sports

Panama falls just short in a bid for the regional soccer title

by Eric Jackson

Panama has yet to become a world soccer power, but in the past decade and a half or so it has become a factor to consider in regional play. How far Panamanian soccer has come was confirmed in the Copa de Naciones, but in losing the final of that tournament to Costa Rica our team also highlighted how far we have to go before becoming world class.

Our national teams play a rather orthodox kind of game, cautious and opportunistic on offense while putting up a dense defensive array on their own end of the field. This style frequently leads to boring, low-scoring games and to suggestions that FIFA modify the rules to make the matches more exciting and attractive to fans.

Panama's problem when it played Costa Rica in Cuscatlan, El Salvador on February 18 was that you usually can't play this style and make so many defensive errors and get away with it. They nearly did, but in the end their luck ran out, giving Costa Rica the tie that allowed the Ticos' superior offensive power to easily prevail in a penalty kick shootout.

Goalie Jaime Penedo's play, a number of Costa Rican misses on point-blank opportunities and the goalposts kept the game from being a rout. In fact it looked for a time like Panama, despite its sloppy play in its own end, would pull out a win.

In the first 20 minutes or so of the game, thanks largely to speedster Ricardo Phillips, Panama was clearly dominant. Then, in the 22nd minute, the Panamanian defense broke and only a good play by Penedo kept Costa Rica from gaining the lead.

In the 39th minute Phillips made the play with a breakaway and then a centering pass to Amílcar Henríquez, whose hard shot toward the bottom left corner of the goal would have missed the net, but didn't miss Luis Tejada, who deflected it in for Panama's only goal of the night. One zip Panama, a score that held up for most of the night.

After that the first half was a tale of a few good Panamanian offensive chances come to naught and repeated Panamanian defensive lapses that the Costa Ricans were unable to convert into goals.

In the second half the Ticos turned up the pressure and Penedo needed the assistance of the goalposts to keep them at bay. It was striker Alonso Solís who hit the post in the games 57th minute, and not long afterward he was taken out of the game in favor of Curt Bernard.

And in the 85th minute, Panama's defense proved porous for the umpteenth time and Bernard put the ball in the net for the tie.

In the shootout Costa Rica didn't miss and Panama did, repeatedly. The 4-1 shootout score more closely matched the balance of play over the entire game than did the one-all tie that led to the penalty kick contest.

Getting into the final with the Costa Ricans, who usually win the Copa de Naciones Central American soccer tournaments, was Panama's big accomplishment. (It wasn't unprecedented, however --- our team got that far in 1995, serving as one of the early notices that Panama was turning into a soccer country.) The national team played four games in seven days, and when you think about it proved that we can play with the region's best and hold our own, but still lack the depth to be the champions.

The team's good performance in the Copa de Naciones got it a berth in the upcoming CONCACAF Gold Cup, at the last version of which Panama surprisingly got to the final and in an even greater shock played the Americans to a tie in that game, only to lose on penalty kicks. Penedo's good performance in that tournament got him noticed, which is why he now plays in Spain.

The game broadcast was projected onto large screens at this country's major Carnival venues, but the disappointing result didn't dampen the party spirit all that much. But then, a shootout among gang members that left one man dead on the Transistmica and brawls that rival Panama City gangs took with them to Interior Carnival locales didn't stop the party either.

Really, if you think about it, the whole notion of putting a soccer game on the screen during Carnival says a great deal about the sport's increased popularity here.