Two to Go

The finishing line is in sight for qualifying for next year's World Cup finals in South Africa. Several teams booked their spots yesterday (Spain and England, most notably), but the situation in CONCACAF is far from settled.

Of the six teams in the final round of qualifying, only Trinidad & Tobago has no hopes of making it to South Africa. After scraping out wins over El Salvador (2-1) and at T&T (1-0), the United States is back on top of the group, but only barely:

The United States (5-2-1) leads the final round of North and Central American and Caribbean qualifying with 16 points, one ahead of Mexico (5-3), three in front of Honduras (4-3-1) and four ahead Costa Rica (4-4). The results of Wednesday's other two games helped the Americans, with Mexico beating visiting Honduras 1-0 and Costa Rica losing 1-0 at El Salvador.

Our remaining matches are on the road against Guatemala and in DC against Costa Rica, neither of which will be easy. At the very least, we're assured of fourth place in the group and a playoff against the fifth place team from South America (which right now would be Argentina, who are really fighting for their lives), but that's not really what we want. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if we either won the group of scratched through to the playoff.