Panamanian soccer team falls short in Gold Cup, but goes farther than ever before

Panamanian soccer

So very close

by Eric Jackson

They played their hearts out at their opponents' house. For more than 120 minutes on the afternoon of July 24, Panama held the United States at bay in the Gold Cup final, played in Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Goalie Jaime Penedo was particularly brilliant.

But with both teams still scoreless after overtime, Luis Tejada, Jorge Dely Valdés and Alberto Blanco failed to get their penalty kicks past American goalie Casey Keller, and though Baloy did, Penedo was only able to stop one of the US penalty kicks. That was all she wrote. Panama was number two.

Which, however, was much more than any soccer team from this country has ever accomplished.

Our under-20 teams have been to the world championships twice --- though they have been unimpressive once they got there. Our national team has an uphill battle to get one of the three CONCACAF tickets to the World Cup in Germany next year, or even the fourth-place finishers' shot against an Asian also-ran for a possible additional pass.

Panamanian soccer is quite serious now, with our best players are being snapped up by foreign professional teams and the game on the verge of overtaking baseball as the national team sport.

Already the Marea Roja --- whether it be the Panamanian community in the United States or the soccer fans here --- turns out to soccer games of importance in far greater numbers than those who attend big baseball events.

(Television viewership? Hard to say. First of all the TV industry here routinely and flagrantly lies about such statistics, and despite any and all claims there are now just not enough advertisers willing to pay the money that it takes for a broadcaster to buy the rights to buy regular season Major League Baseball games and make a profit anymore. FIFA, more intent on growing their sport worldwide than the baseball owners are interested in the global status of theirs, offer a better deal which in turn means relatively more soccer promotion here and therefore feeds the enthusiasm of our most promising young athletes.)

But let the ad cartel worry about all that. The bottom line is that soccer has captured the national imagination, and our national team put in a brilliant performance in the Gold Cup.

Its next local appearance, in September against Costa Rica as the CONCACAF finals continue, WILL be televised. However, there won't be any fans at Rommel Fernandez Stadium because of the obnoxious behavior of a few hooligans the when last the Americans came to town. FIFA quite reasonably penalized Panama by ordering the game played in a stadium devoid of fans. So there won't be any traffic jams in Juan Diaz before and after the game, but there also won't be much traffic of any sort. The red tide of Panamanian soccer fandom will be well nigh invisible while the game is on, unless one goes to where a television screen is lit up.

One might expect that, even though it dwells in the cellar halfway through the six-team CONCACAF finals, the excellent Gold Cup performance may fire this national team up. A trip to Germany for an unprecedented Panamanian appearance in the World Cup may not be such an impossible dream after all.

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