USMNT | 8 years of the match between the USA and Costa Rica on the snow

This Monday, March 22, Eight years have passed since that match in which the United States team received Costa Rica in the middle of a snowstorm that hit Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Colorado, where the North American squad played one of the coldest games in its history against the team led by Keylor Navas, whom they beat by the slightest difference amid controversy over the weather conditions that night .

The stars and stripes squad received Costa Rica, in a duel corresponding to day number 2 of the Concacaf World Cup qualifying rounds to Brazil 2014 and that was recorded in history by the snowfall that fell on the scene of the meeting in which the United States was left with the three points, thanks to a goal from Clint Dempsey.

The game, which was played at a temperature of 17º F (-8 ° C), generated controversy and even the then president of the Costa Rican Football Federation, Eduardo Li, sent a letter to FIFA, requesting that the match be replayed, because at times, the snow reached up to 3 centimeters above the pitch.

Clint Dempsey scored the goal with which USMNT won the historic duel, in which not even Keylor Navas, then Real Madrid goalkeeper, could prevent the fall of the Costa Rican squad, which experienced firsthand the extreme conditions in which league matches such as MLS and NFL have developed, where snow is becomes the protagonist.

The protests did not wait, because after falling to the United States, the then coach of Costa Rica, Jorge Luis Pinto, exploded against the refereeing body and assured that the match should not be carried out due to the conditions in which the pitch was found.

“I could never imagine that the game could be allowed to continue in the second half. If the first should not have been played, the second was insane. They should suspend the referee, because he has allowed a regrettable spectacle to take place and insult Costa Rica, ”said Pinto.

For his part, Dempsey himself, who scored the winning goal for the squad led at that time by Jürgen Klinsmann, commented that “it was very difficult to see something on the field, and in the second half the snow reached us above the ankle and it was practically impossible to play”.

After the controversial duel between the United States and Canada in a snowstorm, both teams won their ticket to Brazil 2014, the stars and stripes squad occupied the first place in the final hexagonal of Concacaf with 22 points, while Costa Rica advanced in second position after accumulating 18 units.

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