The hat tricks keep on coming! Brad Davis scored three goals in the second half for his first career hat trick to lead the Houston Dynamo past Chivas USA, 4-0, Thursday night at Robertson Stadium. Both teams went into the game with three-game winning streaks, but the Dynamo prevailed to move ahead of Chivas into second place in the Western Conference, three points behind leader FC Dallas, which has played two more games.
Author Archives: Paul Kennedy
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USA-Mexico, Gold Cup History
The USA and Mexico have only met in the Gold Cup three times. The USA prevailed in their meeting in the semifinals of the first Gold Cup in 1991, and Mexico won in the final of the 1993 and 1998 Gold Cups. Here’s a look at the three meetings …
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Speculation grows that Thierry Henry will leave Arsenal
[TRANSFER TALK] Will Thierry Henry leave Arsenal for Barcelona? There has been rampant speculation that Henry, reportedly unhappy about the Gunners’ future, has signed an agreement with Barca on a three-year contract (plus an option year) worth $11 million a year. There’s even been talk that Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who brought Henry to Highbury in 1999, would take over for Frank Rijkaard as coach at Barcelona
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Angloma and the ‘Gwadaboys’
The surprise of the Gold Cup has been Guadeloupe, the French department making its debut in the CONCACAF championship. The “Gwadaboys” have already beaten Canada and Honduras and meet Mexico Thursday in the quarterfinals. Here’s a look at some of its stars …
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AC Milan and Inter tussle over Honduran Suazo
[TRANSFER TALK] Honduran David Suazo, arguably the best striker ever to come out of Central America, is involved in a tug-of-war between Italian clubs AC Milan and Inter Milan. Days after the 27-year-old Suazo was reported to have joined Serie A champion Inter from Cagliari, AC Milan said it had signed Suazo.
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Univision’s broadcast of Thursday’s Mexico-Panama game delivers
Univision has been showing Mexico’s Gold Cup games for a reason. Rather than diverting the Tri’s first four matches to Galavision or TeleFutura, Univision aired them live. In the case of last Thursday’s primetime showing of Mexico-Panama, the game did a 20.1 household rating in the NHTI (Hispanic homes), delivering 2,343,000 Hispanic homes and 4,374,000 Hispanic persons 2+ for each average minute. Most impressive was the Gold Cup group match’s appeal to men 18-49. In that all-important demographic, the game drew 1,959,000 viewers, more than any other television program that evening on any U.S. TV network.
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Tiny Guadeloupe shocks Honduras to set up date with Mexico in Gold Cup semifinals
Jocelyn Angloma, the 41-year-old former French international, did it again, scoring his second goal of the Gold Cup to help tiny French department Guadeloupe knock off Honduras, 2-1, and advance to the semifinals, where it faces Mexico on Thursday at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Once again, Mexico put on a subpar performance, but it escaped from Houston’s Reliant Stadium with a 1-0 win in overtime over Costa Rica, which finished the game with eight players. In the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader at Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium, Canada cruised past Guatemala, 3-0.
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Haitian U-17s vanish, then reappear at JFK stopover
There was a bizarre twist to one of soccer’s great success stories of the year when 13 members of Haiti’s U-17 team vanished, then reappeared at New York’s Kennedy International Airport, where they were scheduled to fly to South Korea for an international tournament in preparation for the U-17 World Cup there later in the summer. After Haitian Football Federation president Yves Jean-Bart appealed on a Haitian Creole-language radio station in New York to the players to “reinstate themselves as soon as possible,” the players all returned to the team.
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Beckham aims to leave Real Madrid as a champion
David Beckham will play the final game of his European club career on Sunday when Real Madrid hosts Real Mallorca with the Spanish league title on the line (TV: GolTV, live, 3 pm). Despite an ankle injury that kept him out practice, Beckham should play in what concludes a four-year career with Real Madrid. A victory would give Real Madrid the title and end a four-year title drought, its longest in more than a half a century.
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USA to face tricky Panama in Gold Cup quarterfinals
The USA-Mexico showdown at the Gold Cup will have to wait for later. Mexico again struggled but held off Panama, 1-0, on Wednesday in Houston to finish second in Group C and avoid a date with the USA in the quarterfinals. Instead, it’s Panama, one of the most dangerous teams in the tournament, that Bob Bradley‘s Americans will meet in a difficult quarterfinal test.
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SMU’s Mann dies unexpectedly a week after graduation
Jordan Mann, a member of SMU’s 2005 NCAA Men’s College Cup team, died unexpectedly May 26 at his home in Prairie Village, Kan. Mann, who had graduated from SMU a week earlier with a degree in finance, died of apparent natural causes according to the Prairie Village Police Department, pending an autopsy. Mann starred at Shawnee Mission East High School and for the Kansas City Legends and played at Furman for two seasons before before transferring to SMU in 2005. Mann played for the Mustangs 18 games in 2005 and 16 in 2006.
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Mexico’s Sanchez eyes Gold Cup title — and revenge
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] A Gold Cup title in his first big test as Mexico’s national team coach would be a feather in the cap of Coach Hugo Sanchez. If that means beating the USA in the final in Chicago, all the better. Revenge for the 2-0 loss to the USA in his Tri coaching debut is certainly on Sanchez’s mind. Like U.S. coach Bob Bradley, Sanchez will have to have to take into account that his Tri will have to play in the Copa America right after the Gold Cup, but he has selected a full-strength squad for the CONCACAF competition in which it opens against Cuba on Friday at Giants Stadium.
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Rising star Perez leads Panama’s Canaleros
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Panama headed to the Gold Cup with one of the rising stars of CONCACAF soccer. Blas Perez scored two spectacular goals to lead Colombian champion Cucuta to a 3-1 win over Boca Juniors last week in the first leg of the Libertadores Cup semifinals, but he wasn’t with Cucuta for the second leg Thursday night in Buenos Aires. Perez, who will play next season for Spanish club Hercules, and Jose Luis Garces of Portuguese club Belenenses should give the Canaleros one of the most dangerous frontlines in the tournament.
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Absences cast doubt on Honduras’ chances
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] On paper, Honduras has more talent than any team in the Gold Cup except Mexico and the United States, but absences and injuries have taken their toll. Among others, star David Suazo, rumored to be headed to Inter Milan from Cagliari, is injured and unavailable for the Gold Cup. Julio Cesar “Rambo” Leon, another Italian-based player, will miss the Bicolor’s first two games against Panama and Mexico because of Genoa’s Serie B promotion playoff against Napoli on Sunday.
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Cuba is the underdog in Group C
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Cuba returns to the Gold Cup for the fourth straight time — a record for a Caribbean team — having finished third at the 2007 Caribbean championship. Coach Raul Gonzalez’s goal is to reach the quarterfinals, though Cuba finds itself the underdog in arguably the toughest group with four-time Gold Cup champion Mexico, 2005 runner-up Panama and Honduras.
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Beckham is happy to be with the lads
David Beckham set up two goals in his first competitive game for England since the 2006 World Cup and his 96th international appearance. Beckham’s promising comeback set the stage for more England appearances late in the summer and into the fall — just as the Galaxy moves into the stretch drive of the MLS regular season. With England still fourth in Group E, Coach Steve McClaren will be counting upon Beckham to play for England in its five remaining qualifiers.
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Trinidad & Tobago falls into chaos
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Call Trinidad & Tobago “Team Chaos.” If the Soca Warriors didn’t have enough troubles because of a dispute between members of their 2006 World Cup team and the T&T federation over World Cup bonuses, they ran into more trouble when they tried to fly to the United States from Honduras on Monday after their 3-1 loss to the Catrachos on Saturday. Eight players were delayed in Honduras on Monday due to visa problems, while another player, Andre Toussaint, was detained at George Bush Airport in Houston for having a visa that only allowed him to enter the United States from Trinidad & Tobago. The Soca Warriors have been seriously depleted. Sixteen 2006 World Cup veterans were ruled out because of their threatened lawsuit, and five others are boycotting the national team in solidarity. That left only one World Cup veteran — midfielder Densil Theobold — in the team for the Gold Cup.
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El Salvador looks for small successes
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Mexican Carlos de los Cobos is looking for small successes for El Salvador at the Gold Cup. The El Salvador coach hopes his team, which has struggled badly in recent years, earns some respect and develop a solid nucleus for World Cup qualifying, which starts next year. He also hopes some players use to the Gold Cup to get seen and sign with clubs abroad.
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Guatemala hopes to end long winless streak
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Guatemala has a long record of futility in the Gold Cup. It’s played in the last six Gold Cups yet has won only one game in that span — a 3-0 win over St. Vincent & the Grenadines in 1996. The Chapines take a 12-game winless streak into their opener against the United States on Thursday night.
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Guadeloupe earns tie in Gold Cup debut; De Guzman leads Canada past Costa Rica
Playing its first game ever in the Gold Cup, Guadeloupe earned a 1-1 tie against reigning Caribbean champion Haiti on the opening day of play in Group A. In the first game at Miami’s Orange Bowl, Julian De Guzman of Spanish club Deportivo Corun scored twice in the second half to give Canada a 2-1 win over Costa Rica.
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Canada has strong MLS flavor
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] The Gold Cup was the scene of Canada’s greatest achievement of the last 20 years. Indeed, its 2000 Gold Cup victory stands as the only bright spot for a program that has languished and fallen far behind its North American rivals, the United States and Mexico. The national team program is in transition. It hasn’t had a full-time head coach since Frank Yallop left a year ago to return to MLS as the coach of the Los Angeles Galaxy. Dale Mitchell won’t take over as his replacement until after the U-20 World Cup in Canada. Interim coach Stephen Hart will coach Canada at the Gold Cup. Canada has a considerable pool of talent to draw upon from overseas and now in MLS
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Medford sets sights on Costa Rica’s first Gold Cup title
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Costa Rica is a team in transition. Gone is Coach Alexandre Guimaraes, who led the Ticos at the 2002 and 2006 World Cup and will coach Panama at the 2007 Gold Cup. Star Paulo Wanchope announced his international retirement after the 2006 World Cup and is now playing for FC Tokyo in Japan.
Former Costa Rica star Hernan Medford leads the Ticos in his first major international tournament as national team coach. For the Gold Cup, Costa Rica will be at close to full strength with 11 holdovers from the 2006 World Cup and four players based overseas, including former Los Angeles Galaxy defender Pablo Chinchilla, who now plays in Austria.
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First-timer Guadeloupe taps into pipeline
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Like Martinique, which played in three Gold Cups, Guadeloupe is an overseas French department with a population of 450,000, so it is ineligible for FIFA competitions like the World Cup. But the French departments are CONCACAF members and compete at a high level within the Caribbean. Many high-profile French stars have roots in Martinique and Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe, this year’s only first-time entrant, is tapping into that pipeline of current and former European-based pros for the Gold Cup.
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Haiti has hometown edge in Group A
[GOLD CUP PREVIEW] Haiti will be the home team in Group A at Miami’s Orange Bowl. For Haiti’s first ever game at the Gold Cup in 2000, a crowd of almost 50,000, most of them Haitian supporters, turned up at the Orange Bowl to watch the USA beat Haiti, 3-0. Haiti enters the Gold Cup as arguably the hottest team in CONCACAF. Its victory in the Digicel CUF Cup final in January touched off wild celebrations in Port-au-Prince. (Its U-17 team qualified for this summer’s world championship in South Korea, knocking out defending world champion Mexico, in one of the biggest upsets in CONCACAF history at any level.)
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Tiny Liechtenstein is on a roll
With a population of 33,000, Liechtenstein does not even have its own pro league — its top club, FC Vaduz, was tied for eighth in the Swiss Second Division — and has never finished anywhere other than last in its group of a major qualifying tournament, but it finds itself on a roll going into Wednesday’s Euro ’08 qualifier against Spain in Vaduz. Liechtenstein has earned four points in its last two games: a 1-0 win over Latvia — only its second win in European Championship qualifying — followed up by a 1-1 draw away to Iceland on Saturday that left Latvia last in the group.