The conventional wisdom --- and really, the most sober estimate of anyone who watched the progress of the game --- was that Panama should have lost this one.
Yes, the Panamanian side has a few guys playing in, or having played in, foreign leagues with more prestige than our ANAPROF. But the Jamaican lineup was studded with players from the English Premiership, the Scottish League and Major League Soccer in the United States. On the whole, the Reggae Boys are bigger, faster and stronger than Panama's national soccer team. As a former British colony, Jamaica has a much longer and deeper soccer tradition than we do, so that even if both Panama and Jamaica are home to about three million people, a much bigger percentage of Jamaican youth practice the sport.
Add to that a Jamaican team coming off of a tie with an American team that's heavily favored to win the first of two tickets to advance to the CONCACAF finals (the qualifying tournament for the 2006 World Cup in Germany). Moreover, consider that Hurricane Frances shut down Florida airports, stranding Panama's starting goalie and thus keeping him out of the game.
The advantage apparently showed on the pitch, too. Almost all game long the Jamaicans controlled the ball. Young Jaime Penedo, the arquero for Colon's ANAPROF team Arabe Unido, had to fend off a half-dozen blistering shots on goal. Many a time the Panamanian defenders had trouble clearing the ball from their own penalty area.
But if the Jamaican team is the pride of the Antilles, a Panamanian team largely composed descendants of the Caribbean diaspora showed them a thing or two. Or maybe I should say, goalie Jaime Penedo and strikers Roberto "Bombardero" Brown and Julio César "Panagol" Dely Valdés showed them.
Panama administered the first shock a little more than two minutes into the game, after the first serious Jamaican threat in the Panamanian end was turned away. Suddenly breaking down the field into the Jamaican end, Julio Medina lofted a centering pass in front the net and Brown outjumped the bigger defenders to head it into the goal. Except for a lonely few Panamanian fans, the Kingston crowd was stunned into silence.
But not for long. The Jamaicans came right back, kept the ball in the Panamanian end and did everything but score. From the Jamaican point of view, it must have been exiting, albeit ultimately frustrating, to watch. Yes, the home team flubbed a bunch of golden opportunities in front of the visitors' net. But they did not squander all their good chances --- Penedo rose to the occasion time and again with spectacular saves.
Then, 35 minutes into the first half, Dely Valdés got a long pass and raced down the field on the sort of breakaway where the odds in favor of a player of his caliber scoring are enormous. Realizing that, Jamaican defender Ian Goodison pulled Panagol down from behind just outside the penalty area, preventing the goal but taking a red card. The ensuing free kick caromed off of the Jamaican defensive wall, but Julio Dely had done well enough by making the Jamaicans play the rest of the game shorthanded.
Despite playing with only 10 men on the field, Jamaica's ball control advantage was only slightly reduced. In the second half, Panama went into a defensive mode, playing only three men up front and trying to cling to their one-nil advantage.
It looked for a time as it that bit of coaching conservatism was a bad move. Some 31 minutes into the second half Penedo deflected yet another Jamaican shot that would have gone past most goalies on most nights --- but then Panama again failed to clear the ball out of its end and one of the Reggae Boys buzzing around Penedo, Damani Ralph, deflected a short pass off of his heel into the net for the shorthanded tying goal.
Now the Jamaicans were pumped up and going for the come from behind win before the ecstatic home crowd.
But that opened last minute opportunities for the Panamanians.
Just before the end of regulation time, a pass went just agonizingly long and Dely missed the opportunity to head it into the net.
But just over two minutes later, when the clock said that regulation time had just expired but the officials had yet to acknowledge this by indicating how much penalty and injury time would be allowed, Alberto Zapata got a pass in to Dely and this time he lived up to his reputation and put the ball in the Jamaican net. Even above the sound of a couple of guys jumping and shouting and waving Panamanian flags, you could have heard a pin drop in Kingston.
Reggae Buays dem a weep and a wail.
That leaves Panama in second place in CONCACAF's Group A, behind the United States, who defeated El Salvador in a home game played at the same time as the contest in Kingston, after opening this elimination round with a tie against Jamaica. On Wednesday, September 8, the Americans will be in Panama for an 8 p.m. showdown at Rommel Fernandez Stadium.
Also in this section:
Soccer: Panama stuns Jamaica in Kingston, to face US on Sept. 8
Curundu ousted from Little League World Series by bad call
Panamanians in Major League Baseball
