A Match Defined by Absence

On This Day in 2009, Bornstein's Late Equalizer Gave Joy to a Match as Players and Fans Were Heartbroken Following Davies's Accident

The question that hung over RFK Stadium on Wednesday night was not whether the United States would qualify for the World Cup. That had been answered four days earlier on the soaked field in Honduras, when Conor Casey's two goals and Landon Donovan's bending free kick had secured a place in South Africa. The American team had already done what they came to do. They were already going.

No, the question that truly mattered existed in a hospital room across the city, where Charlie Davies lay in a bed at Washington Hospital Center. There were two breaks in his right leg and fractures in his face, among other injuries, from a car accident where the vehicle he was riding in struck a guardrail on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Davies was in "serious, but stable condition," but another passenger, Ashley Roberta, was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver, later identified as Maria Espinoza, who was driving under the influence, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two years in prison in 2011.

Davies was 23 years old. He had been the attacking spark at the Confederations Cup that summer, providing an offensive intensity against the world's best that suggested the Americans possessed something they had lacked for years: a young player capable of changing matches. He had just transferred to France's Ligue 1, to Sochaux, a step upward that promised a career trajectory that would carry him through the World Cup and beyond. The medical assessments indicated recovery in 6 to 12 months. The unspoken truth was harsher: Davies would almost certainly never wear the American jersey in South Africa.

That absence—his absence—was palpable as the teams took the field on a cool, rainy October 14 evening. American fans had organized on social media in advance, coordinating placards bearing the number 9—Davies's jersey number—as a collective gesture of mourning and solidarity. When Casey received a pass from Jozy Altidore in the ninth minute and stood unmarked in front of the goal, the moment seemed to carry weight beyond the pitch. Davies would have converted this. Davies would have been there.

But Casey's shot didn't find the net. And moments later, Bryan Ruiz collected the ball for Costa Rica and bent a shot into the upper corner with the kind of precision that seemed to say the evening belonged to the visitors. In the 24th minute, Ruiz struck again, a thunderous drive from distance that left Tim Howard with no chance. Two minutes. Two goals. The Ticos had come to Washington with desperation—they sat fourth in the table, still fighting for their World Cup berth, facing elimination if the numbers didn't fall their way. Now they were winning. Now they were ascending.

The Americans were not playing for qualification. That relief, which should have liberated them, instead seemed to paralyze them. Without the weight of necessity that had carried them through Honduras, they appeared diminished. They possessed the ball. They created chances. But they lacked precision, lacked the sharp finishing touch that transforms pressure into goals. The rain intensified as the match wore on. The turf became treacherous, a slick surface that demanded caution and rewarded audacity in equal measure. Costa Rica, leading 2-0 and defending, began to see their path to qualification materializing. All they needed was to survive. All they needed was for the clock to run down. 

But the Americans, shaped by four previous comebacks during this qualifying cycle, refused to accept defeat. In the 72nd minute, Michael Bradley collected a rebound and fired it past the goalkeeper Keylor Navas. The margin had been halved. The momentum, which had belonged so completely to Costa Rica, began to shift. Then, in the 83rd minute, the match suffered a wound of its own. Oguchi Onyewu, who had been the anchor of American defense throughout the qualifying campaign, planted his left foot to head a ball during a corner kick and collapsed. His left knee, the patella tendon severed by the impact, had given way beneath him. Players gestured frantically to the sideline. Medical attention arrived. And then, in a moment that seemed almost scripted by fate, Onyewu was carried from the field.

The United States had used all three of its allowed substitutions. They would finish the match with 10 players. Costa Rica sensed the opportunity. Here was a team down a man, playing in the wet, with their goalkeeper showing signs of vulnerability. The Ticos pressed forward, seeking to capitalize on their numerical advantage. After the Onyewu injury, they had seven more minutes left to secure the victory. Seven minutes to send the United States to only its second home loss in qualifying since 1985. Seven minutes to keep their World Cup dream alive.

What happened instead was the kind of moment that transcends the mathematics of the match. In the 95th minute, as the final seconds of regulation time dissolved into stoppage time, Robbie Rogers, wearing the number 9 shirt in Davies's absence, delivered a corner kick into the penalty area. The ball hung in the humid air, finding space in a crowded box. And from the least expected source—Jonathan Bornstein, the left fullback, a player not known for heading prowess—came a final act of defiance. Bornstein, basically unmarked, his smaller frame somehow finding the space that had eluded everyone else, rose above the crowd and nodded the ball past Navas.

The stadium erupted. Not in triumph, exactly, but in something more complex: a release of tension, a validation of resilience, a collective exhale after days of devastation. Bornstein, mobbed by his teammates, had scored a goal that meant nothing to the standings for the Americans and everything to the spirit of the team. The United States and Costa Rica would draw 2-2.

As the final whistle sounded, the American players did something that spoke to what this match had become. They carried a banner bearing the number 9. They took a victory lap around the stadium not because they had won, but because they had survived. Because they had fought back. Because their absent teammate, lying in a hospital bed across the city, had motivated them to answer the moment, even when the moment no longer demanded anything from them.

"We used Charlie's situation to motivate us," Howard said afterward, his words measured but sincere. "We're happy he was alive, and that in itself gave us a lift. Charlie would give anything at this moment to put on a jersey and have it all back. You almost kind of feel lucky and privileged."

The celebration was tempered, though, by what had been lost in the course of 90 minutes. Onyewu, that marginalized defender from AC Milan who had controlled the tempo through qualifying, would be out for three to four months. The injury had struck on the same day as Davies's accident, as if the football gods were determined to extract a price for the Americans' success. Bob Bradley, the head coach, spoke with the weariness of a man who had aged a decade in two days. "We've had two days of tough news," he said simply. "Gooch has been such an important part of our team."

Across the way, Costa Rica's own drama unfolded. Their coach, René Simoés, had been ejected in the 88th minute for arguing with officials, a decision that might carry consequences into the two-legged playoff he would lead against Uruguay. The Ticos, who had entered the final round 4-0-1 (WDL), had collapsed to 1-1-3, falling from second place to a playoff. They had tasted World Cup qualification and found it slipping away at the final moment. For them, this draw was a defeat.

For the United States, standing on the threshold of its sixth consecutive World Cup appearance, the significance was harder to measure. They had finished first in the CONCACAF hexagonal for the first time outright, surpassing Mexico by a single point. This was a statement, a declaration that the region's traditional hierarchy was shifting. Yet it rang hollow against the backdrop of Davies's hospital bed and Onyewu's damaged knee. As the players jogged from the field, the rain still falling on the grass of RFK Stadium, they carried with them the peculiar weight of survival.

But the following days, and in the months ahead, would bring reckoning. How quickly would Onyewu recover? Would Davies ever play again? And when the American team finally boarded a plane for South Africa in the summer, would they carry the momentum of these comebacks or the scars of these losses? The match itself provided no answers. Only questions, hanging in the cool Washington night, unanswered and possibly unanswerable.