Honduras lost in soccer 2-1 vs USA

Well, the soccer game Honduras vs USA was played saturday night in Chicago. Unfortunately Honduras lost 2-1, this is not a good result for Honduras, not at all.

We were hoping to get at least a draw and we were close to get it. But that didn´t happen.

In a previous post on this blog we were talking about the combination of results that were supposed to be the best for Honduras aspirations. There were 3 matches, and 2 of them didn´t turn out very well for Honduras.

Let´s see... Honduras lost vs USA, that´s not good at all. Costa Rica won 3-2 vs Trinidad Tobago, that´s not good either. The only result that was somehow good for Honduras was the victory of El Salvador over Mexico, 2-1.

If we take a look at the current standings of this final qualifying round, we can comment a little bit about the forecast of the next few games, and try to understand if Honduras still has a chance to qualify to the World Cup.

The standings as of today are the following:


In two days (on wednesday June 10th), the first half of the qualifying round will be over, every team will have played 5 games. Honduras will play against El Salvador in San Pedro Sula, and Mexico will play against Trinidad Tobago in Mexico City.

Costa Rica and USA have already played the game between themselves last week, Costa Rica won 3-1 that game. Costa Rica and USA already played 5 games, and that´s exactly the very middle of the tournament for them, because 10 games are the total games of this qualifying round.

It doesn´t matter what happens in the 2 games of Wednesday, the facts are that Costa Rica will remain in 1st place with 12 points, and USA will remain in 2nd place with 10 points, there is nothing that can change that.

Now comes the tricky part, what´s going to happen on wednesday?.

It´s not very difficult to guess that Mexico will beat Trinidad Tobago. Let´s remember that the game will be played in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Mexico will not only beat Trinidad Tobago, but the amount of goals that Mexico will score will be a lot, that is for sure.

My guess is that Mexico will score at least 5 goals or more. I wouldn´t be surprised that Mexico will win 5-0, 6-0, 7-0 or even more. Mexico needs a victory very urgently, they are desperate. On the other hand, Trinidad Tobago is already out of competition, they only have 2 points.

This means Mexico already has 6 points if we count on the 3 points they will get from Trinidad Tobago on wednesday.

What about Honduras?. The situation for us is more complicated. We will play against El Salvador, they are really inspired with their recent victory against Mexico. El Salvador will play with all they´ve got, they will fight all game long. Right now they are on 3rd place, with a draw they would still keep that 3rd place, which is enough to qualify to the World Cup.

Let´s remember that in Concacaf area we have 3 tickets available for going to the World Cup.

I bet no one was counting on El Salvador, all forecasts anticipated that El Salvador was going to be out of competition very early. But that didn´t happen, not even close, they are as live as they ever have been, they are fighting for that 3rd place.

Honduras will play as a local team in San Pedro Sula. Honduras needs to win that game, there is no other choice for Honduras. A draw would be very bad news. If we get a draw vs El Salvador, we can say goodbye to South Africa, that's the truth.

Anyway, Honduras has the "advantage" of being the local team in this game vs El Salvador. Local teams have been very strong in this qualifyng round. As for Honduras, over the last few games since the games prior to this final qualifying round, Honduras has won each and every game playing as a local team.

Honduras won against Puerto Rico, Canada, Jamaica, and Mexico. This was in the preliminary round.

In this final round, Honduras has only played one game as a local team, and Honduras defeated Mexico 3-1. So far, Honduras has played 5 games as a local team, and has won every game in a very convincing manner.

Our logic and common sense says that we should beat El Salvador as well, let´s hope that will be the result. We really need it.

Let´s suppose Honduras beats El Salvador, the standings after 5 games would look like this:


As you can see, Honduras in 3rd place is not bad, that´s good enough to qualify to the World Cup. But please notice that Mexico will be 6 points, only 1 point behind Honduras.

This means that with 5 games remaining in the 2nd half of this qualifyng round, the competition will be very tough. Honduras will have to fight for the 3rd place with Mexico. Costa Rica and USA have already gone up in the standings, and they will keep that way unless something completely unexpected happens, but that is a very remote possibility.

I suggest we go step by step. Our next step is to defeat El Salvador on wednesday, there is no other good result for Honduras. Win now or die forever.

Let´s wait then.