I feel it necessary to talk a little more about the Yanks qualifier in El Salvador tomorrow. Some of this is a service to you, and some of it is an education for me.

I've compiled a brief list of facts on El Salvador, as well a look at the stadium in San Salvador.

After the jump of course.

El Salvador
FIFA Rank: 106
CONCACAF Rank: 10
National Stadium: Estadio Cuscatlan (capacity 52,900)
Last World Cup Finals Appearance: 1982

The more I look at the game, the more I'm convinced that a U.S. win by less than 3-0 (and do I dare dream for more) would be disappointing: El Salvador does not have a player in their squad that plays their club soccer outside of the country, and their league does not crack the IFFHS rankings top one hundred (which I don't put a lot of stock in, but it's still some kind of measure).

A lot is made of the hostile environments that exist throughout CONCACAF, and I'm sure El Salvador is no exception. Here's a picture of the stadium, just to give you a sense of it:



This video of last month's El Salvador-Trinidad & Tobago qualifying match doesn't really give you the sense that it will be overly hostile, though:



Finally, something relatively humorous I found while poking around for information on El Salvador: Apparently, in a fan poll on the FIFA website, El Salvador was picked to be atop the hexagonal after Match Day 1. Weird. Obviously that didn't happen as they tied T&T (2-2) while the USA and Costa Rica won.

Forgot to mention a thought I just had (connect the dots with me):
The DC Metro has sizable Salvadoran population...
DC United play their home opener at RFK tomorrow, kicking off at 7:30 pm Eastern...
El Salvador-USA kicks off at 9 pm Eastern...
Attendance at RFK will be...?