Thursday, March 8, 2007

Not so fast

The Gold Cup draw was announced a few days ago and it was, as expected, set up so the US and Mexico won't meet until the final if both teams win their groups and reach the final.

A lot of people are already making plans for a US-Mexico final on June 24 in Chicago's Soldier Field but we should all realize that the games still have to be played. Jeff Carlisle, for one, over at Soccernet says that it's all but a done deal for US-Mexico in the final.

Now, while I think Mexico and the US are clear favorites to reach the final, I wouldn't buy any plane tickets to Chicago just yet. The US and Mexico met in the 1991 and 1993 finals but look at the rest of the tournament's history:

1996: Mexico-Brazil
1998: Mexico-US
2000: Canada-Colombia
2002: US-Costa Rica
2003: Mexico-Brazil
2005: US-Panama

Don't really see a lot of US-Mexico finals there. Three of eight finals have been US-Mexico and two of those were in the early, early days of the tournament. Now, it could very well be that the US and Mexico play each other in the final but it's far from a foregone conclusion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, US and Mexico met in the semifinals at the 1991 edition. The US won against Honduars on penalties in the final.