United States and Mexico Tie One On

February 7th, 2008 by Tuffy Posted in soccer |

If the game had been a Tom Tancredo presidential rally, the poor man would have suffered a stroke as soon as he looked up into 70,000 faces of the enemy. If the game had been a Brinks Home Security commercial, the Brinks operator would have stopped calling to check on the United States goal by halftime. If the game had been a war, it would have been… well, the Mexican-American War, natch, except with six yellow cards and a concerted effort by the Mexican defense to take the piss out of Landon Donovan. (Don’t they know we have dibs on that?)

The United States and Mexico played a friendly game of futbol Wednesday night on neutral ground: Houston, Texas. The first half was a sloppy but exciting barrage of goals befitting of young scorers everywhere. Oguchi Onyewu made an insane run at goal after his throw-in at the 30th minute to fling himself at the loose ball recklessly and head it home off the far post; the dream-like loft and speed on the header made Mexican ‘keeper Guillermo Ochoa the sole participant in a game of freeze tag.

Mexico returned the favor through the NAFTA-style defense offered by American Drew Moor just a few minutes later on a set piece. Jonny Magallon (hereforth known as Selsun Blue, thanks to his new hair color and the able linguistic assistance of Matt Sussman) exposed the main weakness of Sam’s Army on Wednesday: the half of the field with U.S. ‘keeper Tim Howard standing forlornly on it, hoping for the calvary to finally arrive. Even Ross Perot could hear that giant sucking sound.

Then… Jozy.

In the 40th minute, Real Madrid officials dug the number for Jozy Altidore’s agent out of their other coat after a frantic search and were disappointed to be sent directly to a full voice mailbox. His international-level header tallied his first of many goals as a USMNT member and may have made a blogger squeal like a little girl. (And ladies… Jozy’s legal.)

Magallon spanked home another goal a few moments into the second half that made it clear to all watching that the U.S. defense couldn’t cover a set piece with the Star Wars missile defense program installed around the stadium. An apoplectic Tim Howard, desperately trying to properly position the young defenders in front of his goal with little success, should probably not play in a state with lenient gun ownership laws. Somebody’s going to emergency; somebody’s going to jail.

The last forty minutes of the exhibition showed an exhausted set of teams and audience after the rapid scoring early on. The rest of the match was sloppy, uninspired, and felt rather perfunctory… so it was more like old married sex.

Still, U.S. coach Bob Bradley got his younguns into the 2-2 draw as much as possible, never losing focus during the chippy play (English sports banter for “street fight”) that his goal was always to drain the swamp of old players that won’t be around for World Cup 2010.

Oh, and the U.S. gets to keep Texas for another year, so no one really wins, either.