... while America looks set for Round Two
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from June 1994.
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The Colombians were stunned earlier by a death threat to one of their players, but were outplayed anyway by a U.S. team playing its best ever soccer in the competition that mattered most.
On a day when Cameroon players threatened strike action over pay, the contented Swiss looked certain to gain the second round after romping to a 4-1 victory over Romania.
In the Group A standings, The Swiss and the Americans have four points from two games, Romania has three and Colombia, expected to head the group, has none.
The Americans, scoring their first World Cup victory since upsetting England in 1950, were helped on their way by an own goal from defender Andres Escobar. He tried to intercept a center from John Harkes and slid the ball into his own net.
Ernie Stewart, who plays in the Netherlands for Willem II, scored the second in the 52nd minute from Tab Ramos' pass, and the game virtually was all over when Colombian substitute Adolfo Valencia replied in the final minute.
Marcelo Balboa almost scored a spectacular third for the Americans, shooting fractionally wide from a 16-meter overhead kick.
The Colombians almost certainly will go home after their third game against the Swiss on Sunday.
"Unfortunately I have still not been able to find the explanation as to why we played this badly," coach Francisco Maturana said. "I think it's obviously very weird that our participation has been a disaster.
"This is not what people expected from us. Unfortunately we could make only two substitutions. We would have liked to make 11 substitutions at halftime."
The Americans were buoyant.
"We proved to everybody today that we can play the game," goalkeeper and captain Tony Meola said.
"The game plan today was to squeeze Colombia in the middle. They kept coming and coming and our guys kept stopping them."
After a disappointing 1-1 tie with the United States in their opening game, the Swiss overwhelmed a Romanian team that had outgunned the Colombians 3-1. Alain Sutter (16th minute), Stephane Chapuisat (53rd), Adrian Knup (66th) and George Bregy (72nd) fired the goals that tied Switzerland best ever World Cup performance, a 4-1 thumping of Italy in 1954 when it hosted the tournament.
Gheorghe Hagi fired his second goal of the tournament and Florin Raducioiu, who scored twice against Colombia, this time twice was foiled by acrobatic Swiss goalie Marco Pascolo.
Romanian substitute Ion Vladoiu was sent off in the 73rd minute only seconds after he went onto the field for clattering into Switzerland's Christophe Ohrel.
The Colombians were stunned by a death threat aimed at midfielder Gabriel Gomez, older brother of assistant coach Hernan Dario Gomez.
Team spokesman Javier Hernandez said coach Francisco Maturana decided to replace Gomez with Herman Gaviria after the front office at the team's hotel told the delegation that it had received a death threat against Gomez.
Maturana considered resigning over the matter, then decided to remain with the team.
The death threat was sent to the team's hotel in Fullerton, Calif., spokesman Javier Hernandez said.
"The threats came on telefax and contained very serious threats," he said. "We don't know the origin of these threats. The threats were against the team in general and Gomez in particular.
"They threatened to blow up the house of Gabriel Gomez."
Cameroon goalie and team captain Joseph-Antoine Bell said in San Francisco that a pay dispute had been going on for some time with the team officials.
The players reportedly have not been paid for two months and it is not clear how much they are owed.
