By Mike Woitalla, Executive Editor
Soccer America Magazine
According to the FIFA Rankings, Wednesday's clash between the United States and Trinidad & Tobago pits the world's sixth best team against No. 53.
Those may be dubious rankings. Guatemala, a 5-1 winner over T&T in March, is ranked six spots below T&T. The USA sits above France, Spain, Germany, England and Italy.
Still, by all accounts, the gulf between Coach Bruce Arena's squad and the Soca Warriors is huge and anything but a resounding win should be considered an embarrassment by him and his team.
The Trinidadians have never reached the World Cup and have come close only once, denied by Paul Caligiuri's shot in 1989. They reached this qualifying final round thanks to wins over the Dominican Republic, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and St. Kitts & Nevis. FIFA — and this is not controversial — ranks those three teams 172nd, 128th and 122nd.
In nine previous World Cup qualifying meetings, the USA has beaten T&T seven times and they have tied twice.
Tonight's match in East Hartford, Conn., marks the start of the second half of the Hexagonal, the six-team final round of CONCACAF qualifying from which the top three teams earn World Cup berths and the fourth-place finisher gets to play off with Asia's No. 5.
The USA is sitting pretty, in second-place, one point behind Mexico, whose edge merely reflects that it hosted the first encounter between the archrivals. A win tonight would guarantee at least a fourth-place finish for the Americans.
The USA opened the Hexagonal at T&T and eked out a 2-1 win thanks to goals by Eddie Johnson and Eddie Lewis. Playing on the road and in the wake of a labor dispute were the excuses for that scrappy U.S. performance.
Tonight, the Americans face a team without a large enough U.S. immigrant population to rob them of the home-field support. Moreover, Arena will be able to use, for the first time since the 2002 World Cup, both John O'Brien and Claudio Reyna.
With that duo on the field, the Americans should be able to control the pace and rhythm of the game. They should be able to dominate possession and win more stylishly than they did while capturing the Gold Cup crown in July, when they struggled against Panama, which is last in the Hexagonal, and Honduras, which was eliminated from World Cup qualifying at the semifinal round.
If the USA fails to put on a sparkling performance, it won't endanger its chances of reaching Germany 2006. But it will raise serious questions about what it could achieve there next summer.
USA vs. Trinidad & Tobago
Wednesday, Aug. 17 in East Hartford, Conn.
TV: ESPN2 (live) 8 pm ET/5 pm PT.
Telemundo (delay) 12:30 am ET/PT.