Jason Kreis slipped the warning in during his pre-match press conference.
“I think in some ways it’s a little unfortunate that we have to have one-off games to qualify for the Olympics, but it is what it is,” he said.
He had grasped the concept. A bad day—one mistake—can send you packing. Concacaf set up its Olympic qualifying tournament to produce two semifinal matches that send the survivors to Japan, and for the U.S. U-23 national team, everything would come down to those 90 minutes. Past performance and pedigree were immaterial. What mattered was the play on the day.