CONCACAF Looking Strong, MLS not to shabby.

At the beginning of this tournament we probably thought that the North American and Central American teams wouldn't fair to well in Brazil. There would be a chance that Costa Rica, Mexico, the United States, and Honduras wouldn't make it out of their group. All four teams not advancing. The story has been much different. The USA has a chance of advancing out of their "Group of Death", Costa Rica has advanced to the knock out stages, Mexico has it all on the line against Croatia today, and even though Honduras wont advance they haven't just looked horrible.

Ruiz scoring against Italy to propel CR into the knockout stages

Costa Rica was drawn into a group with Uruguay, England, and Italy. The group of champions they called it because everyone besides Costa Rica has lifted the World Cup trophy. What was little Costa Rica going to do in this group, nothing right? Well it turns out they qualified with one game to spare. I always said Costa Rica was a good team when the US played them in qualifying, we just happened to catch them in the snow. I didn't think they were good enough to take down Uruguay and Italy, but they did, and it wasn't a fluke, they just played that good. With help from Joel Campbell, Bryan Ruiz, and a top class goalie from La Liga, Costa Rica looked very promising in the group stages.

Mexico, although I hate them, has been able to hold on in their group. Today they play Croatia in pretty much a winner takes all match. Brazil should handle Cameroon, so the winner of the Croatia Mexico game will go on to the knock out stages with Brazil. Mexico had a horrible 2013, they barely made it to Brazil, and they went through many coaches. If they make it out of the group stage today I would say that's already a trophy for them, because for awhile it looked like they wouldn't even be here.

During the draw back in December I thought there was no way we could do anything good in our group. For awhile I didn't believe we could get 1 tiny point. Now we have 4, and we should have 6. When Dempsey and Bradley moved back to the MLS I was scared that this might lower their ability to play against world class teams in Brazil. Instead (excluding Ghana for Bradley) both of them have played pretty great so far in the World Cup and both played great in the World Cup warm up matches. In the starting lineup against Portugal we had 5 MLS players taking the pitch. More than I would've ever liked, but they played the best match the National team has ever played. I'm still not a big fan of us trying to "grow" our players in the MLS, but we have clearly made some progress. I hope that David Villa is the start of more world class players coming to America.

The good people at Arseblog have said that the US team has been one of the best teams to watch this year at the World Cup. Our collective team effort is what makes us good, not relying on one individual star.

Overall CONCACAF has proved that we are more than we used to be. We've improved and we should improve over the following years. We still have a long way to go to really win a lot, but for right now I'm pretty happy with how our qualifying nations have performed.