He is the oldest player on the U.S. national team's latest World Cup qualifying roster and was its best in the Americans' first away match in the CONCACAF hexagonal, a come-from-behind 2-2 draw in Sal Salvador in which he set up the first goal and scored the second.Unfortunately, Frankie Hejduk will not be continuing his renaissance tomorrow night in Costa Rica. The national team has confirmed that the 34-year-old defender will miss the match with a strained groin, forcing the Americans to do without valuable experience at a venue where they will need it so desperately.
The seemingly indefatigable Hejduk has started the first three games of the round, helping the U.S. to a 2-0-1 record and first place. But he missed the Columbus Crew's game against San Jose last week, and last Friday coach Bob Bradley said the injury "was going to probably take seven to 10 days." Bradley still has Jonathan Spector, Marvell Wynne, Danny Califf and Jonathan Bornstein on his list, but none offer the veteran savvy of Hejduk.
The El Salvador drama in March demonstrated the challenge presented by road games in Central America, and Costa Rica (second place at 2-1-0) is a different class. The U.S. has never won a qualifier there, going 0-5-1, and has had a nightmarish time on the artificial turf of Estadio Saprissa. It has had to endure everything from dodging batteries and bags of urine to the famously egregious phantom handball call on Greg Berhalter in 2000. Its last visit, in October 2005, was a 3-0 loss.
"They have great confidence there, and we are aware that we've never won there, so when we look at different challenges and and talk about things that we still want to achieve, this is a good example," Bradley said, adding that experience in that sort of venue is important. "We try to take into account the experiences that our plaeyrs have had....The fact that we have a number of guys that have been to Saprissa Stadium, that have played matches there, that will certainly be part of what we discuss when we get the whole group together."
Tim Howard, Oguchi Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra, DaMarcus Beasley, Pablo Mastroeni and Brian Ching are the members of Bradley's roster who started that October 2005 game. But nobody on the team has scored a goal in Costa Rica, and no matter the experience earned abroad by players like Onyewu, Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley, or the key roles at home played by the likes of Landon Donovan and Sacha Kljestan, Saprissa (and Azteca in Mexico City) always seems to spook the Americans. The average age of the US roster is 25, according to the federation. The Saprissa crowd is loud and on top of you, the lights always seem to play a few tricks and the referees inevitably are unsympathetic. Hejduk's effort, experience and optimism would have been a big help on Wednesday night.
Meanwhile....
At the other end of CONCACAF, Toronto FC is in position to clinch the second annual Canadian Championship and a berth in this fall's Champions League tonight in Vancouver. The MLS club (2-0-0) will win its first trophy with a tie, while the Whitecaps (2-1-0) need a win to stay alive and remain in position to repeat the Montreal Impact's incredible run last term.
"It's a big deal for us," TFC captain Jim Brennan told the club's website. "It's about time we won something now. We had a couple of years where we were getting things together but now we've got a very good side. We have a team full of winners and now is the time for us to start winning things."
It's great that Toronto is taking the tournament seriously. While some US-based MLS clubs repeatedly bag the Open Cup (which now also comes with a Champions League berth), TFC is doing its part to help build some soccer tradition in a country that has next to none. It's easy to pick up on criticism of Canadian soccer authorities if you hang around the game long enough, and the chorus grew louder last fall when the national team crashed out of the second round of World Cup qualifying winless.
But this is something that Canadian soccer got right. Take the country's three fully-professional teams and play a double round-robin to decide a true national champion. Hopefully it's something that will continue when Vancouver ascends to MLS in 2011.
