It has been a sad week for soccer in the USA after a disastrous game saw the American men’s soccer team eliminated from qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia. Unfortunately, the USA soccer team can’t blame any political protests or anything like that. Their elimination was simply down to poor play.
The USA Soccer Team suffered a shock defeat against Trinidad and Tobago. This defeat means America is out of the qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
The American Favorites Lose
Earlier this week, the United States faced off against Trinidad and Tobago. It should have been an easy win. However, the American team landed up losing 2-1. In addition to this, Honduras beat Mexico in a surprise result, which sealed the fate of the USA team, eliminating them from qualifying for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. To make matters worse, the Americans were the strong favorites for the match at -400. This gave them an 80% chance of winning the game, so the defeat was quite a surprise.
The USA needed to win both of its final matches in order to qualify for the World Cup. Things got off to a very good start last week after America managed to defeat Panama 4-0. That just left Trinidad and Tobago, which was expected to be the easier game.
USA Elimination Likely to Hurt Sportsbooks
America qualifies for the FIFA World Cup by playing in the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, or CONCACAF. What makes our elimination even more painful is that this is said to be one of the easiest ways to qualify for the World Cup.
Now that our team hasn’t qualified, it is probably going to hurt sportsbooks in the USA, especially in Las Vegas. Over the last few years, betting on soccer matches has increased in America. However, now that the USA team will not be participating in the competition in 2018, we expect to see the number of people placing bets to drop.
Hopefully, those numbers will bounce back in the future, especially if the USA is one of the hosts for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
