We only pay for "Basic" cable. This means we get most of the broadcast stations plus a couple of others. They didn't lock us out too tight on the top end and so we get HGTV at 77 and an only sightly fuzzy Bravo at 76. Home and Garden TeleVision is Lexie's default channel. There are very few shows on there that she won't watch.
One of the broadcast stations that we don't get is Telefutura. This is broadcast at UHF 17, but on cable at 41 -- way past where ours peters out at about 24 (very fuzzy ESPN). ESPN2 has Soccer Saturdays, which is to say that they show an MLS game most weeks but are unreachable for me at 25.
All twenty-five of the CONCACAF Gold Cup 2005 games will be televised. The majority of the games seem to have been on Telefutura. During the first week, I was picking up mail and watering plants for a friend who had digital cable. He invited me to watch all his HBO channels while he still had them. Instead I watched soccer on Telefutura. Now, don't get me wrong, a number of the games have been on Galavision (6) and Univision (8) and some have been replayed there. In fact the final on Sunday at 2:00pm CDT will be on Univision.
Last night, however, both semi-final games were on Telefutura and for a number of reasons I needed to stay home. The first game was the one I was most interested in (USA vs. Honduras). After most of the guys I called were either not answering or not going to be home, I reached Rob and he agreed to tape the game for me.
Soccer games usually run two hours on TV -- two forty-five minute halves, a fifteen minute half-time and some opening ceremonies. In elimination games, however, a draw will not do, so we run the risk of extra time (two fifteen minute periods I think) and if that is insufficient then we go to penalty kick "shoot-outs."
I found out how the 12 teams that took part in the tournament were chosen a couple of weeks ago. The tournament started with three groups of four teams playing round robin. The top two teams from each group, plus the two third-place teams with the best records advanced to the quarter finals. These games took place on Saturday and Sunday. It turned out that every team that advanced from Group A (Honduras, Panama, Columbia) won its quarter final match. The only game which did not include a team from group A was the easy win for USA(B1) over Jamaica(C3).
The first game of the entire tournament was Panama's surprise win over Columbia 1-0. Columbia was also beaten by Honduras (2-1) in group play, but it's win over Trinidad & Tobago (2-0) was enough to allow them to advance. In the first game on Sunday at Reliant Stadium (Houston, TX), Columbia(A3) sent home reigning Cup champs, Mexico(C1), after an amazing kick by Abel Aguilar from 35 meters out curved over the hands of the hopelessly retreating Mexican goalie Muñoz and under the bar.
In the short history of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, the only winners have been North American teams: USA (1991, 2002), Canada (2000), and Mexico (1993, 1996, 1998, 2003). Canada placed third in group B and it's goal shortage kept them from advancing to the quarter-finals. USA and Costa Rico led group B, each beating Canada and Cuba and playing each other to a draw.
After their strong performance against Mexico, I expected Columbia to wrap up Panama without a problem last night, particularly following the embarassment they suffered on the tournament's opening night. Could it be that Columbia might be not only the first non-Norte-Americano, but non-CONCACAF team to win the Cup? Despite other folks calling Aguilar's goal a fluke and making other dismissive comments, I feared it was a real possibility. Panama had other plans. The game I didn't get to see last night saw Panama victorious three goals to two.
That result was still over five hours in the future when the USA and Honduras entered the pitch.
I got to Rob's at about twenty after seven to get the tape of the game. I had warned him that this game which started at five might go long, so he shouldn't stop recording at seven. He assured me that he just put in a "four or six hour tape and hit record." He'd pull it out when I arrived to get it, whenever that was. I was planning on stepping out of the room and having him check to make sure the game was over before stopping the tape. There was no need.
When we got to his back room where the VCR was running, the tape was ejected. Immediately I understood that he had not checked the recording speed, and no matter what the current state of the game, I would be watching the first two hours and no more. I chatted with Rob a bit, thanked him for the tape and took it home.
There were very few commercials before the broadcast started, but kickoff did wait for the opening ceremonies a bit. I knew that the time was tight, but maybe we'd get lucky and it would be such a blowout that it would be decided long before time ran out. That hope evaporated as Honduras played tough in the first half and was the first to break the deadlock with a goal at thirty minutes. The play was rough and two minutes of injury time were added to the end of the half. During the injury time there was another injury. This meant that the first half ended up taking about fifty minutes.
The second half saw USA's play improve, but while they spent a lot of time on the Honduran's half of the field they couldn't seem to get anything solid enough to finish. All the while, I felt certain that the USA would eventually win, but I was doubting whether I would see it happen. With maybe five minutes of tape left the USA finally got a ball in the net without being called back.
A couple more minutes elapsed and I went to get the laptop so I could navigate to the official site and see how the game ended. I sat on the sofa and had the laptop on the ottoman booting up, when Lexie exclaims, "That's a goal!" I looked up just in time to see a camera angle from behind the net showing someone kicking the ball offscreen, possibly into the goal, then the camera scrolled down to the left and I thought I saw the ball, when "Click! Whirr..." the tape ended and started to rewind.
I wasn't even sure who had scored, but Lexie assured me it was us. I stopped the rewind and watched the entire play. Sure enough, we caught the goal being scored and the shot of the ball lying in the corner of the goal just before the end of the tape. On the website I found that was indeed the final score of the game. USA 2 - 1 Honduras.
Posted to Games and Sport at July 22, 2005 7:44 AM