{"id":31053,"date":"2015-01-24T19:23:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T00:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=31053"},"modified":"2015-01-24T19:23:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T00:23:01","slug":"u-s-qualifies-for-u-20-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=31053","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Qualifies for U-20 World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo Credit: U.S. Soccer<\/p><\/div>\n

The U.S. U-20 Men\u2019s National Team got off to a rough start in the 2015 CONCACAF U-20 Championship drawing 1-1 with Guatemala and falling 1-0 to Panama, but a four game winning streak, culminating with a 2-0 playoff with over El Salvador on Saturday, guaranteed the U.S. a spot in the 2015 FIFA U-20 World Cup. Ben Spencer and Paul Arriola struck on either side of halftime in the match at Montego Bay, Jamaica, to give the U.S. a spot in the U-20 World Cup for the second straight time.<\/p>\n

After going winless in their first two matches to fall near the bottom of Group A, the U.S. rattled off three straight wins by a combined score of 11-0 to take second place in the group. The run wasn\u2019t enough to give the U.S. a spot in the championship, but did qualify them for the play-offs and Saturday\u2019s play-off win over El Salvador propelled them to the U-20 World Cup.<\/p>\n

The U.S. came close just over a minute into the match when Spencer flicked a long ball to San Jose Earthquakes\u2019 midfielder Tommy Thompson in the box. Thompson, one-on-one with the \u2018keeper, fired just wide of the far post from a tight angle.<\/p>\n

Spencer would put the U.S. ahead in the 37th<\/sup> minute after winning a header off a long free kick. Spencer\u2019s effort hit off the crossbar, but he was there for his own rebound and headed it into the empty net.<\/p>\n

U.S. goalkeeper Zack Steffen came up huge in the 52nd<\/sup> minute denying Jose Villavicencio on a penalty kick with an impressive diving save to his right, preserving the 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n

The U.S. doubled their lead in the 68th<\/sup> minute through Arriola.\u00a0 Bradford Jamieson IV\u2019s shot was blocked, but the rebound fell to Arriola, who snuck a shot through a crowded box to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n

Things got worse for El Salvador in the 79th<\/sup> minute when Andres Flores was issued a straight red card.<\/p>\n

The U.S. would hold on from there to assure a place at the 2015 FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand, which kicks off May 30. West Haven, Conn. native Tyler Turner was on the U.S. roster, but did not see time in the match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2-0 win over El Salvador in 2015 CONCACAF U-20 Championship play-offs gives U.S. U-20 a World Cup spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[148],"tags":[892,534],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/usu20.jpg?fit=615%2C400","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31055,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31053\/revisions\/31055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}