Grueling World Cup qualifying campaign comes thick and fast for Team USA
KANSAS CITY, Mo. --
It's been more than two years since the United States women's national soccer team won the 2012 Olympics or, for that matter, played much meaningful soccer. Instead, they've slogged through a long string of friendlies and friendly tournaments and camps. On Wednesday, at long last, that changes when the Americans take on Trinidad and Tobago (live, FOX Sports 2, 8 p.m. ET).
That game will be part of opening day for the 2014 CONCACAF Women's Championship, which begins with Guatemala-Haiti (live, FOX Sports 2, 6 p.m. ET). The tournament finalists and the winners of the third-place game qualify for the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada. The fourth-placed team goes to a playoff with Ecuador for the final spot.
And now, the big games will come thick and fast for the USA. These qualifiers lead into big dance next summer -- and then into the Olympics again the following year.
To say that the Americans are the towering favorites for this tournament is still to undersell it somehow. Suffice it to say, there exists no conceivable excuse for them not to bulldoze their way through to a World Cup berth -- or indeed win the tournament. Consider first that, unlike any other team in their region, and perhaps the world, they boast at least two world-class players in every single position. As striker Abby Wambach recently pointed out, the USA's reserves would probably be a top-4 team in the world.
Then there are the other factors, which all seem to have fallen in the USA's favor. Canada, the only regional team that can really compete with them, isn't playing, because as hosts they have qualified for the World Cup automatically. And rather than 2 1/2 spots as in previous cycles, there are now 3 1/2 World Cup spots up for grabs, in addition to Canada's place. Mexico, the third-best team in CONCACAF, were hammered by a cumulative score of 12-0 in a pair of friendlies with the USA in September. During the last CONCACAF qualifying tournament, for the London Games in 2012, the USA swept their five games by a 38-0 scoring margin.
The means at the disposal of the Americans are unfathomable to their regional rivals. They have a small army of coaches and support staff, state-of-the-art equipment and can afford to go to training camps in such as places as Brazil, as they will in December. By contrast, group stage opponents Haiti have been practicing in Indiana on a shoe-string budget. Their coaches are unpaid and they are crammed into small apartments, eating and living as cheaply as possible while raising funds by selling rotisserie chicken and t-shirts, according to the New York Times. Trinidad and Tobago, another other team making up the USA's Group A, along with Guatemala, traveled to their training camp in Texas with just $500 and no plan for food or transportation (Haiti, of all teams, reportedly sent them the last $1,316 they had to help out). In Group B, the Jamaican team didn't even exist until earlier this year: It had been disbanded in 2008. And Martinique, while playing in this tournament, is ineligible for the World Cup as FIFA considers it part of France.
To underscore the USA's historical dominance over the other teams in this tournament, the record books tell an almost implausible tale. Against the other teams in Group A, the USA is 12-0-0 all-time with a 99-2 goal difference. The Trinidadians were the only team to score on the Americans -- in a pair of games back in April 1994.
The teams in Group B fared just as badly. The USA is a combined 41-1-1 against Costa Rica, Mexico, Jamaica and Martinique. The goal difference against that foursome stands at 213-11. Only the Mexicans have managed to score on the USA.
So the Americans are, to some extent, competing against themselves, fighting for jobs and adjusting to a more attacking and possession-oriented system. As head coach Jill Ellis and several team members have said, their focus is on performing as they should. The rest should then take care of itself. Essentially, this tournament is much of a tune-up for the World Cup than a qualification process for it. They are real games, coming at the breakneck pace of five in just 12 days, just as the World Cup could make them play seven times in 26 days.
While the opposition is feeble, the Americans are making the usual and predictable noises about taking it all very seriously. "If we want to be the best team in the world, no matter who we play we have to show up," said Wambach.
"We want to make a statement," added midfielder Carli Lloyd. "We want to take it to each team."
Yet there is an uncomfortable memory that keeps an American triumph from being an absolute given, serving as a cautionary tale. If you read the above closely, you'll have noticed that there stands a lone loss to those 53 wins against the competition. It came against Mexico in the semifinal of this very event in 2010, in the crucial semifinal. That relegated the Americans to a must-win third-place game against Costa Rica and then a pair of playoff games with Italy, through which they squeaked into the World Cup in Germany.
They were overwhelming favorites then, too, but a single game tripped them up and made a straightforward assignment ever so stressful. "In 2010, it was much more difficult than we maybe originally had hoped or planned," recalled Wambach.
That leaves the American women loath to make assumptions. "Obviously, in the last World Cup qualifying, we know what happened," said Lloyd. "[Qualifying] is the first order of business. We've got to take care of this and we can't look at any team lightly."
"They know that this is what we have to take care of," added Ellis. "The prize is so big that the focus is very narrow on it."
