Still Searching for the Finish

On This Day in 1994, The Americans Tie Bolivia in the Joe Robbie Cup, as Questions Persist Four Months From the World Cup

The unanswered question that January left behind—whether the Americans could find goals consistently enough to escape their World Cup group—traveled with the squad to Hong Kong in the second week of February, and the Carlsberg Cup offered no reassuring answers. Against European champion Denmark, the United States played to a scoreless draw before losing on penalty kicks. Against Romania, a disputed penalty in the 72nd minute handed the Americans a 2-1 defeat, Marcelo Balboa's goal the only consolation in a result that stung less for the loss than for how it was decided. The Americans flew home from Hong Kong 1-3-1 (WDL) on the year, with Milutinovic's measured standard—better it happen now than in June—tested against the calendar's unforgiving arithmetic.

A week later, Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami offered a different kind of examination. The Joe Robbie Cup had assembled four World Cup-bound nations. The United States, Colombia, Sweden and Bolivia would play in a weekend tournament that was, in the most clinical sense, organized practice. No team was quite at full strength. No result would carry into the summer. And yet the proximity of the World Cup had begun to change the atmosphere around every training run and exhibition, the approaching tournament feeding a quiet electricity into even the most routine preparations. Alexi Lalas, who would sit in a Florida downpour after a soaked practice session and simply grin, understood this instinctively. "We get paid to run around and kick a ball," he said.

Vice President Al Gore and his family were among the 15,676 who came to Joe Robbie Stadium on the evening of February 18, bringing a ceremonial weight to what was, basically, a glorified scrimmage. Tony Meola learned only five hours before kickoff that he would start—the selection made not on form but on rotation, given that Brad Friedel had started the last time these teams met a year and a half earlier. Initially unsettled by the late notice, Meola spent the match quieting himself through the work itself, making five saves, several of them spectacular in sequence: repelling a long-range effort, then tracking the ricochet, then soaring to catch the follow-up attempt. He got better as the night wore on, which proved fortunate, because the American defense in front of him gave him ample opportunity to practice.

Bolivia's goal came in the 44th minute and exposed precisely the defensive fragility that assistant coach Timo Liekoski had, with some premature confidence, declared solved the day before. Jaime Moreno collected the ball from Alvaro Pena and accelerated down the right flank. Desmond Armstrong, caught in midfield when the counterattack developed, couldn't recover in time. Meola came out to challenge, partially slipped trying to avoid Armstrong, and Moreno seized the opening, pivoting left and driving a hard shot from 12 yards into the net, with the ball deflecting off Lalas's hand on its way in, an inadvertent touch the referee correctly ignored since the shot was already on course. "I was stuck in the midfield when we got caught on the counterattack," Armstrong said afterward.

The halftime deficit had, in January, become the crucible in which the Americans proved themselves. Against Norway, against Switzerland, against Russia, they had found equalizers and winners in the closing minutes. But the pattern had begun to attract a different kind of scrutiny—less admiration for the resilience than concern about the habit of needing it. Spotting World Cup opponents' early goals in June was unlikely to produce similar results.

The second half offered the familiar posture: American pressure, Bolivian discipline, and the crowd at Joe Robbie Stadium with little to cheer. Mike Burns entered as a substitute midfielder 11 minutes before the answer arrived. He found Cobi Jones on the left wing, reading the run correctly because, as Burns explained, "I saw he was one on one, and with his speed, that's what you want." Jones pushed the ball toward the endline—too far, it seemed—then swung his left foot and watched the shot skitter across the goalmouth. Bolivian defender Marco Sandy lunged and made contact, nudging the ball the final distance into the net. The goal was Jones's, the touch Sandy's, the result a 1-1 tie in the 78th minute. It was the Americans' sixth goal in their last seven matches, a pace that satisfied no one.

"Before, we were losing games," Jones said in the locker room afterward, where Vice President Gore moved through the celebration with the enthusiasm of someone marking a significant achievement rather than a hard-won draw. "Now we're starting to tie more games. Hopefully by the World Cup, we'll be ready to win games." The progression Jones described had a certain logic. It also had four months of evidence suggesting the third stage remained genuinely uncertain.

"It's a problem," Armstrong said of the Americans' recurring deficits. "But I think we showed a lot of character to be able to come back." The assessment was accurate in both halves. The character was real, but so was the problem.

Sunday's match against Sweden removed any ambiguity the result against Bolivia might have left. Hugo Perez, who a month earlier had contemplated quitting after a devastating performance against Switzerland and a lingering ankle injury, scored in the fourth minute. The Americans then watched Sweden dismantle their defensive organization over the remaining 86 minutes, falling 3-1 in front of 20,171. "The synchronization of our defense was inadequate," Milutinovic said, before reaching for the maxim he had deployed throughout the winter: "But there's an old saying: Better it happen now than later."

Sweden won the Joe Robbie Cup on goal differential, finishing level on points with Colombia but superior in the tiebreaker. The Americans returned to Mission Viejo with a 1-4-2 (WDL) record on the year and three months remaining before their World Cup opener against Switzerland at the Pontiac Silverdome.

The month had clarified rather than resolved. The finishing problem was real and persistent—a 1-1 draw against Bolivia, achieved on a deflection in the 78th minute, was not the evidence of scoring reliability the Americans needed. The January resilience, for all its emotional value, was beginning to look less like a foundation than a habit—a useful one, perhaps, but insufficient for opponents who would not need much invitation to punish American disorganization from the back.

What the Americans possessed was undeniable: fitness, collective commitment, and the psychological reflex to stay in games they had no business winning. What remained unproven, with Colombia, Switzerland, and Romania waiting in June, was whether any of that could substitute for the defensive cohesion and finishing consistency that the World Cup would demand. March and April would need to provide answers that January's drama and February's draws had only deferred.