Kicks off today vs mighty Barbados (pop. 270,000) a proud footballing nation nonetheless. (TV ESPN 2 2:00 PDT) Two legged elimination series with the return match in Barbados next Sunday.

I am a little nervous since the US haven't scored a goal during the run of play in four games. Though I expect at least 4 today.

Starting lineup

18-Brad Guzan; 6-Steve Cherundolo, 5-Oguchi Onyewu, 3-Carlos Bocanegra, 15-Heath Pearce; 10-Landon Donovan, 12-Michael Bradley, 4-Pablo Mastroeni, 17-DaMarcus Beasley; 11-Brian Ching, 8-Clint Dempsey

Howard is hurt, sticking with 2 defensive midfielders is a little perplexing

I feel bad for barbados

wow, this is ugly

It is still 0-0 Mex-Belize in the 58th minute. Its on Telemundo the Mexican are getting very restless.

nm, I jinxed that one real quick.

I seem to recall a thread on this.

You guys should destroy them.

This is getting ridiculous...I've watched 10 minutes and it's been in the Barbados penalty area at least half that time.

lol 8-0

So ignoring the 3 goals today as they really aren't relevant, is Ching likely to be a feature for the USMNT? He didn't play in the run of friendlies iirc, though I don't know if he was injured or something.

I doubt Ching has much of a future with the National Team other than playing in some of the early qualifiers. Hopefully Altidore or Kenny Cooper can emerge and challenge Eddie Johnson for the striker spot. I wasn't that impressed with the US today but 8-0 is a great result especially after seeing the Mexico only beat Belize 2-0 in Houston and that Trinidad and Tobago (who qualified for last years WC) lost at home to Bermuda. I hope that some of the younger guys who didn't play in the friendlies like Robbie Rodgers and Kenny Cooper get to play in the return leg.

I don't think this is possible. Your 18 man lineup has to stay consistent for both legs.

Also, I would doubt you're going to see any of Robbie Rodgers in WCQ since he's never played a senior team game. You will get to see him in the Olympics though, no way he gets held off that.

I pretty sure you can. I hope he brings in a bunch of MLS guys which might make it more likely the MLS doesn't schedule games on FIFA dates next year.

You guys know if concacaf has released a more full set of rules?

I've only found this from the World Cup site, but nothing that would have the rule that tone mentions.

Well then hopefully I'm wrong. I have no idea why I thought this, so whatever.

The US is basically a lock to qualify right? Like, out of all those teams only Mexico is good at soccer.

Costa Rica and Trinidad both qualified in 2006 and had fairly okay teams, but yes Mexico and USA are the best CONCACAF teams and will both easily qualify. I'm not too familiar with Honduras but I think they are capable of scoring a goal or two.

Yeah.

The US and Mexico probably are the two countries most likely to qualify based on their relative skill level compared to the confederation and how many spots are allotted. Just to head off an argument, Brazil and Argentina are about the same.

The Concacaf (North America, Central America and the Caribbean) gets 3.5 spots. Other than the US and Mexico the rest of the Concacaf teams are pretty bad. The Conmebol (South America) gets 4.5 spots. The .5 is precisely that the 4th team out of concacaf and the 5th team out of conmebol have a home and away playoff with the winner advancing to the finals.

The way the concacaf qualification works the worst teams play a two-legged knockout round, then they throw the winners in with the top teams for the second knockout round. After that there are two group stages. So basically what the US and Mexico have to deal with are a knockout round against a really bad opponent, a group stage against not as bad but still pretty bad opponents (the groups are setup so the US, Mexico and Costa Rica are seeded and thus not in the same group), and then another group stage with the best teams in the confederation.

That was quite a sentence and I'm rambling a bit here, but the point is that there isn't much room for a shock early exit. The knockout round is a home and home which isn't as bad as a one off and the opponent at that stage will be terrible. The first group stage will feature 6 matches against three teams that are bad and the top 2 teams from each group advance so it would take an atrocious run for the US or Mexico to get eliminated there. Finally, there is a group of 6 teams, meaning 10 matches, and they just have to finish top 3 for the auto spot. The opposition is better, but there should be enough matches for the top teams to get to the top half of table every time.

Basically what you have is a lot of qualifiers relative to the quality of the confederation plus the seeding is such that you can only face the good teams in the last stage where you only need to finish in the top half.

edit:

I mentioned Brazil and Argentina. The Conmebol gets 4 spots plus the playoff with the concacaf 4th placer. The way they do it is to put all 10 countries in one league basically. You play everybody twice and the top 4 go through automatically. For Brazil and Argentina the opposition is a lot tougher than for the US and Mexico, but they are about as likely to qualify just because 18 matches is enough for them to have a few off days and still get into the top 4. In addition, if they end up being in the fifth spot they have a playoff with a Concacaf team that they are significantly better than.

Yeah Honduras is pretty good. Right now they have one of, if not the best, strikers in CONCACAF in Daved Suazo, who plays for Inter Milan.

Yeah you can make changes to the roster and I agree about MLS. I really hope they stop scheduling games during FIFA dates.

1-0 US win in the return leg.

The qualifying groups in the next phase are (Top 2 advance)

Group 1
USA
Guatemala
Trinidad and Tobago
Cuba

Group 2 'group of death'
Mexico
Canada
Honduras
Jamaica

Group 3
Costa Rica
Surniame
Panama
Haiti

Group 2 'group of death'
Mexico
Canada
Honduras
Jamaica

???

Mexico is the best team in CONCACAF. Canada and Honduras are at least top 5, if not top 4. Jamaica is better than Trinidad & Tobago was when they made the WC.

Mexico the best team in CONCACAF? No way!