Costa Rican’s hopes of returning to the World Cup waning.

Costa Rica’s poor run of form continued last night as the Ticos traveled south to face Peru and came out losing 3-1. As Costa Rica continue playing friendly games in preparation for their World Cup qualifying campaign, the more it appears that the Central American nation will fail to make it to South Africa with only 1 win in their last 11 games despite their encouraging performance.

It was always going to be a difficult game to play, away from home and in more humid conditions than the Ticos are used to, but the Costa Rican side started promisingly. They held the ball well and made few errors in conceding possession to the home side; totalling up 60% possession in the first half alone.

However Costa Rica really failed to utilize this advantage and only managed to threaten the Peruvian goal on a couple of occasions, one of which included a thunderous strike which rattled the woodwork of the goal.

Peru looked dangerous when on the attack and started to exploit the vulnerable parts of the Costa Rican defense, with a few shots coming close. Peru finally broke the deadlock in the 34th minute when a failed Costa Rican attack resulted in a Peruvian counter attack where Hernan Rengifo fired home to give Peru the lead.

The lead didn’t last very long though as Costa Rica continued to press forward to get back into the game. Ricardo Harris made a darting run into the box from the right only to be brought crashing to the ground by a Peruvian defender leaving the referee with no option but to award Costa Rica a penalty. Saprissa’s Alex Alpizar stepped up to the spot and coolly converted the penalty to bring the two sides level before half time.

The second half started fast and furiously as Peru came racing out of the starting blocks looking like a completely different side than the one that had played in the first half. Within a minute of the restart Carlos Zambrano had sent the home crowd into raptures again as Peru regained the lead. And the attacking barrage didn’t end there as Peru continued to press and were awarded a free kick outside the box. Martin Hidalgo stepped up to take the free kick and looped the ball up over the wall and into the back of the net to put the South Americans up 3-1.

Costa Rica tried to get back into the game as they continued to go forward and even managed to hit the back of the Peruvian net via Gabriel Badilla only for the referee to rule out his goal for being offsides. As the clock counted down, the game fizzled out and both sides seemed to reside on a 3-1 win for Peru.

In comparison to the friendly against Jamaica last month, the Costa Rican side had made a massive improvement on their overall game, and this will no doubt help improve the mental strength of a side that has been really lacking in confidence within their past few friendlies. But a loss is still a loss no matter how well they played, and if they can’t pick up wins in their forthcoming qualifying matches, they won’t be at the World Cup 2010 tournament in South Africa. It’s that simple.

Granada is Costa Rica’s first opponents in their qualifying group, who they will face in a couple weeks time. Coach Medford and his squad must really be feeling the pressure with a nation that has come to believe that Costa Rica should be good enough to regularly make the World Cup finals standard.

Photo courtesy of estaciontropical.blogspot.com.

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Filed under: Sports on March 27th, 2008