3️⃣ The top three: Do they know it's Curacao Day?
And more from MD3 of the final round of World Cup qualification!
The top three advance. Here is your premium-only piece summing up the third matchday of the final round of this time reporting from Paramaribo
🇬🇹 The Chapines’ Chance
The Concachaos alarm bells were ringing here at the Franklin Essed Stadion (metaphorically of course). Guatemala was leading Suriname 1-0 thanks to a goal from Darwin Lom, who entered the game and saw a chance come to him almost immediately after Ridgeciano Haps gifted Los Chapines possession in their final third and Shaquille Pinas tried to chest a ball away but instead set up Lom for a cool volley.
The group standings had Suriname on top with four points, then Guatemala with four points with the potential (which later became reality) that Panama would beat El Salvador and be on four points, leaving La Selecta on three points.
We thought the alarm bells were for the Group A stack-up. Instead, it was for what would happen here. Suriname goalkeeper Etienne Vaessen charged up to join the attack on a last-gasp corner kick.
Then, he went against his goalkeeping instincts to get the hell out of the way of a ball as teammate Virgil Misidjan fired a laser of a shot through traffic and in for the equalizer.
“A goalkeeper has to come then because you can make a bit of noise. I saw the ball coming to me, then I stepped away so I think was I exactly in the way of the goalkeeper’s vision,” Vaessen told me after.
