What can you say about a game after which BOTH coaches were fired? An 0:0 draw, naturally, and a pretty ordinary one at that. And it won't surprise you to find out that, in their last official acts, both coaches pronounced themselves happy with the result.
The parallels didn't stop there. Desperate for improvement, both coaches changed tactics, going back to earlier ideas. (That they hadn't worked the first time was beside the point.) St. Clair, facing a manpower shortage in defense (Andrews and Cox injured, Sancho off form), changed the new 4-4-2 to the old 3-5-2 from the semis. Pinto, facing a manpower shortage up front (Wanchope tired, Herron not fit, Froylan Ledezma having walked out of camp claiming Pinto was a "dictator"), switched his 4-4-2 to the 4-2-3-1 he had tried during the Copa America last summer. Both coaches tried new faces, too. St. Clair gave first starts to Atiba Charles in defense and Silvio Spann in midfield; Pinto gave a first start to Óscar Rojas on the right side of the 3-man midfield line.
And both still got the sack, of course, not so much for the game itself but for what had gone on before. Pinto had produced an uninspired, defense-oriented team, with little spark in midfield and little consistency in results. St. Clair had inherited a team in the depths and failed to bring them out. "Fuera Pinto!" and "St. Clair must go!" were hardly new expressions.
The game itself? Unfortunately, I didn't see it--the scheduled TV showing was preempted by the death of the Pope. OK, no argument, but still kind of disappointing. And after all, John Paul II was a former footballer himself, right? I'm sure he would have understood.
But we do have news and fan reports, and a few video highlights, and in any case it was more or less clear what happened. Costa Rica had only a few scoring opportunities, T&T fewer than that. The new faces acquitted themselves well: Óscar Rojas gave a solid two-way performance before he gave way to Wanchope for the last 20 minutes; Atiba Charles showed positioning, pace, and ball skills; Silvio Spann made some hard tackles (perhaps a few too hard) and delivered some good passes. But forwards for both teams were disappointing. For Costa Rica, Whayne Wilson got very little done as a lone ranger, and was subbed in the second half. For T&T, Cornell Glen got the start but simply wasn't at full throttle, and Stern John continued to sink into the sunset.
On the other hand, both keepers did the job when necessary. Álvaro Mesén has been great since he got the spot back, and he made the key save in the 70th minute when sub Nigel Pierre got to a cross from Angus Eve and tried to chest the ball across the line. Mesén's body was in the goal, but his hands and the ball were outside, and that was enough. Clayton Ince took over for Shaka Hislop and, despite a broken finger, made a couple of nice stops, the best coming in the 26th minute when he denied Alonso Solís one-on-one.
Dwight Yorke probably summed it up best: "It was not a classical game by any means." But everyone agreed that T&T had showed a lot of heart after the disaster in Guatemala. No, they didn't score, but the midfield was solid, there were no defensive breakdowns (even from Dennis Lawrence), and at the end of the game they were unquestionably driving the action. It was unquestionably their best performance in ages. But it wasn't enough to save St. Clair's job, and of course it didn't help Pinto much either. No surprise when both of them bit the dust.
This wouldn't be CONCACAF, though, without some truly serious craziness in the job search. Even before the ticos' team plane touched down in San José, the FA were talking terms with former coach Alexandre Guiamares. It was supposed to be a top-secret meeting at L'Olivo restaurant in Sabana Norte, only someone tattled (my money's on the proprietor--free publicity!) and dozens of reporters besieged the place. The FA members literally had to sneak out the back way to avoid getting overwhelmed. But the cat was out of the bag, and a stunned Pinto was met at the airport by the hordes asking him how it felt to be fired. He somehow managed to elude the media without comment, and his younger son summed the whole thing up with an obscene gesture at a reporter. The next day Guiamares was confirmed as the new man, but everyone was so upset at how Pinto had been treated that the FA publicly apologized to him. How often does that happen?
It was funtime over in T&T, too, as word got out that Jack Warner was about to sign a prestigious European coach. Names like Keegan, Robson, and Taylor were bounced around, and soon the announcement came: Leo Beenhakker. Not a bad catch--except the next day it came out that the original choice had been none other than Big Ron Atkinson. Yes, that's Ron "Mr. Racial Sensitivity" Atkinson. Want some details? Google "Atkinson Desailly" and "Atkinson Chinese," for starters. Several senior T&T squad members absolutely refused to accept Atkinson, and so Warner did a quick two-step and signed Beenhakker. All's well that ends well--except he also named Russell Latapy and David Nakhid as co-assistants, and they just happen to hate each other. Good luck, Leo.