Part 234: Chapter the Third: The Hex, Part 1.
Chapter the Third: The Hex, Part 1January 1, 2029-June 10, 2029
When I said I was going on vacation at the end of the last update I bet you didn't think I meant a real life one. I could take one ingame, too, as I don't have a whole lot to do until our first match in the Hex round against Honduras is at the end of January. After that it's a month and a half until we face Jamaica in Kingston and Trinidad in Nashville during the March international break. Then it's another two months that I'll spend avidly watching Wrexham's title defense before two more Hex matches on May 29th (against Costa Rica) and June 1st (a trip to the Azteca in Mexico City).
The Hex, or Hexagonal, is the final stage of World Cup qualification for North American nations. Home and away matches between each of the six nations are held over the course of the year with the top three nations qualifying for the World Cup and the fourth placed nation going into a home-away playoff against
The Hex was used for the first time in qualifying for the 1998 World Cup, and has been popular enough that it's still being used for the upcoming 2018 qualification. While the United States and Mexico are the clear favorites to qualify home games in places like San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and San Jose, Costa Rica are tough matches for anyone shy of the true giants of world soccer. Heck, in 2013 Mexico finished 4th and barely made the World Cup after beating New Zealand in the playoff. And they only made the playoff because the United States scored an otherwise meaningless goal in the final seconds of their last hex match against Panama that moved the Mexicans into fourth place.
Also:
There's nothing like a World Cup qualifier played in Colorado on a balmy March evening. Suck it, Los Ticos. Costa Rica would get a measure of revenge when the US came to play later in the Hex by giving them incredibly crappy training facilities, and if you look up any video of the snowy match on Youtube you'll find irate Costa Ricans still complaining about the game not being canceled.
Was there really any chance of someone else winning this? He's not even 20 and yet Moctezuma is already the highest achieving American player in the club game of all time as a regular on a Premier and Champions League winning team.
The yearly best 11 is a bit off considering that only one player played in all seven senior team matches. I'll have a rundown of the USMNT at the end of the club year on who really deserves these spots.
It's a clean sweep for the Meteor!
I signed Keith Coleman on a free and he was the first American I brought to Wrexham. Injury has sapped him of his potential, though he's still good enough to be wanted by a still-relegated Tottenham. I'm impressed that Wrexham got more than a pint of beer for him.
Especially since he's a class A jerk who's now refused multiple transfers because they won't pay him enough money even though he's currently making almost nothing. I think his contract is out at the end of the year, at least.
In the wake of my departure Brony Hunter abolished term limits.
The locals roused a mob to take over the tabulation when an American club member was rumored to be ahead in the vote count.
All Ali Does Is Slump, his strike in this FA Cup match is only his third of the season after scoring twelve last year.
The Golden Boy (more like Golden Man these days) gets a contract extension and a small raise.
Allan and Reed, meanwhile, add a year to their current deals at the same wages as before. It must be contract week at Wrexham HQ.
What are you doing?! Palma was signed through 2033 at £8,000 a week! Not only did you give him a raise but you shortened the contract!
If Wrexham doesn't win the league title this year, the culprits will include taking a solitary point from 17th placed Brentford. The draw puts Manchester City in first on 52 points from 22 matches, while Wrexham has 51 from the same number of games.
I'm detecting a bit of a crisis in North Wales.
Williams out!
Team USA has a clean bill of health other than the dislocated shoulder of Isaac Parsons, so I take the opportunity to bring in some younger players for our upcoming match against Honduras.
Let the whining commence.
I'm sure the European coaches are just fine with me taking their players in the middle of the season despite not being in an international break. It's nice to be Paul Elliot for once.
Wrexham's back atop the table! They're now four points ahead of Manchester City with a game in hand and three up on Manchester United.
Prior to the match the media settles on Abel Oliva being the biggest threat on the Honduran team. He's a solid mid-tier striker with some serious flair, and he could give our defense the fits.
vs Honduras, January 30, 2029
CONCACAF World Cup Qualification, The Hex
Honduras topped El Salvador by just two points in the prior round of qualification. It's got their coach on the hot seat, and if they start off slow we could see a panic move that sees him sacked and an emergency caretaker brought on. Moctezuma won't be starting, seeing as he's still tired from his match two days ago, but if we get into the second half and we're struggling he's primed to come off the bench.
Starting Formation: 4-2-3-1 Control
Starting 11: Paladino, Latham, Needham, Ramirez, Jimenez, Padilla, Hughes, Fisher (c), Enriquez, Clavijo, Garcia.
Subs: Toninho, Delgado, Lozano, Bartlett, Wood, Stevens, Rusling, Dixon, Barrett, Ulusal, Paredes, Moctezuma.
We have plenty of possession, but are failing to apply the screws to the Honduran defense. They're the ones who look more likely to score, in all truth, and they almost do when Oliva sends the ball into the side netting on a counter-attack in the 8th minute. The striker gets free on another counter right before the half, and luckily misses into the side netting for a second time.
Our best chance in the early going comes on a Joey Garcia effort to start the second half, but he can't get the ball to dive back under the crossbar and into the upper 90. Oliva continues to cause trouble, but his surging runs are limited after he earns a yellow card for diving. Still,it's all square in a scoreless game when I bring on Andrew Paredes for his senior team debut at 58 minutes, and I don't hesitate to put Moctezuma into the mix as well.
The players take over the game from that point, stifling Honduras, but frustration piles high as we can't get our shots to fall. The guys do their all to grab the late winner in the final ten minutes, including a crossbar rattling header from Moctezuma and an effort from range that proves Paredes has plenty of confidence to play at this level, but at the end of the day it's an aggravating home draw that sends the fans away muttering dark imprecations.
USMNT 0-0 Honduras
Now we have to stew over taking only one point for six weeks. Or rather, I do. The players all have to get back to their clubs.
Before I know it, though, it's already late February and the Confederations Cup is being drawn.
If Argentina and Germany don't advance from the group stage I'll eat my hat. In our group we've got a difficult but not impossible task in overcoming both Senegal and Scotland. Making the finals will mean we have to beat Argentina or Germany, though, and to win the thing we'll probably have to beat Spain on their home turf or the other of Argentina/Germany. Anything can happen in a single game, but I'm not overly optimistic.
The Gold Cup is also drawn. The level of competition won't be nearly so high.
That said, we're going to be sending along our B team rather than our best players. They'll more likely than not survive to the latter stages of the tournament, but it's going to be very hard to beat a full strength Mexico team and the better Central American nations could give us fits.
Ouch. Toninho had already been losing his starting spot to naturalized American Pasquale Paladino, and now his career might be in jeopardy.
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Thinking of you, buddy. Sorry I can't do more to raise your spirits.
That's not as devastating an injury as the one Toninho suffered but it does mean he'll miss the Jamaica and Trinidad matches. That's not great considering how the talent distribution for the United States doesn't have much by way of midfield destroyers. It's especially dire when we use the 4-5-1 and a defensive midfielder, where I'm calling up never before capped 24-year-old Salvadore Rojas along with occasional senior team member Peter Romaneiro to man the spot.
Of course Chris Ramirez is hurt. It's what he does.
He's only 24 years old. He was originally a 4 star potential player for Wrexham, now he'd likely be a 1.5 or 2 star one. My hopes of him ever being a rock in the center of our defense have more or less evaporated like a morning fog.
Despite all of that, though, he's still probably the best centerback the nation has even after having racked up over three full years of time in the trainers room since arriving on the scene nine years ago.
That last minute equalizer must have been gutting, but Wrexham has been on fire over the last month and a half, with Paul Williams winning the manager of the month award for the third time this season. The draw keeps them a point up of City on the table.
Graham Graham is well situated for his future as a grandfather.
At Jamaica, March 16, 2029
CONCACAF World Cup Qualification, The Hex
Scotland, Uruguay, Turkey, and France stand between us and a #1 seed at the World Cup as the latest FIFA rankings have us in 12th place. We're going to have to actually get back to winning our qualification matches, though, and if we blow this the way we blew the last match, I'm going to become mildly concerned. That win will have to come without Isaac Parsons for about half of the match, he's just coming back from injury and I don't want to run him out there for more than 45 minutes.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Paladino, Parsons, Needham, Latham, Jimenez, Romaneiro, Hughes, Enriquez, Fisher (c), Ulusal, Moctezuma.
Subs: Rubio de la Fuente, Delgado, Bartlett, Klaas, Stevens, Rojas, Ramos, Rusling, Barrett, Clavijo, Paredes, Garcia.
I'm pulling my hair out as Jamaica has their way with us, and watch them take the lead in the early going on young striker Steve Wood's 20th goal for his nation. That deficit remains at the half, and then continues into the second half as our Yanks repeatedly jerk their shots high, wide, and not infrequently high and wide of the goalmouth. Our humiliation is complete when Jamaica humbles us with a second goal from a corner kick.
Jamaica 2-0 USMNT
Moctezuma needs to score and create goals if we're going to do anything at the Confederations and World Cups, so his slump is deeply troubling.
Our World Cup plans aren't actually at risk yet, but this is not the hot start to the final round of qualification I wanted. Especially troubling is our fecklessness in front of the goal across both games so far.
vs Trinidad and Tobago, March 20, 2029
CONCACAF World Cup Qualification, The Hex
If we don't win here it's time to panic, and while we're huge favorites to win I'm taking nothing for granted going into this game. Trinidad has been very good so far in their first two matches, drawing with Mexico and beating the tar out of Costa Rica in Costa Rica. They've blitzed the goal in those matches, scoring three times against Mexico and four against Los Ticos. Considering that Mexico and Costa Rica are the two best non-United States teams in North America we're running into them at exactly the wrong time.
Starting Formation: 4-2-3-1 Control
Starting 11: Paladino, Parsons, Needham, Bartlett, Jimenez, Ramos (c), Hughes, Paredes, Barrett, Moctezuma, Garcia.
Subs: Rubio de la Fuente, Delgado, Latham, Stevens, Klaas, Romaneiro, Rojas, Ulusal, Enriquez, Fisher, Rusling, Clavijo.
The crowd is on it's feet but left groaning after a great, unselfish play from Joey Garcia tees up the ball for Moctezuma in the 6th minute that the 19-year-old skies over the crossbar. Our ineptitude around the net continues. Garcia keeps plugging away, though, and is able to send another ball into the box ten minutes on that his Partizan teammate Andrew Paredes slugs into the net for our first goal since the start of 2029.
Our players continue to shred the Trinidad defense like tissue paper, but our finishing makes like Moctezuma, and we're only a goal ahead of the visitors after a half-hour despite innumerable chances. It takes a free kick from the ageless Jose Francisco Ramos to give us that second goal lead before the break.
The second half sees us score another well deserved goal when the team takes the opening kickoff and proceeds to string together a sixteen pass sequence that ends in Moctezuma calmly setting up a Garcia goal to make it three-nil. A fourth comes from a surprising source, as centerback James Needham has the ball fall to him after another free kick opportunity. It's exactly the performance we needed after our sluggish start to the Hex, and plants us in second place only a point back of Mexico at the top of the table.
Man of the Match: James Needham.
USMNT 4-0 Trinidad
Fan match confidences for the first three games of the Hex:
vs. Honduras- 28%
at Jamaica- 22%
vs. Trinidad- 60%
I haven't exactly been covering myself with glory.
Bah. We're not getting a top seed, are we?
The thrashing of Trinidad and Tobago did a world of good for morale, which was pretty down after the Jamaica debacle.
I'm not sure if Wrexham's success now that I'm gone proves me a better or worse manager than Sir Alex Ferguson. After he left Manchester United they crashed all the way to seventh place the next year, getting his handpicked successor sacked and causing a great gnashing of teeth and the ritual sacrifice of Marouane Fellani. But was that because United's roster was really so awful that only he could drag them to a title? Or was it because he failed to assure their continued success after his succession?
Regardless, a double is still possible for the Dragons. Arsenal shouldn't be too difficult, they're barely hanging on in fourth place, just ahead of Swansea.
No one is catching Wrexham in the league. They beat Derby recently and now have 85 points with 3 games remaining while United and City are tied for second with 77 points. If either Manchester club were to win out they'd end with 86 points... so they'd need Wrexham to lose all three of their remaining matches to have even the faintest prayer.
Yeah, I don't see them overcoming a three goal deficit in Wales. Grwn and the Dragon Tamer can start booking tickets for Spain and the final.
And Wrexham doesn't make their fans wait long to clinch the league.
Four in a row, and six in seven years. Those both represent achievements that no other team in the history of the Football Association can match. Not Arsenal. Nor Liverpool. Nor Chelsea. Nor Manchester United.
Naturally I got media inquiries about the event, and naturally I backed my man Paul Williams even if I took care to point out what a wealth of talent he inherited.
Wrexham has been on a tear since getting knocked out of the FA Cup in January, winning seventeen of nineteen matches while not losing once. They have two matches remaining, the season finale against Aston Villa and then a Champions League final rematch against Juventus.
Why can't my national team players stay healthy?! Garcia could miss both the Confederations Cup and the Gold Cup with this injury.
Hahahaha.
Sky Shadowing can't get over the hump. Southampton went from challenging for fourth place at midseason to finishing eighth.
And of course, despite winning the league by 10 points, the bigotry towards Wrexham players continues despite my departure.
It's apparently much easier to win games when you're not using a 2-3-5 Pyramid.
I think doing the double in his first year as coach has cemented Paul Williams as my long term replacement. I wonder how long it will take for a segment of the fanbase to decide that Paul Williams was the genius all along and that I really was never all that great.
If the new stand isn't named after me I'm going to be offended. This will give the town of Wrexham, population 64,000, a 50,000 capacity stadium. That ratio of seats to people is making Wrexham comparable to a midwestern college town in the United States.
Now that I can turn my attention away from Wrexham there's the issue of injuries on the USMNT, and the fact that Jose Francisco Ramos, who scored a free kick goal in our last match, is retiring at the age of 33.
Oh come on.
When the squad comes together it marks the start of a full month where they'll be together, playing in two World Cup qualfiers, two friendlies, and at least three Confederations Cup matches. This is our best chance to build squad cohesion before next summer, which is what makes it so frustrating to be missing at least four players who are likely to be on our World Cup roster.
I'm also not looking forward to how thin our Gold Cup team is going to be. We could get upset well before the late rounds given the middling MLS quality players I'm going to have to give a shot at international play.
vs Costa Rica, May 29, 2029
CONCACAF World Cup Qualification, The Hex
The Hex table is jam packed. Mexico is on top with five points, Jamaica is at the bottom with three, and everyone else has four. That includes us and Costa Rica. With a trip to Mexico looming large four days from now it's vital to win our home match and keep our spot near the top of the qualification table.
Starting Formation: 4-2-3-1 Control
Starting 11: Paladino, Parsons, Latham, Bartlett, Bruno (c), Padilla, Enriquez, Paredes, Coleman, Rusling, Moctezuma.
Subs: Rubio de la Fuente, Delgado, Lozano, Jimenez, Needham, Hyndman, Barrett, Hughes, Fisher, Ulusal, Clavijo, Williams.
Costa Rica bite early with a goal against the run of play and Moctezuma's attempt at an answer clips the bar before going over. Ten minutes later Keith Coleman, the oft-injured Wrexham ex-prospect, scores his first ever goal for the United States by getting the rebound from his own shot and putting it home. Paredes hits the post on our third irritatingly inaccurate shot of the day just after as we keep up the pressure. It culminates in a Moctezuma goal that puts us ahead after 34 minutes. Keith Coleman, showing the sort of flair and verve that had made him a touted prospect before injuries derailed his career, scores again as halftime approaches, and we've stormed back from a deficit. Before all is said and done we score a fourth as 21-year-old Jesse Clavijo finishes off a set piece with his first ever goal for the team. He's come on for Moctezuma, who I need fresh to face Mexico. The late minutes see Los Ticos score again, but it's a minor sour note after an incisive display that keeps us a point back of Mexico and in second place.
Man of the Match: Keith Coleman
USMNT 4-2 Costa Rica
At Mexico, June 1, 2029
CONCACAF World Cup Qualification, The Hex
Not looking forward to facing Stringel. I want to play a defensive game, aiming for a 0-0 or 1-1 draw. If we can manage that we'll be in great shape to lock up qualification early.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Paladino, Parsons, Latham, Needham, Jimenez, Hyndman, Padilla, Hughes, Fisher (c), Ulusal, Moctezuma.
Subs: Rubio de la Fuente, Delgado, Lozano, Bruno, Bartlett, Coleman, Rusling, Barrett, Paredes, Clavijo, Williams.
This match would have been hard enough if we had played mistake-free football. So it was even more of an uphill battle when James Needham put the ball past Paladino to gift Mexico an early lead. Then Isaac Stringel, Wrexham Superstar made it 2-0 before the half closed, and we were lucky it took them that long to score again. They added a third after the break from a free kick, and the only silver lining is that we were merely bad in the second half rather than the complete clusterfuck of incompetence in the first.
Mexico 3-0 USMNT
Fresh off of comprehensively kicking our ass, Isaac wins his third Best Player in Europe award. It's his fourth. He's twenty-five years old.
Keith Coleman, meanwhile, gets a free transfer out of Wrexham. Hopefully he can build on the two goals he scored against Costa Rica, because we're going to need the help.
Well, that stunk. If we don't turn things around real quick we're going to get bounced right out of the Confederations Cup, and not going to make much noise in the Gold Cup either.
