Bienvenidos

So first off, my apologies. I completely and utterly forgot I had this blog until today….and Panama is already eliminated from qualifying for WC2010!! Gutted really that I didn’t even have a chance to preview the campaign at all, or write any match reports (although they weren’t pretty, believe me).

The long and short of it is in the many layered world of CONCACAF qualifying, Panama ended up having to play a home and home series versus El Salvador. Simple enough, loser goes home, winner moves on to the next group stage. Now to those of you more familiar with the European or South American version of qualifying, this may seem a bit extreme. Two matches and that’s it if you lose? Yup, that’s how we do it over here, at least in the early stages.

Let’s get something clear right now; Panama got straight up shafted in the draw for ‘Phase 2′ as they call this round of qualifying. While Panama awaited with a bye, El Salvador warmed up with a 16-0 aggregate drubbing of Anguilla in Phase 1. By getting the bye, Panama’s last competitve fixture was their Gold Cup loss to the US in 2007. They had a few friendlies, but nothing that would properly prepare them for the cauldron of San Salvador (where they lost 3-1 to be eliminated). My beef is with the draw. El Salvador? Easily the strongest team coming out of Phase 1. Not even close. And who did some of the other seeded teams get from Phase 1? USA got Barbados (9-0 aggregate win), Jamaica got the Bahamas (13-0 aggregate win), Mexico got Belize (9-0 aggregate win)…..you get my drift. I’m not making excuses but to draw El Salvador was a nightmare that came true. We can moan as much as we want about the format (180 minutes and thats it? Campaign done?), and the draw (toughest team by a country mile) but we can’t escape the fact that the two legs were more than winnable, and we just didn’t get the job done.

Next focus is on the Gold Cup then.

I’ll be back with more on Panamanian players abroad, and the domestic league soon.