Missed Shot

They are typical American tourists, the soccer equivalent of men who wear black socks with sandals, who are baffled by the exchange rate and who are hankering for a Big Mac. They try. They really do. When they're on the road, the members of the U.S. national team work hard and play with conviction, but they can't figure out a way to win.

Take Sunday's World Cup qualifying game with El Salvador, a nation that proved to be a more congenial host than anyone—especially the U.S. embassy in the capital of San Salvador—figured it would be. The Salvadorans have a decent team, with a sweet midfielder in Mauricio Cienfuegos, but not an especially dangerous one. Indeed, the hosts seemed ready for the taking after U.S. striker Roy Lassiter volleyed a cross from midfielder John Harkes for a goal in the 52nd minute. Nine minutes later, however, after a poorly executed U.S. offside trap, a miskick by Salvadoran striker Ra�l D�az Arce wound up in the goal after ticking off U.S. goalkeeper Brad Friedel's fingers. El Salvador held on for a 1-1 tie.

In Cup qualifying, any point won on the road is splendid, but Sunday's result didn't please the Americans, who had expected more of themselves. Never mind that the U.S. hasn't won a game in Central America since 1989. The Yanks know they lost their soccer virginity a long time ago. They are no longer the doe-eyed na�fs of the '90 World Cup slaughter in Italy or the bubbly homeboys who reached the second round in the '94 Cup. They are now hardened pros, a midlevel soccer power that should handle a team ranked 47 places below it in the world rankings, even if the match is being played on a sultry afternoon in the midst of a serene sea of Salvadoran blue and white. As U.S. Soccer Federation secretary general Hank Steinbrecher said after Sunday's tie, "We have to learn to put the nail in the coffin. There's a lack of a killer instinct."

So the Americans are slouching toward France '98, though they have a lot of company in the shallow end of the pool of CONCACAF, the group of World Cup aspirants from nations in the Caribbean and North and Central America. At the midway point of the final six-team CONCACAF qualifying tournament, only the first-place Mexicans have a road win, a 1-0 triumph in El Salvador on June 8. The U.S. tied 0-0 in Jamaica on March 2, lost 3-2 in Costa Rica on March 23 and, despite dominating the second half against the Salvadorans, flew back to Miami with one point instead of the three for a victory. A win would have given the Americans a huge lift in their bid to finish in CONCACAF's top three and thereby qualify for France. Instead, the third-place U.S. is only one point ahead of the bottom three teams, El Salvador, Canada and Jamaica. One U.S. advantage: Its remaining schedule, which includes three home matches and a visit to Vancouver, is soft. Will the Americans make it to France? Probably. Will they reach the second round of the World Cup final? Not if they keep playing with a lack of precision.

Lassiter could have won the game in injury time, but his shot glanced off the crossbar. It was a tough break for a striker who had made his own luck after a first half in which U.S. attacking partners David Wagner and Jovan Kirovski played as if they hadn't met each other before. Coach Steve Sampson fiddled with his lineup at halftime, flopping midfielders Cobi Jones and Ernie Stewart to move Stewart to his accustomed right side and making sure both stayed wide so the U.S. could stretch a limited Salvadoran defense. The changes worked almost immediately when Harkes made a throw-in to Stewart, received a quick return pass and spotted a breaking Lassiter. When Lassiter took the left-footed cross—"It was curving over his shoulder, almost a Willie Mays catch," Harkes said later—and his volley flew inside the far post, Cuscatl�n Stadium got so quiet you could hear a riot cop's truncheon drop.

About 100 national riot police were ringing the 35,000-seat oval, with a phalanx of local cops in every aisle. Blessedly, they were excess baggage. This was a fiesta, with a loud but never unruly crowd of 29,000. The preemptive show of force, however, was not unwarranted. In El Salvador's last game at Cuscatl�n, the loss to Mexico, fans hurled debris, and one strong-armed supporter dinged a linesman with a projectile when a penalty wasn't called against Mexico in the closing minutes. FIFA, the sport's international governing body, fined the Salvadoran federation $35,000 for the crowd's rowdiness and Salvadoran coach Milovan Djoric $5,000 for, among other infractions, his remarks about the Argentine who refereed the game; it also suspended Djoric for two games, including Sunday's. That didn't stop Djoric from standing behind the El Salvador bench and screaming instructions about substitutions to surrogate Kiril Dojcihovski. Put it this way: The FIFA ban had less teeth than Mike Tyson.

Had there been more incidents on Sunday, FIFA could have moved El Salvador's last two home games, scheduled for Sept. 14 and Nov. 9, to a neutral country, so everyone was on his Sunday behavior. In the first half, when someone threw a water bag at Harkes as he readied to take a corner kick, 25 fans pointed at the culprit. "The guards," Harkes said afterward, "were more of a threat than the crowd." None of the American players was hanged in effigy, although their images were carved into coconuts by a man outside the team hotel. At $20 the souvenirs were a bigger steal than El Salvador's tie.

Maybe U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson, who assumed her post in El Salvador on May 16, now has a firmer grip on the level of risk that visiting American soccer fans face. The embassy simply should have advised Americans planning to attend Sunday's game that some discretion was in order. Instead it dropped a diplomatic big one by telling its American employees not to go to the match and having the U.S. State Department issue a warning to all U.S. citizens that soccer games are "often emotional events that have engendered violent or disruptive behavior by supporters of different teams." To which we add, Duh. The Salvadoran government was mildly miffed by what even Sampson termed "an overreaction."

Which is not to say that soccer travel isn't often tough. Last year, when Sampson was in Costa Rica on a scouting mission, 5,000 fans rushed to the side of the stadium where he entered and began screaming, in Spanish, " Steve Sampson, f—-you!"

"I don't know if honored is the right word, but at least it shows that fans from around the world know who the U.S. coach is," Sampson says. "That's a sign of respect." Even when travel is bumpy, you try to make the best of it.