After U.S. national team practice yesterday afternoon at RFK — one in which D.C. United teen-aged goalkeeper Bill Hamid was helping out in net — head coach Bob Bradley was asked if there was a low point for him during CONCACAF qualifying. It struck me as unusual the way he responded without his usual stoicism: “When you start the qualifying, you know that it’s ten game, ten tough games. You split it a little bit into halves, if it makes sense. You know along the way that not every result is going to go your way, and you have to treat it as a whole. If there was one game that we still would look back upon as being disappointing, it was the Costa Rica game. We went down right away in the game, where we didn’t handle a situation well, a play that we lost the ball in our own end, we didn’t cover it well, and [Alvaro] Saborio hit a great shot. The crowd was already excited, but that really set the tone for that night. As we tried to respond, we gave up a second goal. If there was one game, one moment where we were not pleased with just how we handled things, it would’ve been the Costa Rica game, especially early on, the first 15 minutes.”
