sports

Under-20 team qualifies the ugly way

by Eric Jackson

Panama's under-20 soccer team will go to the FIFA Under-20 World Cup this June and July in Canada. They earned their ticket with a second-place finish to the United States in a four-way tournament that took place among the teams from Haiti, Guatemala, Panama and the USA at Rommel Fernandez Stadium on January 17-21. But maybe "earned" is not quite the right word.

Yes, the Panamanians came in with the second-most points and thus won the second of two world championship berths. But if the truth is to be told, they were awful.

On the 17th they should have beaten Guatemala, if one considered the overall play. The problem was that, just two minutes into the game, Panama allows an own goal off of Josué Brown. It wasn't until well into the second half that Armando Cooper got a breakaway and passed off to Nelson Barahona to put the ball in Guatemala's net to salvage a tie.

The next game, on the 19th, Panama beat the Haitians 3-2 --- but just barely, on the strength of an own goal off of Joseph Peterson, who erred while trying to clear a shot by Josué Brown.

That left Panama into the final day's play needing a win against the Americans to earn their ticket to Canada without anyone else's help. Were the Guatemalans to win or tie against Haiti and Panama to tie or lose to the United States it would have been the Guatemalans who went to Canada.

Luckily for Panama, Haiti upset Guatemala by a 2-0 margin in the afternoon's first game, giving this country's team what they needed regardless of what happened next.

And what ensued was an absolute humiliation. US captain Freddy Adu opened the scoring seven minutes into the game, and ended it, after second half goals by Robbie Rogers, Johann Smith and Jonathan Villanueva, in the 90th minute. Against the five US goals the Panamanians only got two shots on goal, only one of them very good. It was worse than the 5-0 score indicated --- Panama couldn't move the ball all night, whether by dribbling, short passes or long clearing passes. The Panamaian defense was in a constant state of collapse.

This is the third straight under-20 world championship tournament for which Panama has qualified, but so far we have never gone beyond the first round --- never won a game, in fact. Soccer is making great advances against baseball as the nation's most popular team sport and the quality of the players this country is producing is improving. But Panama is still nowhere close to the top.