2008 Olympic Qualification
U.S. Soccer and the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association of Football (CONCACAF) have finalized plans that will see the United States host final round action of the 2008 CONCACAF Men’s Under-23 Championship in Los Angeles, Tampa and Nashville from March 11-23, 2008.

The eight-team tournament will send two finalists to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The tournament will be played as eight doubleheaders at The Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., and LP Field in Nashville, Tenn.

Both The Home Depot Center and Raymond James Stadium will host three doubleheaders each in group play, while LP Field in Nashville will host the semifinals on Thursday, March 20, and the championship match and third-place game on Sunday, March 23.

2004 Olympic Qualifying Recap
After a best ever fourth-place finish at the 2000 Olympics in Australia, and coming off an undefeated 4-0-2 mark in 2003, the U.S. Under-23 Men’s National Team suffered a setback early in 2004 that doomed their chances at achieving glory at the Olympic Games in Greece.

With limited access to European players like forward Conor Casey and defender Oguchi Onyewu and with injuries to players like 2003 leading scorer Edson Buddle and defensive midfielder Ricardo Clark, the U.S. team had no choice but to go into the CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Mexico at less than full strength.

That said, the U-23s still had the services of the experienced, attacking trio of Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley and Bobby Convey, who had helped U.S. youth teams advance to their respective world championships at both the U-17 and U-20 levels.

Placed in Group A with Panama, Canada and Honduras, the U.S. needed to qualify as one of the top two teams in the group to advance to the semifinals, where they’d face one of the top two teams in a Group B that consisted of host Mexico and Costa Rica, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.

The U.S. opened with a shaky 4-3 win over Panama in which the team built a 3-0 lead by the 30th minute, only to have Panama come back to score three goals in the first 30 minutes of the second half to tie the match. Convey provided the game-winner in the 79th minute, his second goal of the game, to help the U.S. take three points. Convey scored two more goals in the next match, an easy 2-0 win over Canada. Having qualified for the semifinals with the win, the U.S. had only Honduras left to face for the top spot in the group and a match-up against the second-place team in Group B.

The only surprising result in the opening round of the tournament came in Group B, where Mexico could only muster a 1-1 tie with Costa Rica and finished in second place, meaning the winner of Group A would have to face the powerful hosts with a Estadio Jalisco crowd of up to 60,000 behind them. Neither the U.S. nor Honduras wanted to be in that position, but U.S. head coach Glenn Myernick reiterated that the U.S. team always plays to win, and win it did.

With Myernick resting starters Beasley, Convey, Donovan and Ed Johnson in advance of the single elimination semifinal, Alecko Eskandarian took advantage of the playing time and almost single-handedly delivered the victory with an impressive hat-trick performance. Honduras came back with a pair of goals to make it close, but the U.S. prevailed with a 4-3 win and a date with their fiercest rival two days later.

In the all-or-nothing semifinal match, an inspired Mexican squad rose to the occasion and dominated the visitors, breaking through the USA’s suspect back line for back-to-back goals in the 27th and 28th minutes, then added an insurance goal in the 55th minute and tacked on a painful fourth goal in the 92nd minute.

With its first loss of the tournament, the USA failed to qualify for the Olympics for the first time since 1976. (The U.S. qualified in 1980, but did not compete due to a boycott of the Moscow games). The loss also snapped U.S. Soccer’s streak of qualifying for 19 consecutive FIFA outdoor world championships.