🏆🇲🇽🇺🇸 Is the Gold Cup final the end to a smooth road?
In this newsletter we respect Concacaf, but were there enough challenges in this Gold Cup?
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In the end, it’s Mexico against the United States.
So often in Concacaf it seems to come down to this. It came down to this just a month ago in the culmination of the first-ever Concacaf Nations League. It came down to this at the most recent Gold Cup.
With the United States electing not to bring in some of its best players and Mexico fielding a strong squad for the Olympics as well as putting together a Gold Cup roster, it felt like perhaps this would be the tournament in which someone else lifted the trophy for the first time since 2000 when Canada won its only Gold Cup title.
Yet, despite an improving region and a big challenge from Qatar, the Asian champion and an invited guest, the two regional powers made it through.
Here’s where I’m supposed to write, “But it wasn’t easy!” and that’s sort of true.
The U.S. got past each of its knockout rounds with 1-0 wins, the goals coming relatively late. It suffered in its semifinal with Qatar, gaining momentum from a missed penalty and a few savvy subs from U.S. manager Gregg Berhalter.
Mexico didn’t roll through the knockout stage. The semifinal against Canada looked like it was in control until Tajon Buchanan’s goal, a missed penalty from Carlos Salcedo and the lack of a response until late when Hector Herrera, otherwise poor in the contest, found the winner late in stoppage time.
Was it that difficult, though? Mexico got a Honduras team that was missing basically its five best attackers because of either injury or COVID-19, plus manager Fabian Coito and a few other players absent because of the virus. Then they struggled with Canada, obviously a team that showed it was worthy of being in the semifinal but one that also was down Alphonso Davies, Jonathan David, Cyle Larin and Ayo Akinola and then further lost Lucas Cavallini and Steven Vitória to suspension.
You only can beat the teams in front of you, but Mexico may win this tournament playing essentially one team (El Salvador in the final group match) that you really could call ‘full strength’.
“I think everyone knows the path isn’t easy,” Mexico midfielder Hector Herrera said Saturday. “But personally, I think it has been “a little easy,” not as difficult as it has been in other Gold Cups. Tomorrow it feels like a hard game that we’ll try to figure and end with a victory.”
Mexico is running into a few speed bumps: The grief of Jonathan dos Santos who lost his father last week, finally conceding a goal in this tournament, players like Herrera and Carlos Salcedo having to bounce back from their worst showing of the tournament and having only three days to do so.
For El Tri, it feels like if this tournament were to stretch on any longer, they’d be ripe for the upset.
Maybe the upset is in play Sunday as well. As we talked about before the tournament, this U.S. team isn’t the strongest to put on the Stars and Stripes this summer but it’s also not a bunch of amateurs or anything. Berhalter rejected the idea the pressure is off the U.S. since he selected an alternate group and Mexico has something resembling its best team.
“We’re going to do everything we can to win this game and if we don’t win this game I can guarantee you we’re going to be bitterly disappointed,” he said. “There would be nothing better to win this title, and that’s what we’re 100% focused on.”
That’s the way tournaments go. We all may remember some of the winners of past competitions weren’t impressive, that they perhaps had an easy route, but what really sticks in the memory is that they won. They’re the champion. They’re the best.
Whichever North American power is celebrating after tonight’s match at Allegiant Stadium will go down in history as a deserving Gold Cup champion.
We, the hardcores, might remember that it wasn’t too rocky of a road to get there. The players and staff around them, able to say forever they’re champions, won’t care.