Mexico Mounts Epic Comeback Against the U.S. to Win Gold Cup; Tim Howard Blasts CONCACAF

At the start of the match, it looked like the U.S was going to pull off a stunning upset. They scored 2 very early goals from Michael Bradley and Landon Donovan, looking like the dominant team for most of the 1st half. Mexico was not out, however, making an incredible comeback to win the game 4-2. Mexico exploited the U.S.'s biggest weakness, a very weak defensive back that goalkeeper Tim Howard has been critical of since the last World Cup. The final goal by Giovanni Dos Santos was a clear-cut example of this, pressuring Tim Howard who had absolutely no aid whatsoever even with 6 defenders at his side.

The match never got particularly heated, other than Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez losing his cool late in the game, and it was clearly a friendly game. What did stand out was how overwhelming the support in the stadium was for Mexico. Generally, U.S. vs Mexico matches in the U.S. are divided 50-50 and have examples of people using the split-jersey, sewing two different jerseys together. This time, U.S. support was very low compared to the overwhelmingly Mexican crowd, many of which included visitors from Tijuana.

Perhaps feeding off the crowd, the Cup Presentation Ceremony was conducted almost exclusively in Spanish by Univision reporter Fernando Fiore. This didn't sit very well with Tim Howard, commenting that it was a "fucking disgrace" to conduct the ceremony entirely in Spanish on U.S. soil because he said, "You can bet your ass if we were in Mexico City it wouldn’t all be in English." CONCACAF was not available for comment, but Howard's comments are only one part of the controversy that the Gold Cup has had.

There are multiple allegations that Mexico had more than 5 players caught with banned substances in their drug tests, possibly the entire team, but CONCACAF kept the team in the tournament because they were the defending champions and it was likely that the final match would be between the U.S. and Mexico. I find it personally puzzling why Mexico was allowed at all to stay in the tournament with so many players caught, especially the goalkeeper. CONCACAF is probably the most controversial continental division in FIFA, especially now with Jack Warner resigning due to ethics violations and corruption charges.

I personally have to agree with Tim Howard. Generally, international announcements are conducted in 2 languages, the host country's language, and English. In the case of the host country using English, but the winning team is not an English speaking-country, the announcements will also be made in that country's language. Long story short, the ceremony should have been conducted in both English and Spanish, not overwhelmingly Spanish. Fernando Fiore is usually a good reporter and has fun on-air tweeting with Chad Ochocinco, but he really dropped the ball here. I understand CONCACAF picking Fiore to make the announcements since he's an unbiased observer who speaks fluent English (Fiore is from Argentina), but allowing him to continue doing the whole ceremony in Spanish is really mind-boggling.

With Mexico's win over the U.S., they will represent CONCACAF in the Confederations Cup in 2013 after the U.S represented in 2009. The Confederations Cup is considered by most to be a dress-rehearsal of sorts, since it always takes place in the next World Cup's host country one year prior to the World Cup. The Confederations Cup winner is generally viewed to be the favorite going into the World Cup because of the nature of difficulty in getting there; one must be the best team in the continental division to even qualify, and then the team must beat the other best national teams in the world. In the 2009 Confederations Cup, however, the final match was between the U.S. and Brazil, Brazil winning 3-2. In the 2010 World Cup, the U.S. was eliminated in the Round of 16 and Brazil was eliminated in the Quarter-Finals.

I'm not that terribly upset the U.S. lost, since Mexico won anyway and if this drug scandal ends up being more serious, or even if it's all cleared, both of my teams made it anyway.