El Salvador Athletics

Eric Wynalda, U.S. soccer's all-time leading goal scorer, will miss Sunday's key World Cup '98 qualifying match against El Salvador in San Salvador because of a groin injury. The San Jose Clash forward was released from the U.S. training camp here Thursday and will not travel with the team when it leaves for El Salvador this afternoon. "I can't shoot and I can't sprint; it's as simple as that," Wynalda said. "There's no way I can play in this game. It simply won't work.

In the stands at Azulgrana Stadium in Mexico City, they burned the U.S. flag. In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, they hung a life-size effigy of the referee from a grandstand fence and pelted U.S. players with rotten fruit. At Ricardo Saprissa Stadium in San Jose, Costa Rica, they spat on any American within range, hurled stones and batteries and bits of wire and glass at the players and taunted them and their families with unprintable insults. Isolated incidents? Not a chance.

When it was all over, when the final whistle had sounded in the final game of Mauricio Cienfuegos' international career, it was the opposing coach who was the first to console, congratulate and thank him. Trudging off the Los Angeles Coliseum field alone shortly before 10 Monday night, his blue El Salvador jersey soaked by the effort he had put in during a 2-0 loss to World Cup-bound Jamaica, Cienfuegos had every right to feel downcast. For him, and for El Salvador, it marked the end of an era.

Beneath a banner proclaiming "Eva Maria lifted up El Salvador," this tiny country's only medal winner in last week's Pan American Games arrived home to the blaring trumpets of a mariachi band and bouquets of pink gladioli, white roses and birds of paradise from dozens of well-wishers. The 58 other members of the team sneaked back into the country on separate flights, more embarrassed than deportees.

Galaxy midfielder Mauricio Cienfuegos, who walked out of practice Wednesday and failed to show for El Salvador's Gold Cup qualifying game against Haiti, is expected to be in uniform tonight when El Salvador faces Canada at the Coliseum at 8 p.m.

A good deal more interesting than anything happening on the field, Galaxy midfielder Mauricio Cienfuegos made a brief but gripping contribution to The Football Confederation's Gold Cup qualification tournament Friday.