by Rod Hughes
The under-20-year-old All Star team from Costa Rica lost 1-0 against their Japanese counterparts yesterday in the world soccer championship tourney in Canada, edging closer to an early elimination.
The team played by the book, fearing to make a mistake, losing the element of surprise and therefore lost. But what do you expect, after the savaging they recieved from local sportwriters after their 1-0 loss to Nigeria? And mistakes happen in soccer, momentarily and unexpectedly. Take the error of a very good midfielder, Celso Borges, at minute 67 that allowed Japan’s Amotu Tanaka to boot in the only goal of the game, for example. It would have made little difference if earlier attacks had been rammed home with confidence. The score would have been 2-1.
And even local sportwriters must admit that when they were good in Victoria, they looked very good, indeed. As the game went on, the attacks were pressed forward more positively but also with an element of desperation that leads to imprecision.
“The truth is that there are no words (to describe the feeling) when the team plays well only to lose clear options to score,” a frustrated forward Luis Stewart Pérez told the daily La Nacion.
So the blue, white and red team is on the brink of going home, with no points, the same as the Scottish eleven, whom they have yet to play and whose division they share. As La Nación’s sportswriter Rodrigo Calvo says, only a miracle can send them into a second round. But in 1990, the senior All Stars made it into the second round of the World Cup by beating a Scottish team.
Maybe history will repeat itself. Anything can happen in this game…