General

The Agony and Ecstasy of El Mundial

Oct 16, 2009, 7:30 PM UTC

â†µThe United States had already qualified for the World Cup before Wednesday’s final game in the hexagonal against Costa Rica, so a 95th-minute goal by Jonathan Bornstein to tie the Ticos 2-2 didn’t mean much in the grander scheme of things. It meant an awful lot to the folks in attendance and the team because of Charlie Davies’s late-night car crash that left another passenger dead and Davies staring at a least a year of rehabilitation before being able to return to the field. It didn’t mean much to the country or the USSF. It was just nice to not lose a game. It had the meaning of a Pittsburgh Pirates game. â†µ

â†µâ†µHonduras, on the other hand: â†µ

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â†µâ†µIt meant a little something to Honduras. The last-second equalizer and the Hondurans’ 1-0 win over El Salvador lifted them into the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, causing the streets to fill with revelers clad in the flags of both Honduras and the USA. They come in about 30 seconds from the end of this clip: â†µ

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â†µJonathan Bornstein's the target of English headlines that simply thank him, and could probably become president of the turmoil-ridden country simply by landing in the capital city. He'd be Milo Minderbinder there. â†µ

â†µâ†µCosta Rica, for its part, took a gut punch. Listen to the color commentator on the Costa Rican feed of the game:â†µ

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â†µâ†µThe Ticos now face a home-and-home series against Uruguay for a spot in the World Cup, and that’s a dicey proposition. In 2006 Trinidad and Tobago did slide in via a playoff, but that was against the fifth-place Asian team, Bahrain, not the fifth place South American team. Uruguay is currently 25th in the FIFA rankings. Costa Rica is 43rd. They’ve got a shot, maybe, but it’s not a good one. â†µ

â†µâ†µThis is the point in the post where I bring something together about random chance and soccer, but there’s nothing to add that doesn’t detract from the pure, insane reaction from the Honduran radio guys. I mean, that’s why we watch these things. 95 minutes into a 90-minute game, condemned to a playoff you just about know is fatal, staring at the possibility of playing on the world’s biggest stage for the first time since you were a kid, and the shortest player on the field darts through a field of opponents to find the ball on his head, and two countries explode with opposite emotions. There’s a lot of overlap between crazy serious college football fans and USMNT fans, and it’s because the stakes in each are so high. Three games every four years, or three every twenty-eight. It’s college football stripped down to bare emotion.â†µ

â†µâ†µAnd there are no commercials, so that’s cool.â†µ

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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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