The Reggae Boyz will face Costa Rica in Costa Rica tonight at 9pm Jamaican time for the return round of the 4th round of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying series for FIFA World Cup in Russia 2018. Last Friday they drew 1-1 in Jamaica.
Costa Rica heads the group, 3 points ahead of Jamaica and Panama. Panama will face Haiti, who is at the bottom of the group with just 1 point.
With a goal in the 89th minute after many successful time-wasting tactics by Nicaragua, Simon Dawkins secured a place for Jamaica in the Semi Final round of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying game with a final score of Jamaica 2: 0 Nicaragua. Thanks also to Darren Mattocks who scored a goal in the 13th minute, which started to get Jamaica out of debt. Mattocks displayed a valiant effort throughout the entire match. Jamaica needed 2 clear goals to win and the Reggae Boyz accomplished just that. Well done. I wish I could say the same about the commentators on FLOW Channel 100 though. They probably put Jamaica to sleep, making some miss the 2nd goal. The same thing was said about every 5 minutes in a different way, CNN style. Though debatable, for Suga, there were a lot of dull aka boring moments in the game, especially in the 2nd half where it looked for a moment like the Reggae Boyz gave up, but the commentators could have done better. They even closed the curtains on the Reggae Boyz until World Cup 2022 with about 15 minutes left in the game, which is A LOT in football time. Shame on them and extremely poor coverage.
They will now join Costa Rica, Panama and Haiti in Group B. Haiti, who was also in a knock out round, beat Grenada to advance. How does the rest of the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying 4th round look?
Group A: Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Canada
Group C: United States, Trinidad & Tobago, St.Vincent and the Grenadines, Guatemala
So the Road to Russia continues!
US Open
Serena Williams won 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 last night in a 98- minute long Quarterfinal versus her sister, Venus Williams. It seemed much longer for them and it wasn’t easy for Serena at all compared to their match up this year at Wimbledon, where it took Serena only 2 sets to win. Serena’s face looked like she was in emotional pain for the entire match. Since they are both power hitters and servers, rallies if any, only lasted about 3 or 4 hits and nobody knows Serena’s serve better than Venus.
Serena closed out the match with an ace and Venus whispered in Serena’s ear that she was very happy for her. Very sweet exchange and embrace afterwards.
Serena will move on to play the unseeded Italian, Roberta Vinci in the Semi Final this Thursday, continuing her quest to complete a Calendar Grand Slam and even Steffi Graf’s 22 Grand Slam titles in the open era.
Serena now leads Venus 16-11 in head to head Grand Slam matches and has won 7 of the last 8 meetings.
See why Venus says Serena is the ‘best ever’ here:
http://es.pn/1K7Ppem
The men’s side of the Quarterfinals was also pretty exciting yesterday with a 5 – setter from Cilic and Tsonga, where Defending Cham, Cilic prevailed 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 6-4. Marin Cilic will meet Novak Djokovic in the Semi finals.
Djokovic who continues to look good defeated Feliciano Lopez in 4 sets, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6. Do you know that he gets his sneaker company to shave down the bottom of his tennis shoes so that he can skid more. It has been noticed he gets to balls that are usually out of reach for most players, by skidding over to them during the open. Interesting stuff.
Today’s action at the Open includes:
Ladies QF:
Kvitova vs Pennetta
Halep vs Azarenka
Men’s QF:
Wawrinka vs Anderson
Federer vs Gasquet
Quarterfinals begin this Friday with France vs Germany!
The Round of 16 was certainly full of Drama. Did the big teams underestimate the skill set of the underdogs?! Nevertheless the favourites still made it through but it took 2 games with Penalty shoot outs and 3 games that went into Overtime out of 8 games total. Wow! Definitely a World Cup to remember.
Stay tuned for more.
What an action packed weekend with football!
The Maracana dream was kept alive for Brazil, Netherlands and Costa Rica who had close encounters with their opponents with even 2 of the matches consisting of Penalty shoot outs. Painful losses for Chile, Mexico and Greece, as their World Cup is now over.
The dream was also kept alive for Columbia that cruised to victory sending Uruguay home with 2 goals by James Rodriguez, of which the first is arguably the best goal in the World Cup so far. He was even trending on Google Circles and is certainly one to watch.
The excitement continues today with France vs Nigeria and Germany vs Algeria.