The U.S. had not qualified for a FIFA World Cup since 1950 and wanted to give a good impression to the world of soccer by qualifying for the 1990 World Cup, after having been selected by FIFA in 1988 to host the 1994 tournament.[2]
The United States was one of the five nations competing in the final round of CONCACAF's qualifiers for two spots at the upcoming World Cup in Italy, the other involved nations being Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador and Trinidad & Tobago. Mexico was disqualified due to a scandal related with the age adulteration for a youth tournament, known as los cachirules.[3] At that time, the U.S. team mainly consisted of college and semi-professional players.[4]
They started by losing 1–0 to Costa Rica away, then they got revenge by beating Costa Rica 1–0 at home. They conceded a late equalizer to draw with Trinidad and Tobago 1–1 at home, then beat Guatemala 2–1 (home) and El Salvador 1–0 (away). After scoreless draws against both Guatemala (away) and El Salvador (home), the situation of the group was as follows:
Since Trinidad and Tobago held the advantage in goal differential, they only needed a draw to qualify for what would have been their first World Cup finals. The United States, on the other hand, needed a road victory against Trinidad to qualify. Costa Rica had already qualified for the tournament in Italy.
Match
The game was played on November 19, 1989 in the Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port of Spain. The stadium was painted red as an homage to the Strike Squad as the Trinidadian team was then known.[5]
Early on, John Harkes tried unsuccessfully to score, while Trinidad and Tobago's Paul Elliot-Allen had two attempts on goal. Eventually, the breakthrough came in the 30th minute when Bruce Murray passed a bouncing ball to Paul Caligiuri, who dodged a rival defender and fired a looping left-footed shot from well outside the box that beat Trinidadian goalkeeper Michael Maurice and gave the U.S. a 1–0 lead.[6] It appeared that Maurice waited for the ball practically standing on the goal line; he later said he could not see it, arguing that the sun had blinded him.[7]
In the second half, the Trinidadians went on an offensive to find an equalizer, but Tony Meola made several saves to deny them. After the final whistle, the U.S. players joyously celebrated while Trinidad and Tobago was left in consternation.[8][9]
Due to the political situation in El Salvador and the fact that El Salvador and Guatemala had no chances to qualify for the World Cup by winning both matches, the matches still to be played between El Salvador and Guatemala were canceled.[11][12]
The U.S. press, considering the significance of the result, described Caligiuri's goal as "the shot heard 'round the world".[13][1]
After 36 years of absences from the World Cup, the U.S. team qualified for the 1990 World Cup but its participation in the tournament was brief. They lost 1–5 to Czechoslovakia, 0–1 against hosts Italy,[1] and 1–2 against Austria.[14]
Trinidad and Tobago suffered a World Cup qualification drought until 2005, when they beat Bahrain 2–1 on aggregate in an intercontinental playoff,[15] allowing the Soca Warriors to qualify to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany and become the smallest country at the time to ever qualify. Yorke and Latapy, members of the qualifying campaign of 1989, were part of that Trinidadian team, which in that World Cup earned a notable draw against favored Sweden 0–0 before losing England 2–0 and Paraguay 2–0, and ultimately being eliminated in the first round.[16]
The U.S. would host a highly-attended World Cup in 1994, then consecutively qualify for the next five subsequent World Cups. Ironically, 28 years later, with the U.S. needing only a draw against Trinidad and Tobago in their final World Cup qualification match, they instead suffered a shocking 2–1 loss and failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, ending their streak of seven consecutive qualifications that started with this match.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
