Most ads are interactive -- click on them to visit the folks who make The Panama News possible

sports
 

Why are so many of the local
kids trying the bicycle kick?

by Eric Jackson

The bicycle kick, also known as "la chilena," is a soccer move in which a player with his or her back to the goal does a modified backwards somersault, kicking the ball toward the opponents' goal in mid-cycle when the feet are above the head. It takes some coordination and good senses of timing and of the position that one's body occupies in space at a given fraction of a second.

And on March 30, 74 minutes into a CONCACAF final series game with Mexico at Panama City's Rommel Fernandez Stadium, Luis "El Matador" Tejada showed how it's done, taking a pass from Ricardo Phillips on the chest and then firing the ball into the net with a perfect overhead bicycle shot. It gave Panama the tie against the favored Mexicans, leaving the Panamanian squad with two ties and a loss so far in the hexagonal tournament that will send the top three times to next year's World Cup in Germany and leave the fourth with another shot against an Asian team.

Panama dominated the whole game but for the score. The Mexicans drew first blood about 26 minutes into the first half, when Ramón Morales put a perfect left-footer past Panamanian goalie Jaime Penedo. About 11 minutes into the second half Panamanian Juan Ramón Solís fouled Mexican Pavel Pardo, who in turn slugged Solís in the face. Solís got a yellow card but the ticket pulled out for Pardo was red, which left the Mexican team shorthanded and Panama dominant.

The tie with the Mexicans left Panama still down in the standings, but given that in the past it would have been presumed that Mexico would stomp all over Panama in any soccer match, it left fans with a good feeling about this team and its World Cup chances --- especially after the previous Saturday's debacle in Costa Rica.

In that previous game, Panama also outplayed its opponents all game long, but ended up with a 2-1 loss on a couple of errors so egregious that Panama's coach, José "Cheche" Hernández was reluctant to speak of it with reporters. (It should be supposed that he talked to the players about the debacle, but neither we nor as far as we know any other Panamanian medium were privy to that conversation.) The Ticos scored first on a penalty kick by Wayne Wilson, whom Penedo foolishly and maladroitly fouled about a foot short of the end line and a little over a body's length left of the goal when had he played more conservatively the ball would have gone out of bounds and into Panama's possession. Then just into the second half Tico player José Luis López got sent off on a second yellow card and Panama used the man advantage well enough at first, with Julio Medina III connecting on a long pass to Roberto "Bombardero" Brown, who put the ball into the Costa Rican net to tie the game. But despite better Panamanian ball control than we had previously seen from this team, that consistently broke down in the opponents' end and worst of all some of the key players from the red team were slow getting back on defense throughout the game. In extra time at the end of the second half Panama made one last valiant attempt in the Tico end, then apparently presumed that the whistle was about to blow and neglected to get back, giving Costa Rica a breakaway and a 2-1 victory on the last shot in the last second of the came. After the game Hernández expressed his displeasure at how Costa Rica came away with a victory in "a game they didn't deserve to win."

Panama has yet to play the United States or Trinidad-Tobago in the tournament's first set of games, and along with the Guatemalans whom they previously tied will meet the Costa Ricans and Mexicans again. Despite their lack of wins so far, Panama's team has yet to be clearly outplayed and it would seem that its chances of an unprecedented trip to the World Cup are still very much alive --- just so long as we don't see any more disasters like the one in Costa Rica.