CONCACAF Hexagonal, June Bad Call Edition

Schedule/Results:

Date	Home	Score (H)	Score (A)	Away	Hex Game
4-Jun	Jamaica	0	1	Mexico	6
7-Jun	Costa Rica	1	0	Honduras	4
7-Jun	Jamaica	1	2	United States	4
7-Jun	Panama	0	0	Mexico	4
11-Jun	Honduras			Jamaica	5
11-Jun	Mexico			Costa Rica	5
11-Jun	United States			Panama	5
18-Jun	Costa Rica			Panama	6
18-Jun	United States			Honduras	6

Updated Table:

Hex	GP	W	D	L	GD	GF	GA	Pnt	Pts/15	Pts/20
Costa Rica	4	2	1	1	2	5	3	7	15	19
United States	4	2	1	1	1	4	3	7	15	21
Mexico	5	1	4	0	1	3	2	7	11	18
Panama	4	1	3	0	2	5	3	6	11	16
Honduras	4	1	1	2	-2	4	6	4	13	16
Jamaica	5	0	2	3	-4	2	6	2	7	11

Question: what on earth is happening with Mexico? The win against Jamaica was surely going to kick-start this team out of its slumber, right? As you can see above, another listless scoreless draw later, that does not appear to be the case.

It's not even the lack of results (well, it kind of is), but their inability to put the ball in the net is perplexing. Only Jamaica has scored fewer goals so far in the Hex, and Jamaica is pretty clearly the 6th team in this 6-team Hex. 

I would prefer to talk about the game, but thanks to it being on beIn Sport, I couldn't watch it. Judging by the looks of the telecast from the highlights I saw, beIn Sport may simply be a high school production club. Thanks for putting money over fans, US Soccer/FIFA, well done. 

Okay, let's get to the bad call: 

See the guy in the yellow shirt on the very left of the mass of people? That's the Jamaican player who scored the tying goal in the 89th minute of Friday's USA-Jamaica game. This player is clearly in an offside position (less than 2 players between him and the goal he's trying to score on) at the time the kick is taken. 

The linesman (light blue shirt just above the "JAM" in the score box near the top of the screen) should see this (and raise his flag to signal it). Why doesn't he? I'm not sure. But he's clearly out of position. A linesman is supposed to align himself with the second closest player to his own goal-line. In the picture above, there are 3 Team USA players closer to their own goal-line (including the not-pictured keeper) than the linesman. 

Even with his terrible position, there does not appear to be anything obstructing the linesman's view of the offside player. My best guess? The linesman simply had a brainfart, and focused on the wrong section of the mass of players, and by the time he looked up to the bigger picture, he had no idea where the goalscorer had come from. And if he's not sure, he's not going to make a call. 

Luckily for him, and for the US team, they scored less than 4 minutes later to take back the win, but this could have been a disastrous embarrassment for CONCACAF. 

CONCACAF Hexagonal, June Preview

This is a big month in the CONCACAF region's quest to qualify for the World Cup. Each team plays 3 qualifiers this month, after which only 40% of the qualifying matches will remain.

Schedule/Results

4-Jun	Jamaica	0	1	Mexico	6
7-Jun	Costa Rica			Honduras	4
7-Jun	Jamaica			United States	4
7-Jun	Panama			Mexico	4
11-Jun	Honduras			Jamaica	5
11-Jun	Mexico			Costa Rica	5
11-Jun	United States			Panama	5
18-Jun	Costa Rica			Panama	6
18-Jun	United States			Honduras	6

Updated Table:

Hex	GP	W	D	L	GD	GF	GA	Pnt	Pts/15	Pts/20
Mexico	4	1	3	0	1	3	2	6	11	18
Panama	3	1	2	0	2	5	3	5	13	18
Costa Rica	3	1	1	1	1	4	3	4	15	19
United States	3	1	1	1	0	2	2	4	15	19
Honduras	3	1	1	1	-1	4	5	4	13	17
Jamaica	4	0	2	2	-3	1	4	2	10	14

For a discussion of the Pts/15 and Pts/20 columns, see the After 1 game report

In the After 3 games report, I mentioned how it looked like there might not be any pushovers in this year's hexagonal. One mere game later, that statement looks a little premature. With a home loss to Mexico, Jamaica is on track to be the minnow in this year's shark-infested qualifying waters.

The main argument against Jamaica being the weakling of this group? They achieved a scoreless draw in Mexico in their first game. A fluke in scheduling gave the Reggae Boys a chance to really put the screws to the Mexican team earlier than anticipated, but instead Mexico delivered the message that they have finally righted themselves. All accounts indicate Mexico dominated their June 4th game, and that is the Mexico we expected to see from the beginning.

That makes tonight's game extremely important for Team USA. The Americans lost in Jamaica during the previous round of qualifying, which gave US Soccer fans everywhere a bit of a cardiac event. The US recovered and moved on to the hexagonal round. This time around, a loss could be more damaging. Panama has gone into Jamaica and earned a point. Mexico earned three. Both teams currently sit above the USA in the standings (granted it's early and Mexico has played an extra game). But if Jamaica is to be this year's sacrificial lamb, the USA cannot afford to give up points that, right now, they have to expect their competitors to accumulate.

After they play Jamaica, the USA will finish June with 2 more home games. The US needs 7 points from these three games to give itself some solid footing. The team that took a 4-1 lead on Germany less than a week ago can certainly achieve that, if not better. The team that let that game turn into a dogfight that they held on to win 4-3 could easily jeopardize any (or all) of these three games.

The road game in Jamaica gives the US a chance to bank some points and give themselves some breathing room for their two home matches. It also would give themselves 4 road points with 2 more away games still to come, which is what it has historically taken to finish top-4 and guarantee at least a chance to qualify for the World Cup.

Most Adorable Goal Ever

Watch this and try not to smile.



The son of one of Chelsea's players stole the show after Chelsea's final game of their English Premier League season.

NFL Draft Thoughts, Day 1

Or, Why Buffalo will continue to stink for the foreseeable future

- Three offensive tackles go in the first 4 picks: After doing 27 seconds of research (mostly scanning through my own memories) I feel confident in saying this was the first time this happened in NFL Draft history. Why did this draft (probably) make history? Two main reasons:
1) There are no franchise quarterbacks in this draft
2) There are no sure thing pass-rushers in this draft

Here are the positions drafted first overall since 1988
LB, QB, QB, DT, DE, QB, DT, RB, WR, OT, QB, QB, DE, QB, QB, QB, QB, QB, DE, QB, OT, QB, QB, QB, QB

That's 15 QBs and 5 defensive line players in 25 years.

Offensive line is seen as a "safer" pick than QB or DE, and it's a valuable position (just look at how the good ones get paid). If you don't like what you see at the top value positions, grabbing a tackle is probably the way to go.

- Two offensive guards go in the first 10 picks: Guards don't normally go top-10. The position simply isn't that important. You don't leave guards on an island to take a defender out of the picture like you do tackles. It's such a scrum in the middle of the field that it's very rare that a guard can really distinguish himself. Don't believe me? Look at how often guards get paid. Not nearly as often as tackles. Did Arizona and Tennessee get good players? Absolutely, both of these guards have been graded very highly across the board. Did they get good value for their picks? Not really.

- The Jets forgot to screw up their draft: Reading up on this draft you'd think the Jets are a player or two away from being good. They're not. They're not the Raiders, who essentially have a black hole where their talent should be, but they need to tear the house down to its foundation and rebuild. So reaching for a quarterback, or an offensive skill position, just to "plug a need" wasn't going to be helpful. The Jets, first and foremost, need talent. And they got it. With their first pick (9th) they grabbed the consensus best defensive player on the board (CB Dee Milliner), replacing the recently traded Darrelle Revis. With the second pick (#13, from the Revis trade), they grabbed the top defensive tackle on the board, Sheldon Richardson. The Jets did it right, and simply went for the best talent they could get.

- The Bills, on the other hand: Buffalo made no bones about the fact that they wanted to come out of this draft with a franchise quarterback. After trading down from #8 to #16, their pick came up with every quarterback still on the board, so they had their pick of the litter. These are the names of quarterbacks who had been mocked somewhere reliable as the first quarterback taken in this draft:
Geno Smith, Matt Barkley, Ryan Nassib (who played for the current Bills coach in college).

The Bills bypassed all of these names and took EJ Manuel out of Florida State.

Now before I continue, I should point out that my team picked a quarterback in last year's draft that everyone thought would fail in the NFL. They rode this quarterback to the divisional round of the playoffs and are being talked up as a legitimate Super Bowl contender this off season. So one might think I should be careful in ragging on another team for taking a quarterback way ahead of where the pundits thought he should go.

But there are two giant differences in the two situations:
1) All of the negatives for Russell Wilson were about his height. The negatives around EJ Manuel concern his ability to play quarterback (can he go through his reads, his ability to move in the pocket, and accuracy).
2) Russell Wilson stepped into a team with quite a bit of talent on it (good running game, great defense). Manuel's Bills have a couple of offensive talents (CJ Spiller, Stevie Johnson) and nothing else.

This smells like a team that saw the read option succeed last year, so they went for the most athletic quarterback they could find. The issue is, the read option worked because it was used with great quarterbacks who happened to be athletic. Not athletes playing quarterback. With the uncertainty as to whether Manuel is the former or the latter, taking him at #16 when no one else had even sniffed at a quarterback looks desperate. And choices made in desperation tend to end badly, much like all of Buffalo's seasons since 1999 (or ever, depending on your perspective).

Vikings make 3 picks: Minnesota grabbed a DT with their original pick (#23), a CB with the pick they got from the Seahawks as part of the Percy Harvin deal (#25), and a WR with a pick they acquired from the Patriots for a few mid-round picks (#29).

Manti Te'o is selected by...no one: Three teams were talked up as having interest in Te'o in the first round. The Bears, the Vikings, and the Ravens. The Bears and Ravens seemed the result of lazy analysis ("Oh, Urlacher/Lewis is gone, let's give them the best known MLB in the draft!") Minnesota's interest seemed a little more legit, but between his measurables, his performance in the Alabama game, and his, ummm, fake dead girlfriend, he was not going to be good value in the first round. On the plus side, I'm sure ESPN and the NFL Network have learned their lesson and won't spend all of today talking about him again...right? Right? Please???

Patriots trade out of 1st round: In other news, the sun rose in the east, dog bites man, and the Browns still stink (sorry, Cleveland).

Day 1 Trade rundown:

Miami gets	Oakland gets
3rd	12th, 42nd
St. Louis gets	Buffalo gets
8th, 71st	16th, 46th, 78th, 222nd
San Francisco gets	Dallas gets
18th	31st, 74th
Atlanta gets	St. Louis gets
22nd, 7th rounder (2015)	30th, 92nd, 198th
Minnesota gets	New England gets
29th	52nd, 83rd, 102nd, 229th

The two trades that stand out are Dallas-San Francisco (San Francisco got to move up 13 spots for very cheap) and Minnesota-New England (for a team with 2 other first rounders, Minnesota paid dearly to get a 3rd one in a draft that's being talked up for its depth, not it's cream of the crop).