Costa Rica celebrated throughout the weekend after its national team clinched a berth in the 2006 World Cup with a 3-0 win over the United States on Saturday night in San Jose, Costa Rica.
The U.S., now 0-6-1 in qualifiers in Costa Rica since 1985, opted to leave several regular players with their club teams because the team had already qualified for Germany 2006. For Costa Rica, however, the win clinched third place in the CONCACAF region (North America, Central America and the Caribbean) and a spot at next year's World Cup.
"Some mistakes were made that more experienced players would not have made," U.S. coach Bruce Arena said. "But overall, I accomplished the objective of watching certain combinations of players play together."
Costa Rica coach Alexandre Guimaeres wanted every advantage he could gain and benefited from calling up a majority of his players from Costa Rica's best First Division team, Deportivo Saprissa.
With many of the U.S. players still making their case to be included on the World Cup roster, the pressure was evident from the start.
Five minutes into the match, defender Eddie Pope slipped on the Astroplay surface as he tried to clear a ball from the goal area. The ball rolled to defender Oguchi Onyewu, who also mishandled an attempted clear. Costa Rican forward Alvaro Saborio's subsequent shot was inadvertently saved by Pope's face.
Although the U.S. seemed to regain its composure for the next 20 minutes, Paul Wanchope put away the game winner off of a U.S. defensive collapse in the 34th minute.
After the ball was won in midfield by Costa Rica, a beautiful through ball was placed to Saborio. Pope gave him too much room, and Saborio took a shot that U.S. keeper Tim Howard got his hands on, but couldn't hold.
An unmarked Wanchope easily placed it into the U.S. net. With the goal, Wanchope became the highest goal scorer in Costa Rican national team history with 43 goals in 65 games.
Coming out of the locker room down 1-0, the U.S. began to lose its composure as evidenced by Carlos Bocanegra's yellow card in the 51st minute, Onyewu's 54th minute yellow, and a 71st yellow card issued to Lewis.
Costa Rica's Carlos Hernandez then scored with a brilliant strike from 21 yards out, catching U.S. keeper Tim Howard out of position and putting the Ticos up 2-0.
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