Demoralizing loss against USA

Saturday night Honduras visited Chicago for their match against the US MNT.

There were many high expectations for this game. Honduras got there with a vast amount of confidence due to their last home game win against Mexico, 3-1.

Since our “Legionarios” have been seeing a lot of action on the pitch, our confidence rose even more. Most of the fans believed we were going to bring the three points back home while others believed that pinching out one point was valuable. As I said in my last post, I thought a point was going to be gained.

Enough with that, lets get back to what happened in Chicago.

The game couldn’t have started any better, Carlos Pavon stole the ball at the midfield advanced at high speed and seconds before stumbling, he slowly passed the ball with love and tenderness to Carlo Costly. Costly advanced a bit more, took a glance at Tim Howard’s position and with passion and confidence, he took a shot… Tim Howard was beaten by Costly’s left-footed shot near his right post. The Soldier Field blew up. I was amazed at how quick Honduras took the lead.

A couple minutes after our goal, the team slowed down. They easily began to lose the ball at the midfield, therefore, the attackers couldn’t do any more damage. The US was the one attacking, although it wasn’t much danger at all. Close to the end of the first half, our defense was a disaster and the ball bounced on the penalty area and then hit Mario Beata’s hand. Penalty. Donovan was obviously the one executing it and it seemed like he was either pissed or wanted to kill Noel Valladares because he made a powerful shot at the upper right hand corner of the goal.

Score at half time was 1-1. I thought Rueda and company would do a nice job of getting the team back together. But when the second half started, the team was the same, in some cases, even worse.

The midfield wasnt any better, Amado Guevara was just a fool. He would just give up after losing the ball. I mean, Amado being the captain, should be the one playing with heart and passion. He wasn’t even close to that.

I do give props to Carlo Costly, he is an attacker, he should never be defending our goal, but he was. He came all the way down to steal the ball and take it back up. He was successful a few times, but without the help of his teammates, there wasn’t anything he could do. There were some others who had a decent attitude but we all know they can give more like Carlos Pavon, Wilson Palacios, Ramoncito and Maynor Figueroa.

Close to the end of the game, Bocanegra scored the winning goal from a corner kick by Donovan. I blame Hendry Thomas for this goal because he just stared at the ball flying him, letting a US player pass it with a header to Bocanegra. Probably the US did deserve it because they were playing much better than us.

Close to the end, Rueda gave some minutes to Pery Martinez, and I don’t know if everybody will agree with me but I think that at the time he jumped off the field, Honduras started playing much better. I’m not sure about introducing Georgie Welcome to the field, he is too young and doesn’t have enough experience There were other players in the bench better than him like Allan Lalin.

After all, I can say that this has been one of the worst matches I’ve seen from our team. Either way our chances of going to South Africa still exist. On our next match against El Salvador in San Pedro Sula, we will have “Rambo” back (missing due to bookings), hopefully he will be a better leader than Amado. It is important for us to gain 3 points, that way we end up in 3rd place, over Mexico, El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago.

Here are the highlights and goals of what happened on the field at Chicago.