Regional club championship blighted by organizational problems on and off the field
The organization formerly known as CONCACAF cannot, unfortunately, change its reputation as easily as its name.
Not even the gaudiness and glitz of America’s gambling capital can cast a flattering light on The Football Confederation’s crowning of Necaxa as regional club champion.
Events run by this band of suits can work different venues and come to new cities, but certain dreary sights keep recurring: Field invasions, players bombarded by debris, comical refereeing, punch-ups in the stands.
Staples of such competitions are organizational and administrative fiascoes, shrouded television coverage, players brawling, inadequate security, and breezy pronouncements that all is well.
All these elements were present in this desert outpost for the 1999 regional club championship, and Necaxa duly dispatched rivals from Costa Rica and the United States to lift a gleaming trophy that contained an invitation to Rio de Janeiro in January for the inaugural world club championship.
Squeezed onto a field 64 yards wide, one that was incorrectly marked a day prior to the opener, players often resorted to a crude style of play amid congested midfields and penalty areas. But Necaxa’s class and experience eventually emerged, and in the Oct. 3 final it rallied while playing 10 against 11 to scrape past Alajuela, a stubbornly resilient squad built on craftiness and counterattacks, 2-1.
Both MLS teams reached the semis, yet neither could go further. Chicago came within a penalty kick of vying for that Rio ticket worth $1.5 million guaranteed, and D.C. United played Necaxa straight-up only to be toppled on critical breakdowns in front of both goals.
Fire defender Lubos Kubik fired his penalty kick over the crossbar and by that margin Alajuela won a tiebreaker, 5-4, after the teams battled evenly through 90 minutes to finish at 1-1.
“Alajuela does a very good job in their organization on the field,” said Fire coach Bob Bradley. “They don’t give you much space. We thought it would be a very tight game, played with much discipline. We’re obviously extremely disappointed.”
D.C. took a 1-0 lead against Necaxa, but a pair of goalkeeping blunders by Tom Presthus handed the opportunistic Mexicans the goals that provided the 3-1 margin of victory.
United midfielder Richie Williams said, “I don’t think the Mexican teams like it when they lose to us, like last year when we beat Toluca and Leon and won this tournament at RFK. At times we outplayed Necaxa, but we gave up those stupid mistakes.”
The Costa Rican teams proved their mettle in the desert. Alajuela’s tactical acumen carried it into the final, and Saprissa kept pecking away at Necaxa before succumbing, 3-2, in the quarterfinals.
Dismissal sparks Necaxa
Alajuela had stamped itself as a formidable opponent in the quarterfinals by surprising Mexican Torneo Verano winner Toluca, 1-0, on a goal by Slovak Josef Miso, who two years ago was approached by MLS before heading to Mexico.
The elusive, skillful Miso set up Alajuela’s goal against Chicago in the semis and saved his best – and worst – for the final, watched by less than 10,000 fans. Through guile and theatrics, he drew two penalties.
Teammate Wilmer Lopez, who masterfully marshaled Alajuela throughout the tournament with his shrewd midfield distribution, gained his team a man advantage through taunting.
Miso tucked away the first penalty for Alajuela in the first half, but was denied his second spot opportunity when Hugo Pineda dove to his left to save at full stretch.
That second penalty had been sold by Miso to Canadian referee Jose Farias on a nudge in the back from defender Jamie Hernandez. Pineda did the game justice by turning away Miso’s kick, but by that time Necaxa was down to 10 men, having lost midfielder German Villa to a foolish tantrum.
After tackling Lopez, Villa reacted to his taunts by pushing him in the face. Lopez went down as if his nose had been sawed off, yet Farias had little choice but to produce the red card.
A mostly pro-Necaxa crowd, already incensed at an apparently legal go-ahead goal having been disallowed, showered the field with plastic bottles.
“We were very upset after the ejection,” said Necaxa captain Alex Aguinaga. “But it made us reorganize the team, we became more aggressive, and we played the way we had to play to win.”
Aguinaga had tied the score, 1-1, with a spectacular scissors kick two minutes into the second half. The Ecuadoran international met a superb cross from Edgar David Oliva with a chest-high volley from 9 yards.
Alajuela couldn’t exploit its advantage as Aguinaga and his teammates refused to buckle in searing, 100-degree heat.
Villa had been shadowing Lopez effectively enough to limit his influence in midfield. With Villa out, Hernan Viga kept tabs on Lopez, Necaxa pressured the ball relentlessly, and frontrunners Agustin Delgado and Sergio Vasquez sharpened their running to open space.
Ten minutes after going a man down, Necaxa went a goal up. Delgado tore down the left wing and drove a ball toward the near post. Alajuela keeper Alvaro Mesen pushed the ball out, but it fell for Vasquez to hammer home.
Alajuela had a few chances to force penalties – no overtime in this tournament – in the remaining 24 minutes, but Pineda turned away a drive from Miso and denied a close-range attempt by substitute Heriberto Quiros.
A brief skirmish in the stands resulted in several fans being ejected, one in handcuffs. Not until Las Vegas police intervened was the situation quelled; only a few ushers were present to monitor more than a thousand fans on that side of the stadium.
After the final whistle, hundreds of fans stormed onto the field, delaying the awards ceremony.
“I am very happy and very proud to belong to an institution like Necaxa,” Coach Raul Arias Rosas said once the field had been cleared. “Why did we win? Because we have a great spirit and great competitive atmosphere in the team.
“We have 11 players on the field who never give up and always keep fighting.”
Disappointment for D.C. and Chicago
Watching the final were the MLS entrants. Both coaches used fleets of reserves for the third-place match, which ended 2-2, sparking another snafu.
Chicago returned its medals after discovering they bore the inscription “fourth place”; CONCACAF had not ordered a second set of third-place medals in case of a tie although there would be no tiebreaker in the consolation.
The Fire’s bid to reach the final ran aground against Alajuela with the loss of playmaker Peter Nowak, who suffered a thigh contusion and was replaced in the 61st minute with the score 1-1.
Miso set up Alajuela’s goal in the 22nd minute by blowing past C.J. Brown on the left flank and serving a ball that Lopez passed along to Wilson Munoz, who cleanly beat Zach Thornton.
Roman Kosecki equalized in the 38th, his free kick curling past the wall and off Mesen’s outstretched hand into the net.
Another free kick, by Ante Razov, nearly stole a win for Chicago in the final minutes, but Mesen tipped it away from the top corner.
Kubik sent Chicago’s second penalty in the tiebreaker well over the bar, his third miss in four attempts this season. He was perfect in six attempts last year.
“It was a game played very tactically,” said Kubik. “For us, they are a little bit different, like [a] South American team.
“We were unlucky. For my mistake on the penalty, we don’t go to final.”
Set plays were the difference in the United-Necaxa match, along with the errors of Presthus, who had rescued United with a last-second penalty-kick save in a 1-0 quarterfinal win over Honduran club Olimpia.
Carey Talley lashed in a header from Ben Olsen following a Marco Etcheverry corner to give United the lead, but it evaporated when an Aguinaga corner kick driven to the near post came off Presthus’ chest and defender Sergio Almaguer nodded in the rebound.
Presthus said the ball had been deflected as it came in, but regardless, United had given Necaxa a boost at a critical moment.
Necaxa swarmed forward in the second half and scored in the 57th minute on a feed from Villa to Delgado. United had a chance to tie it up nine minutes later, but Pineda parried a point-blank header from A.J. Wood.
Necaxa resumed its siege of Presthus, who failed to reach another Aguinaga corner kick that Oliva knocked home for the clinching goal. A Jamie Moreno shot that caromed off the inside of the post a few minutes later summed up United’s luck.
“We have experience at this level, and we know mistakes in these games are fatal,” said United coach Thomas Rongen. “That’s what happened; aside from their goals, they didn’t have a lot of great opportunities.”
Said Williams: “We wanted to be the first CONCACAF team to go to that tournament, but it didn’t work out. Now we have to win MLS, so we can come back here next year.”