And could easily have been so much more. That was the result in tonight's US v Barbados game. US had 34 total shots(20 in the 2nd half alone) to Barbados' 4. Guess which stats I was assigned to track tonight. ;-) I actually nearly ran out of room on my paper! Barbados had 2 players sent off and could have been more if the ref had gotten his cards out earlier. Then again, had he taken control of the game earlier, there may not have been anyone sent off. They were much less vicious in their tackles during the 2nd half. It was amusing during halftime watching folks scramble around the press box trying to find out FIFA's rules on when a game is abandoned if too many players are sent off. The US had some nice moments of passing, but also gave the ball away far to sloppily. They'd have had problems against a stronger team. This result was much needed as it's moved the US from bottom of their group to 2nd place. I was amazed at the number of Barbados fans in the crowd. A few hundred of them easily. And bless them all, they left the stadium singing, dancing, playing drums, blowing whistles. You wonder what they'd have been like if they'd won!

And of all things, one of the production crew is from Ipswich so we had a nice little chin wag about the coming season. He's as insane as I am about flying over for games. He beat my Blackburn record for short trips by doing a 28hr trip over for Ipwich's palyoff at Wembley last spring!

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

Answers

I'm pretty sure the Barbados XI were selected from the fans in the crowd. This team actually beat Costa Rica?

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000

LOL! They did ok for the first minute or so. ;-) Once they realized they were no match for the US, they resorted to fouling and got nastier and nastier as the ref let them go. It wouldn't have surprised me to see Friedel kicking back with a pint and a paper during the second half, though. We actually gave Barbados a sympathy shot in the stats for one of their efforts toward the end. The intention was there. ;-) It was nice to see the new FIFA rule of allowing linesmen to report off-the-ball incidents come into play. No one in the booth saw what had happened until tv showed the replay.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2000