Springfield MO Soccer

By Nathan Jordan

It may not be the glitz and glam that is the World Cup, but true soccer fans this side of the pond are watching the best that CONCACAF has to offer in the 9th Gold Cup Tournament.

The defending tournament champions, the U.S. are hosting the event this year in several U.S. cities with the semi finals and finals being held in Chicago. The U.S. team has brought it all together to advance to the semi final round to play the Canadian National Team. The game kicks off at 6 PM (Central Time) and can be seen on Fox Soccer Channel, TeleFutura, and on ussoccer.com’s MatchTracker.

In case you haven’t been keeping track (and shame on you for not) here are a few things to catch you up on:

Goals, Goals, and GOALS! - The U.S. Nationals have put up some good points in their last four matches. Nine goals were scored by seven different players. Compare that to the five goals scored by the three Canadians.

Some like it rough - The U.S. squad is in foul trouble. DeMarcus Beasley, Frankie Hejduk, Tim Howard, and Oguchi Onyewu all got yellow cards from the quarterfinal match against Panama. A caution in this match would mean sitting out in the finals or third place match. Canada’s only player carrying a yellow into today’s match is Martin Nash

The Legacy - The last time the U.S. Nationals lost to Canada was 1985 with a run of 6 straight shut-outs. They are also the defending champions.

Keeper vs. Keeper - Keller has a 2-0-1 lifetime average when playing against Canada with a 0.00 GAA. Greg Sutton, the man in the net for Canada has played for the Chicago Fire, was tried at Bolton Wanderers and Fulham, was back up for the MetroStars and the Cincinnati Riverhawks. It was just last year that it was announced the 6’6” GK would be joining the MLS expansion team Toronto FC. He only has 10 caps for the Canadian National team.

Tournament so far- The U.S. made a clean sweep of Bracket B (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Trinidad & Tobago) with 7 goals scored and none against. Canada got hung up on by Guadeloupe in the second match but was able to pull through strong against Costa Rica and Haiti. In the quarter final rounds, Canada rolled Guatemala 3-0. The U.S. side was finally scored on but was ahead by two when the Panamanian goal was scored.

With Keller’s record against Canada, the variety of goal scorers the U.S. has shown, and a good tournament performance, past and present, I will predict the U.S. as the winner in this match. The spoke in the wheel for the U.S. leaning on it’s past record instead of extending current ones. Just like every other game in the tournament they do have to come to play.

The winner will face off against the winner of Mexico – Guadeloupe on Sunday June 24th.