port au Spain. the game time conditions were hot and humid. the field did not seem to be in particularly good shape, which caused a few errant bumps and bounces throughout the game. and the US team certainly looked like they had not had much time together to prepare, between the near strike of the players and the late releases that some got from their club teams. nothing about the game was very crisp and that included the camera work and the picture. this was perhaps a function of the bar i was watching it in, or maybe it was a function of shoddy equipment and production on the part of ESPN2. i'm sure they didn't have a huge budget for the game.

the US kept up good pressure throughout the first half which finally resulted in a goal from Eddie Johnson, left basically unmarked in the box. this was in stark contrast to the early part of the game where Trinidad seemed to have everyone packed in on defense to avoid getting behind early. but sloppiness crept into the US defense with an alarming consistency and T&T had quite a few chances to make something happen some of which died due to poor execution while numerous others were called back offsides. still, the run of play favored the US and they deserved the lead.

(quick celebrity note: Drew Carey apparently flew to Trinidad just for the occasion of the game and not for Carnival. the announcers also outed him as a Los Angeles Galaxy season ticket holder, which i'm sure goes over big at those parties at the Playboy Mansion.)

the second half continued in much the same fashion as the first and some fast-paced end-to-end action resulted in nice saves from each keeper before ending with a bullet from Eddie Lewis (leaving only Eddie Pope out of the Eddie-goalfest) that gave the US a 2-0 advantage. the rest of the game was largely academic, even after Trinidad pulled back to within a goal in the 89th minute on a cross that Kasey Keller deflected into the net, and so it was 3 important points to the visitors. and those are important points to have heading into their next match with their largest regional rival in Mexico City - where they have never won a World Cup qualifier - on Sunday, March 27 (live on Telemundo at 1pm ET, check local listings). that game will be followed three days later by the first home match against Guatemala in Birmingham, AL at 8pm ET, live again on ESPN2.

elsewhere around the region, Mexico were also victorious yesterday, winning 2-1 at Costa Rica while Panama and Guatemala faced off to a scoreless tie in their opening match. meanwhile in Asia, South Korea defeated Kuwait, Japan defeated North Korea, and Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan tied, as did Bahrain and Iran. the Euorpean region saw a few contests as well, with the only really notable result being Greece's 2-1 defeat of Denmark that gets the Euro 2004 champions back into position to advance to the field of 32.