On This Day in 1997, the United States Opened the Hexagonal With a Toothless 0-0 Draw in Kingston
The December validation had a shelf life of about six weeks. When the Americans returned from El Salvador with a 2-2 draw and a first-place finish in the semifinal round, Steve Sampson had spoken confidently about depth and about players like Preki, Frankie Hejduk and Jason Kreis proving the program was wider than its star names.
The January U.S. Cup was supposed to continue that demonstration. Instead, it produced something closer to a cold shower. Sampson sent out an inexperienced lineup against Mexico, Peru and Denmark, prioritizing development over results, and the tournament handed him three losses in return, including a 4-1 humiliation at the hands of the Danes that had very little to do with depth and quite a lot to do with the gap between theory and execution. A subsequent tour of China with similar personnel yielded a loss and a draw and raised no one's confidence. The veterans who had secured qualification in the fall had watched from a distance. Now they were needed again. The hexagonal would be different. It had to be.
The Americans arrived in Kingston carrying a compound set of concerns. Tab Ramos, the most creative midfielder on the roster, remained months away from returning after serious knee surgery. Joe-Max Moore was out with a groin injury. Eddie Pope, whose foot had kept him sidelined, would not feature. John Harkes, still recovering from ankle surgery, had trained throughout the week but was not fully himself. And Eric Wynalda—the career leading scorer, the man whose health functioned as a kind of barometer for the whole American attack—had spent the fall fighting a hernia that robbed him of the extra gear his game depended on. Surgery in December and two encouraging outings in China had restored some optimism, but questions lingered.
The March 2 match itself was played under conditions that seemed designed specifically to punish touch football. Kingston's National Stadium had been deliberately left unwatered in the weeks leading up to the fixture, the baked surface transformed into what Harkes would later describe as the worst field he'd played on since he was 12 years old growing up in Kearny, New Jersey. A stiff trade wind further complicated the first half. The noontime heat sapped legs. And 35,000 Jamaicans, swaying to a reggae beat that carried its own kind of pressure, were watching a national team that had never reached this stage of World Cup qualifying and had every reason to believe this might be their moment.
Sampson, forced into tactical improvisation by his injury list, moved Earnie Stewart from midfield to a withdrawn forward role and paired Wynalda with Brian McBride up front. The intent was to attack early and establish a tone. What emerged instead was something more cautious. An American team that played, in the words of one observer, not to lose rather than to win.
The opening half was defined more by what didn't happen than what did. The Americans launched their first shot on goal in the 27th minute, a figure that told its own story about offensive intent. Jamaica, by contrast, came at the U.S. with a directness that belied their inexperience at this level. Walter Boyd, quick and elusive, gave Alexi Lalas persistent trouble on the American left, and in the 30th minute, he turned past the defender and flicked a low shot toward the far post with the outside of his foot. Kasey Keller flung himself to his right and got a hand to it. It was a reflex save, the kind that earns a goalkeeper his reputation.
The closer call arrived just before halftime. With Jamaica pressing and Keller forced off his line to challenge an attacker, Theodore Whitmore found space in the penalty area and stroked a shot from eight yards toward the unguarded goal. The ball had enough pace to be dangerous and enough direction to be troubling. Mike Burns, put in the starting lineup only because of Pope's foot injury, had retreated to the goal line as his training demanded. He trapped the ball calmly, unhurried, and cleared his lines. "I thought he was going to score," Burns said afterward. "Luckily, I was there. He didn't get all of it. That gave me more time."
The Americans went into halftime scoreless, their defense intact through discipline and fortune in roughly equal measure, their attack having produced nothing that troubled Warren Barrett in the Jamaican goal.
The second half offered a modest improvement in American organization—a few accurate combinations through midfield, some semblance of shape, but no genuine threat. Jamaica, which had shown real menace in the first 45 minutes, strangely lost its rhythm after the break, reverting to long passes forward that arrived nowhere in particular. The crowd of 35,000 couldn't rouse the home side back to its earlier urgency. Wynalda's shot to the near post in the 60th minute was the Americans' closest, easily handled. The match drifted to its goalless conclusion.
A draw on the road. The math was defensible. In a six-team double round-robin where only three would advance to France, a point from Kingston was not a catastrophe. Jamaica's coach, Rene Simoes, was magnanimous enough to describe the result as a victory for the Americans. Sampson pointed to the circumstances: the heat, the bumpy pitch, the crowd, a squad diminished by injury. And he declared himself satisfied. "The onus was on Jamaica to win," he said.
Keller, for his part, had extended his shutout streak to four consecutive World Cup qualifying appearances. Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, and now Jamaica had all come up empty against him. "I have absolutely no fear of any situation when he is in goal," Sampson said, and on the evidence of the afternoon, the sentiment was understandable.
But the framing's defensiveness was telling. A program that had been declared ready for France, a program that had spoken about depth and class and readiness, had just failed to create a single genuinely threatening scoring chance against a team making its hexagonal debut. The trade wind and the bumpy turf explained something. They didn't explain everything.
14 days remained before the Americans would host Canada at Stanford Stadium. A win there was not optional. The hexagonal was 10 matches long, and the United States had just used its most sympathetic road assignment to collect one point from a possible three. The margin for error in what remained—Mexico twice, Costa Rica twice, and a Jamaica rematch in October—was considerably thinner than the comfortable qualification campaign of the fall had made it seem.
The point would stand in the table. Whether it would stand up as a result was a question only the rest of the year could answer.
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