Costa Rica is a beautiful little country and the thousands of tourists that visit there each year always receive a warm welcome from the “Ticos,” as the Costa Ricans are called. Everyone that is except for the USA Soccer Team when they come down to challenge the Costa Rican National Team in a game of Soccer… or ‘futbol’ (pronunciation for football) as the sport is called in Spanish.
The ‘Gringos’ are now 0-8-1 for the past nine matches played on Costa Rican soil. Last Friday’s night saw the first match between the two teams to be played in the new National Stadium in La Sabana Park in San Jose. Previous matches were played in nearby Saprissa Stadium in Tibas where team USA had no luck at all.
The Ticos seemed to have the edge from the very beginning of the match in front of a wildly enthusiastic crowd all decked out with “La Roja” (“The Red One” referring to their national team’s home shirt) and equipped with a whole array of noise makers and banners.
Costa Rica has now passed the USA team into first place in the World Cup qualifying standings. While the USA team will still have no trouble qualifying for the big event, the loss to the Ticos snapped a 12 game winning streak for team USA and apparently served as a wake-up call to USA star striker Landon Donovan who was not too impressed with his team’s performance in San Jose where they lost to the Ticos by a final score of 3 to 1 to the ecstatic joy of the local crowd.
“We were a little careless early in the game,” said Donovan, who just returned to the lineup. “We’ve got to do better, clearly.”
The Costa Rican team may have had somewhat of an incentive to beat the ‘gringos’ after suffering a humiliating defeat in a snow storm in a match that some thought should have been called early on. Costa Rican soccer players with snow in their hair was a rare, rare sight indeed!
Actually, Costa Rica at +135 went into the match as the favorite on the 3-way result with the USA at +205. A draw was at +220.
The Costa Rican (8/5) team travels to Jamaica (6/4) for the next round on Tuesday and Mexico (9/5) will play the USA (13/10) team up in up in Columbus, Ohio where the ‘gringos’ will be without Besler, Cameron & Altidore all of whom were suspended with yellow cards received during Friday’s match.
