Arnold: Concacaf Gold Cup is hardly perfect, but this edition will be special

It’s time for the Gold Cup. Yes, again, and this time around I’ll hear no complaints.

If you know my work, you know I’m obsessed with Concacaf. I love its quirks and am intrigued by the stories that so often go untold in this region. At the first Gold Cup I covered, I did an in-depth piece about the sport in Guadeloupe, one of the United States’ rivals at the 2011 tournament. It was a harbinger of the type of stories I’d continue to dig into as my soccer journalism career progressed.

It doesn’t feel like I’m old enough to be covering any tournament for the sixth time, but it adds up quickly when you have one every two years.

That frequency is actually something I’ve bemoaned. The Gold Cup would mean more if it were to take place every four years, though I’ve also advocated for a developmental tournament every two years to help boost countries in need of more top-level international competition.

This year, though, I’m ready. After the difficult times we suffered in 2020, it’s impossible to have too many games or conduct a tournament too often. There are plenty of issues with Concacaf, and the Gold Cup is far from perfect. This edition, however, will feel special.

While the pandemic remains a big threat, with the Delta variant threatening especially those who unvaccinated, it currently is reasonable to expect to safely attend a match in a full stadium like the ones Mexico, the U.S. and Honduras will be playing in. That was simply unthinkable at this stage last year.

Almost exactly a year ago, FC Dallas was being kicked out of the bubble as MLS embarked upon the MLS Is Back tournament. Matches were played in a made-for-TV setup at Walt Disney World with only a privileged few, tested multiple times, able to see the matches in person. The future for sports afterward was unclear and even as fans started returning to stadiums in small numbers in August, it hardly seemed like the time to celebrate sports.

Thanks to the miracle of the vaccines, we saw case numbers stay low as fans return to full or nearly full stadiums for MLS games plus events like Mexico’s friendly match against Iceland or, weeks earlier, a Canelo fight against Billy Joe Saunders. Health experts said this week that Dallas County has reached herd immunity, another joyous milestone indicating just how far we’ve come since July 2020.

That’s why I won’t take this Gold Cup for granted. The tournament is an easy target. Only three teams have ever won, with Mexico and United States showing their regional dominance for decades. This year, the tournament will include VAR but the region’s referees endure a fair amount of criticism (sometimes rightfully so). The crowds may still not be convinced by the first matches of the doubleheaders. There may be a few blowouts.

Yet, there also will be moments like there were in 2019, when Haiti completed a tremendous comeback in the quarterfinal against Canada in Houston, a feat that got even a cynical ‘no cheering in the press box’ journalist like me on my feet for Wilde Donald Guerrier’s winner, to make the semifinal for the first time.

There will be surprise stars, like a forgotten Freddy Adu coming on as a substitute for the U.S. in a semifinal against Panama, also in Houston, sparking the Americans into the final as he set up the winning goal.

There will be great goals. I didn’t cover either in person, but I pray I get to see something like Giovani dos Santos’ moment of magic against the United States in the 2011 final to sink that U.S. team or Benny Feilhaber’s ridiculous volley in the 2007 final.

There have been low moments too. I covered matches later investigated for match manipulation (unlike the wild own goals people typically imagine as signs of crooked gamblers’ influence, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary at the time) and saw a refereeing performance so bad in the 2015 semifinal that Panama held up a banner after the match that called Concacaf a corrupt group of thieves and, to my knowledge, never faced any disciplinary action.

But this time around, I’m going to focus on the positive: We’re going to be able to enjoy the hell out of a tournament. We’re going to be able to see each other at the stadium, hear the roar of the crowd, see the tifos Pancho Villa’s Army and American Outlaws display, hear the players belting out their national anthem.

The Gold Cup isn’t perfect, but after what we all have experienced in the last 17 months, it might feel pretty close.