U.S. Soccer Victory Lacks Home Equity

Guatemala's fans turned out in their blue-and-white thousands on a warm evening to cheer their country's national soccer team (nicknamed the Chapines) in its World Cup qualifying game against the U.S.

It wasn't what U.S Coach Bruce Arena expected.

"The reason we chose Birmingham as a venue is because we really believe every time we've been in Birmingham it has been a pro-American crowd," Arena said last week. "That's not always the case in the United States."

But Legion Field was largely Guatemala's stadium Wednesday night.

The American players were booed coming onto the field to warm up. The fence around the field was draped in Guatemalan flags and homemade signs, all in Spanish. The stands were filled with fans bearing placards that read everything from "Chapines de Nashville, TN" to "Guatemala Trenton, N.J."

Bruce Springsteen's belting out "Born in the USA" on the stadium's sound system didn't change anything.

Only the American team could do that, and it did. The final score: U.S. 2, Guatemala 0.

Eddie Johnson, whose newest teammate at FC Dallas is Guatemala and former Galaxy striker Carlos Ruiz, provided the first goal, steering a pass from Landon Donovan into the net off the right post in the 11th minute.

It was Johnson's seventh goal in six qualifying matches and his eighth overall in eight games for the national team.

"Not scoring in Mexico, I was kind of down," Johnson said. "I knew I had to be better this game."

Guatemala's main scoring threats, Ruiz and fellow forward Dwight Pezzarossi, who each had scored twice in the team's 5-1 rout of Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, were kept in check, for the most part, by defenders Oguchi Onyewu and Cory Gibbs, the latter starting in place of Gregg Berhalter.

The other two changes Arena made from the starting lineup in Sunday's 2-1 loss to Mexico in Mexico City was to start Steve Ralston in midfield in place of Claudio Reyna and to bring Brian Ching in to partner Johnson up front and take the place of the suspended DaMarcus Beasley.

The U.S., cheered on by about half the crowd of 31,624, attacked with far more enthusiasm than it had in Mexico and created a handful of other scoring chances in the first half but could not capitalize.