USA vs. El Salvador: Gold Cup quarterfinal preview
The U.S. didn’t impress in the group stage, but Bruce Arena’s decision to call up his veterans means he’s serious about winning the Gold Cup.
The U.S. men’s national team are no strangers to playing big games at major tournaments. With the Gold Cup quarterfinals on the horizon, coach Bruce Arena will need to stop experimenting with his lineup and go with his strongest players.
After naming three different lineups in as many games, Arena has called up six replacements to his 23-man roster for the knockout stage. The new arrivals are sure to make the team stronger and help them avoid some of the silly mistakes and missed opportunities that plagued them throughout much of the first round.
Goalkeeper Tim Howard and defender Michael Bradley were sitting in the stands this past Saturday in Cleveland, watching as the USMNT beat Nicaragua 3-0 to win Group B with a 2-1-0 record (edging out Panama for top spot, and avoiding Costa Rica in the quarters). Joining them on the roster going forward will be midfielder Darlington Nagbe and strikers Clint Dempsey and Jozy Altidore. The sixth replacement is FC Dallas goalkeeper Jesse Gonzalez.
“[It was] clearly a good result for us. It’s a game where we wasted some opportunities and made things hard on ourselves,” Arena told reporters after the Nicaragua game.
The victory against Nicaragua, in which the Americans botched two penalty kicks, was expected, but the Americans made the match a lot harder than it needed to be. Nicaragua played a pressing game from the start, something that caught the Americans by surprise. There will be little room for error when the team take on El Salvador on Wednesday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
“I was surprised at how aggressive they were and how they pressed us and came after us and made the game difficult,” Arena said of Nicaragua.
A player like Nagbe is sure to neutralize whatever El Salvador (a team that also likes to press) will throw at him, and should help get the offense going. With Howard back on the team, Arena has his preferred No. 1 goalkeeper in the starting lineup and Bradley’s leadership in the back (along with the occasional moment of offensive genius, like he displayed against Mexico in the recent World Cup qualifiers) is sure to give the defense the confidence it could use.
With Altidore and Dempsey in attack, Arena’s roster looks more like the full-strength team we’ve seen in qualifying than the audition version that’s struggled over the past 10 days. Among those demoted are Dom Dwyer and Kelyn Rowe, players who showed they may even deserve a spot on Arena’s World Cup roster come next summer, but don’t have what it takes to lead them at this Gold Cup. Arena’s amended roster now makes the United States the strongest team on paper at this tournament.
Standing in the way of the USMNT are El Salvador, one of the weakest sides still remaining in the competition. The Salvadorians finished third in Group C with a 1-1-1 record. Nonetheless, the United States should not underestimate the Central American side coached by Eduardo Lara.
If this past Sunday’s game with Jamaica (which ended in a 1-1 draw) is any measure of things to come, then expect an entertaining El Salvador side not afraid to attack. At the same time, goalkeeper Derby Carillo did a solid job stopping Jamaica for much of the contest. The Salvadorians’ crisp passing and willingness to seek a win resulted in a surprisingly exciting match.
The Cuscatlecos are led by up top by Nelson Bonilla. The 26-year-old striker has played 36 times for his country, scoring 12 goals. Bonilla, who plays his club soccer with Nacional of Portugal, is currently on loan to Gazientep FK of Turkey. Bonilla, who forms a strong partnership with fellow forward Rodolfo Zelaya, leads the team in scoring at this Gold Cup with two goals.
“We have a team that can beat them,” Bonilla said when asked about the United States. “We will prepare for them like we did the previous three games.”
Salvadorian soccer is coming out of a period of great turmoil. The team got out of their Gold Cup group in 2013, only to suffer a 5-1 defeat to the United States in the quarterfinals. The problems didn’t end there. Just a few months after that blowout, 14 players were slapped with lifetime bans by FIFA for match fixing in international games dating back to 2010. One player involved was Zelaya, a controversial pick for this tournament, after he’d been suspended for a year.
After that scandal, a group of Salvadorian players came forward in 2016, revealing at a news conference in Vancouver that they had been offered bribes to manipulate the outcome against Canada, one in which an El Salvador loss would have secured Honduras’ qualification to the final round of World Cup qualifying. The players had come forward on the eve of the game to say they had turned down the alleged offer made to them by a Salvadorian businessman.
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The player Arena’s men will need to keep a close eye on is American-born midfielder Gerson Mayen. The former Chivas USA player, who was born in Los Angeles and played once for the United States’ U20 team, is fast and possesses great vision. His ball distribution makes El Salvador an offensive threat. Mayen, who scored once at this Gold Cup versus Curacao, has made 27 appearances for El Salvador. El Salvador have three others with connections to the United States: Darwin Ceren, a midfielder for the San Jose Earthquakes, Andres Flores and Richard Menjivar, both midfielders with the New York Cosmos of the NASL.
El Salvador are a team that’s gotten stronger with each game at this tournament. They’re not only playing for pride, but looking to make history at this Gold Cup.