A dramatic Sunday of qualifying few Americans saw or heard.

By Robert Wagman
SoccerTimes

(Thursday, October 11, 2001) -- I have gotten a number of e-mails from fans complaining with varying degrees of vehemence about ABC’s decision to scrap the telecast of Sunday’s critical United States-Jamaica World Cup qualifier in favor of news coverage of the start of bombing in Afghanistan.

What angers most of the writers, understandably, was that ABC chose to dump out of soccer coverage, while all its competition decided to stick with previously scheduled programming -- Fox and CBS with the National Football League and NBC with extreme sports.

"The (pre-emptions) are completely the news division’s calls," said Mark Mandel, ABC Sports vice president of media relations said of the decision to cancel the soccer telecast and an LPGA tournament that followed. "In situations like this, they make the decision."

Once ABC News decided to go on the air, it was impossible to move the match either to ESPN or ESPN2, because ESPN was contractually obligated to broadcast a CART auto race followed by the PGA and ESPN2 had a Major League Baseball baseball doubleheader scheduled.

Personally, I was appalled by the decision by the others not to go to news coverage. Both Fox and CBS said they left it up to their local affiliates. The network fed them both a football game and news coverage, and the local stations decided which to show. I am unaware of a single station on either network that went with news. NBC just went with whatever it was that constitutes extreme "sports."

I talked with a network executive on Monday who gave all this some perspective, but off the record, of course. He said that both Fox and CBS had already lost tens of millions when they junked almost two weeks of programming after September 11. They simply could not have afforded to lose another $50 million or so in football revenue. Neither could local stations who share in the football revenue. That’s why everyone went with the NFL.

NBC apparently made another calculation. It is spending a small fortune to position CNBC as the major all-news competitor to CNN. By going with teenage sports programming, it forced its news audience over to CNBC, and in doing so helped build that brand.

Even ABC’s decision to scrub soccer might not have been purely patriotic. By going with news, it became the only network to which viewers could turn if they thought the day’s events more important than football or rollerblading. The network was likely going to lose money on the soccer telecast anyway, so it made both ratings and economic sense to go with news.

A different issue is Disney’s decision on almost no notice to broadcast a tape of the U.S.-Jamaica match on ESPN Monday at 1 p.m. (ET). My sources say it was a decision made at about 10:30 on Monday morning. I learned about it in a call from a friend at ESPN, but a very large number of soccer fans were caught completely by surprise, and with video recorders not programmed. Yes, I agree, once again soccer is given short shrift by the media.

On another matter, security at Foxboro was very tight. I might be tempted to say almost silly tight, but in this climate, who wants to say that.

Going into the stadium, every fan was patted down and then given a green plastic bracelet to show that he or she had been screened. This took time, a lot of time. I noticed that at kickoff, perhaps 10,000 of the 40,000 fans were still massed outside the gates waiting to get through security. It was probably about 20 minutes into the match before everyone had made it to their seats.

I received two angry e-mails from fans, both saying they had arrived at the stadium a half hour before kickoff and they still missed both first half goals. I’m sorry, but welcome to the new world. Just as you would not think of arriving at the airport 15 minutes before flight time these days, and expect to make your flight, you are going to have to consider going to the stadium the same way. I went through the same security screening, but I arrived at 11 a.m.. It would never have occurred to me to have arrived at 1:30.

On the other hand, I can fault the Foxboro stadium administrators for not having more gates open and more security people on hand. They looked to be trying to save a few bucks themselves.

The U.S. certainly owes a debt of gratitude to two players with ties to American soccer, former Columbus Crew striker Stern John, and goalkeeper Shaka Hislop who played his college ball at Howard University. The two Trinidad & Tobago players were key to the shocking 1-0 upset in Honduras that allowed the U.S. to clinch a World Cup Berth on Sunday.

Not much has been written here in the U.S. about that match and that is a shame. For Trinidad, playing on raw emotion 48 hours after burying midfielderer Mickey Trotman who was killed earlier in the week in an auto accident, turned in perhaps the most amazing performance of the final round.

Everyone not only expected Honduras to win the home match at Estadio Olimpico in San Pedro Sula, but to run up the score to gain a goal-differential advantage going into its final match with Mexico. So Trinidad & Tobago came into the match looking to defend, and hoping for some kind of break. It got a season’s worth in one match.

Trinidad defender Brent Rahim (University of Connecticut) was, shall we say, a bit over-zealous in his efforts. Twenty minutes into the match, he accumulated his second yellow card and was gone, leaving the visitors to play a man down for 70 minutes. Immediately, Honduras coach Ramon Enrique Maradiaga smelling blood, and brought on attacking midfielder Julio César de León, while taking off a defensive midfielder.

The result was almost immediate. Honduran striker Carlos Pavón put one in the net, but it was disallowed after it was ruled he had controlled the ball with his hand. For Honduras, this was going to be the tone for the rest of the match.

At the start of the second half, Maradiaga took off his central defender Reynaldo Clavasquin, and brought on yet another attacker, Saúl Martinez. Within 90 seconds, Honduras hit the crossbar twice on what should have been sure goals. First León hit it with a free kick from 30 yards, then defender Samuel Caballero’s hit it again with a header off a corner kick.

In one of the few Trinidad opportunities of the day, John ran under a long looping pass in the 61st minute, held off two defenders and put a shot past Honduran keeper Noel Valladares. John was not even scheduled to play, instead to in England for a Worthington Cup match, but he came to replace his friend Trotman.

For the next half hour, Trinidad put 10 men behind the ball and defended with all its power. Three more Honduran shots rattled off the woodwork, once hitting the underside of the cross-bar and staying out. Hislop made two terrific saves, one on Pavón that was as good as any seen in the competition.

The final score could well have been 6-1 Honduras, but as Bruce Arena and a number of U.S. players said after the match in Foxboro, soccer can be a strange and cruel game. Or cruel to the Hondurans. For the Americans it was sublime.

Amazingly, this was Honduras’ third home loss of the final hexagonal with setbacks to Costa Rica, the U.S. and Trinidad. Strangely, Honduras defeated Mexico at home, when no one expected it, and won away at the U.S. and drew with Jamaica and Costa Rica.

Some teams have trouble winning at home because of the pressure of high expectations. Notwithstanding the home win against Mexico, Honduras may be a classic example.

The United Sates was one of eight nations which booked its way to the World Cup last weekend. England made it on David Beckham’s stoppage time goal while China, under much-traveled, former U.S. coach Bora Milutinovic made it for the first time. Twenty-one teams are now in the Cup, with 23 more countries vying for the remaining 11 spots.

Qualified for South Korea and Japan: France (defending champion), Japan (co-host), South Korea (co-host); CONCACAF - Costa Rica, U.S.; Europe - Poland, Sweden, Spain, Russia, England, Croatia, Portugal, Denmark, Italy; South America - Argentina; Africa - South Africa, Cameroon, Tunisia, Senegal, Nigeria; Asia - China.

The 11 remaining places will include one more team from CONCACAF, the region of North America Central America and the Caribbean. That will be determined in Mexico City on November 11 with visiting Honduras needing a victory and Mexico advancing on a win or draw.

Four teams will go from Europe, the four winners of home-and-home, total-goal playoffs of Belgium vs. Czech Republic, Ukraine vs. Germany, Austria or Israel vs. Turkey, and Slovenia vs. Romania.

The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Uzbekistan are battling for the second Asian spot behind China with the third-place finisher engaging Ireland, the 18th team in Europe, in a home and home total goal matchup for a spot.

In South America, Argentina is in, and five teams could still make it: Paraguay, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay and Colombia. The three places behind Argentina will qualify with the fourth, likely Uruguay or Colombia, facing a home-and-home playoff with Oceania winner Australia for the final Cup spot.

Senior correspondent Robert Wagman's "It Seems To Me . . . " appears regularly on SoccerTimes. He can be e-mailed at bobwagman@soccertimes.com..