Miss El Salvador and Miss USA Present: Brooks’ Half-Assed World Cup Qualifier Preview

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these things, but coming off that massive 2-0 win over Mexico in the first match of this final round of World Cup qualifying, I figured this could be very important in keeping the momentum going as Bob’s boys make the trip to San Salvador. Or not.

The match will be Saturday at 7pm MT on ESPN2 in the States and will mark the first time since 1997 that the US MNT has played in El Salvador (that was also a WCQ and ended 1-1). Some fun facts about the home nation:

-In 1996 San Salvador was considered the second most dangerous city in the western hemisphere after the US deported thousands of Salvadoran MS13 gang members back to the country. Today, it is still a gang epicenter and boasts one of the highest murder rates in the world. Why all the violence? Let’s ask some local gentleman and see if we can gain some insight…

Ok, uh, let’s go ahead and skip that and just keep moving. Seriously — don’t look back. Run! Save yourselves! Let them have Landycakes and just save yourself!

…

As for El Salvador’s national team, they are coming off a 2-2 draw against Trinidad & Tobago where midfielder Osael Romero scored both goals for them in their first match of this round of qualifying. Their overall leading scorer is Rudis Corrales (7 goals — 5 of which came in that 12-0 obliteration of Anguilla), who is also one of just seven men to score 100 goals in the Salvadoran domestic league.

The US is 4-0-2 against El Salvador all time in World Cup qualifying and hasn’t allowed a goal against them in the last six matches they’ve played.

The US has four players who are one yellow card away from suspension (Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, Frankie Hejduk, Oguchi Onyewu), while El Salvador has seven in the same situtation (Cristian Castillo, Salvador Coreas, Alexander Escobar, Miguel Montes, Alfredo Pacheco, Eliseo Quintanilla and William Romero).

The US will have 18 of the 22 players currently in camp suit up for this match, but judging by the MNT’s record against the Salvadorans, they might only need four or five. And if the squad runs into those lads from before, that might be all that’s left.

[Sources: USsoccer.com and Wikipedia]