EFE

South Africa

The Colombians, who - although the country is not within the CONCACAF zone - were special invitees to the tourney just like the South Africans, have gone down to unexpected defeat at the hands of Panama and Honduras and are now in last place in Group A, which is playing its matches in Miami.

Their only hope is to win their third first-round match against Trinidad and Tobago to see if they can scratch out a place among the groups' third-place squads and make it into the quarterfinals.

On the other hand, Honduras and Panama, with four points each, know that with a tie in their Tuesday night match they'll both advance to the next round.

But apart from what they might achieve in their own game Tuesday night in the Orange Bowl here, the Colombian team has been hugely disappointing.

Of course, they came to the Gold Cup without most of their veteran players, but South Africa didn't bring its best men either and their young players have done outstanding work anyway.

Currently, the South Africans are leading Group C along with Jamaica after demonstrating a strong, aggressive style, surprising Mexico 2-1 and then tying the Jamaicans 3-3.

They can finish atop their group if on Wednesday in Houston's Reliant Stadium they can defeat Guatemala, which has already been eliminated from the quarterfinals after being beatan by Jamaica 4-3 and crushed by Mexico 4-0.

"Our goal is to acquire international experience with an eye toward the future with these courageous youngsters, and I think we're performing well," South African coach Stuart Baxter told EFE.

Meanwhile, in Group B there have been no surprises and nothing particularly outstanding has transpired. The United States and Costa Rica have attained comfortable victories and have already qualified for the quarterfinals.

The U.S. squad, which is seeking its third Gold Cup title, has not played its best soccer so far, but it beat Cuba easily 4-1 and blanked Canada 2-0. Coach Bruce Arena has been able to give his 22 players the chance to keep gaining valuable experience and honing their machine to not only try and prevail in the CONCACAF tourney, but also to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Arena said that although their game hadn't sparkled, he'd liked some of the things he'd seen several of his players do on the pitch.

Costa Rica, who will play the Americans in Group B's last first-round match in Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, near Boston, is also undefeated after its 1-0 win over Canada and its 3-1 triumph over Cuba.

This Central American squad has demonstrated that it's definitely in the running for a ticket to Germany in 2006, and under coach Alexander Guimaraes they've gotten back to their clearly-defined playing style and have shown they know how to mount effective scoring drives.

However, as if the lack of high-quality Gold Cup play so far wasn't enough of a problem for a tourney whose continued existence is ever more doubtful, now a controversy has arisen over the objective of the contest.

While everyone waits to see who the teams are who make it into the quarterfinals, the focus of attention has been on media rumors that have surfaced regarding whether or not the Gold Cup champion will be the official representative of the soccer Confederation (the old CONCACAF) at the next Confederations Cup.

The doubts arose after a report by the Los Angeles daily La Opinion said that the championship team of this year's Gold Cup "is dreaming" if it thinks it will get an automatic ticket to the 2009 Confederations Cup in South Africa.

Confederation president Jack Warner and general secretary Chuck Blazer are working out a procedure for playing a new four-team elimination round to battle it out for the Confederations Cup berth.

According to La Opinion, the new procedure would let the "champions and runners-up of the 2005 and 2007 Gold Cups" face off, and out of the smoke would emerge the team that the Confederation would send to South Africa.

Confederation press spokesman Steve Torres, however, on Tuesday denied the alleged plans to modify the qualification system for the Confederations Cup representative.

"The only thing I can say is that none of that is being considered. That's just pure speculation," Torres declared.