To say the United States men’s national team dominated this afternoon against Cuba in the Gold Cup quarterfinals would be an understatement.
The USMNT won 6-0, which is tied with Mexico (who also beat Cuba) for the largest margin of victory in the tournament.
Cuba was in the match for, um, all of three-and-a-half minutes before the Clint Dempsey and the USMNT opened the scoring and never looked back. (Oh, and should we mention Dempsey scored his fourth, fifth, and sixth goals of the Gold Cup tournament, which puts him in the lead for the Golden Boot? No? Okay, we won’t.)
First Half Goals
It took less than four minutes for former USMNT captain Clint Dempsey to score the match’s opening goal…
…and then in the 22nd minute, Gyasi Zardes scored the match’s second goal — and coincidentally the second goal of the 23-year-old’s international career.
Then in the 31st minute, the United States made it 3-0, matched our pregame predictions, and made sure there was nothing Cuba was going to do to get back in the match.
And then to close out the first half during extra time of the first half, Omar Gonzalez scored his first (!!!) international goal to put the USMNT up 4-0 over Cuba.
Second Half Goals
After the first 15 minutes of the second half where Cuba put together a few legitimate chances on goal, Dempsey got taken down in the box. Cuba got a yellow card and Dempsey put this clever penalty kick in the back of the net to make it 5-0.
HAT TRICK, CLINT DEMPSEY! (And can we talk about Michael Bradley’s assist?) In the 78th minute, Dempsey scored his third goal of the match to seal the deal, and put him two goals in the lead for the Golden Boot!
