Posted on 07/24/2005 4:17:08 PM PDT by dfwgator
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -- The United States won the CONCACAF Gold Cup for the third time, beating Panama 3-1 on penalty kicks following a scoreless tie in Sunday's final.
Santino Quaranta, Landon Donovan and Brad Davis converted penalty kicks for the Americans, while goalkeeper Kasey Keller stopped the opening shot from Luis Tejada and allowed just one penalty, to Felipe Baloy. Panama's Jorge Luis Dely Valdes hit the crossbar and Alberto Blanco put the his shot over the bar.
Only one of the Americans failed to convert his penalty kick, with Chris Armas sending the ball right to goalkeeper Jaime Penedo.
Davis, making just his second international appearance, got the winning penalty kick by putting the ball just past the outstretched fingers of Penedo, who dived to his left. Davis, 23, made his national team debut in the tournament opener against Cuba.
The United States also won this tournament, the championship of soccer's North and Central American and Caribbean region, in 1991 and 2002. The Americans, ranked sixth in the world, dominated Panama to win 3-0 in a World Cup qualifier last month at Panama City. But they struggled against the No. 83-ranked team in the Gold Cup final, their last game before resuming qualifying in Aug. 17 against Trinidad and Tobago at East Hartford, Conn.
Luis Dely Valdes nearly put Panama ahead in the 75th minute, beating the U.S. defense to a cross and chesting the ball down, but his shot from 4 yards went off a post.
Quaranta then made a fine run at the other end and put the ball under Penedo but, with an open net, Clint Dempsey couldn't get a leg on the cross to redirect it.
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Keller made a great diving save to his right six minutes into overtime to stop Valdes, who had a point-blank shot after faking out defender Jimmy Conrad, and Blanco had Keller beaten 12 minutes in but put the ball wide of the far post.
The U.S. had three good scoring chances in the first half. John O'Brien had a nice crossing shot in the 24th minute that Penedo tipped but Conrad, at the far post, couldn't knock it in.
Dempsey was open for a header from about 10 yards in the 38th minute off a cross from Greg Vanney but put his shot at Penedo, who jumped to knock the ball over the crossbar. DaMarcus Beasley then had an open shot from about 14 yards in the 41st off a backheader from Josh Wolff but also sent his shot right at Penedo.
Notes
U.S. coach Bruce Arena served a one-game suspension and was not on the bench. ... Panama's Luis Moreno, who originally was suspended for the game because he was ejected in the semifinal against Colombia, was allowed to play. Panama appealed his second yellow card against the Colombians and CONCACAF's disciplinary committee agreed that it shouldn't have been assessed to him. ... Because the next FIFA Confederations Cup isn't until 2009, the 2007 Gold Cup will determine the region's representative.
Hah, I actually watched this game for about 40 minutes, (a first for me, I consider soccer to be a "foreign " sport), on Univision. I refer to Univision as " the Mexican channel".
I saw a blurb on the screen that you could switch it to Closed Captioning in English. Darn television I was watching on didn't support CC3 English. Oh well..
USA! USA!
Beat Panama? Awesome...!
It's great to win even in sports the US could care less about but the rest of the world does. Along with Lance winning another Tour de France. A great day for the US.
Jimmy Hoffa would have been proud.
USA Soccer bump! The women won their"friendly" game against Iceland, too.
I saw the presentation at the end, but I love the fact that we won ANOTHER sport the world considers theirs...HEWAHHAHAHHAHAHAH...USA RULES!! God Bless the USA!!
USA was ranked #6 in the world in the latest FIFA ranking released this week. :-)
1 Brazil
2 Argentina
3 Netherlands
4 Czech Republic
5 Mexico
6 USA
7 France
8 England
8 Spain
10 Portugal
11 Germany
12 Turkey
13 Japan
14 Italy
15 Iran
Just wait until Freddie Adu is ready for the National team.
I thought the Gold Cup was a shooting trophy.
I have, in fact, been watching a lot of sovver on some of the Spanish channels. They "highlight" the games down to about 10 minutes and they get really exiting that way. The game in real time is just an endless series of muggings. My view is that ice hockey players who need to improve their fighting/violence skills are playing soccer. Dumb game! Very dumb rules!
What sport is this?
It's called 'football' in the rest of the world, because it's played with feet, not armpits, and it's played continuously for 90 minutes with a 15 minute halftime break, not in 7 second bursts of senseless violence a la professional wrestling, separated by two minutes of pickup truck commercials and displays of meaningless statistics. Got it?
Feet.
Armpit.
I don't think we really deserve to be ranked so high, considering a few months back the second-string English squad tanned the US's hide in Chicago. But they are definately getting better. Still need that real scoring threat though to make it to the elite.
Too bad they don't mention the sport anywhere in the article
...although I figured it either had to be hockey or soccer, since it involved a scoreless tie.
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