Last night, matchday 1 came to a close and now every team has played their opening match. Although a couple teams already have their work cut out for them, anything is still possible.
After this first round, there are a couple teams that have stood out to me. The first two teams are Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago. After qualifying less than a week before the tournament, Trinidad and Tobago were able to hold onto a tie in their opening match against Mexico, who are the favorites to win. It was not the most exciting game, but there were some important things to take away from it.
The big news is that Mexico’s main offensive player, Hirving (Chucky) Lozano, was stretchered off in this match after a strong collision with the opposing goalie. There was a hyper-extension of the neck, but luckily he is already in recovery. He will, however, miss the rest of the Gold Cup. He is the main striker and now coach Gerardo (Tata) Martino will have to figure out who will take over that striker position.
The Second thing to take away was to see that Trinidad’s strategy is to ‘park the bus,’ which means to strictly play defense and only play offense if there happens to be a counterattack opportunity. The game was played mostly in Trinidad’s third (from the 30-yard-line to their own goal). Clearly this is working for them, but they will need to figure out a way of incorporating more offensive play, as defense will only get them so far.
The last team that stood out to me was Qatar. For a team to travel and play a tournament against teams that play a completely different style than their normal competition is not easy to do. Qatar was able to earn a 3-3 tie against Panama who is not a bad team by any means. Qatar’s main player so far has been Akram Afif. He has been the main creator, is fast and can blow past defenders, and is also their main finisher. He was involved in all three goals: scoring the first, assisting the second, and winning the penalty for their third goal.
No guest has ever won the Gold Cup and although Qatar has proven to be a good team, I think people are still underestimating how far Qatar could go in the tournament.
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Standings after matchday 1:
| Group A | Pts. | Group B | Pts. |
| El Salvador | 3 | Canada | 3 |
| Mexico | 1 | USA | 3 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 1 | Haiti | 0 |
| Guatemala | 0 | Martinique | 0 |
| Group C | Pts. | Group D | Pts. |
| Costa Rica | 3 | Honduras | 3 |
| Jamaica | 3 | Panama | 1 |
| Guadeloupe | 0 | Qatar | 1 |
| Suriname | 0 | Grenada | 0 |
Photo: Hirving Lozano, Wikipedia, Creative Commons
