- Five players on the U.S. roster are carrying yellow cards into San Jose: Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, Frankie Hejduk and Oguchi Onyewu. A caution for any of these players against Costa Rica would result in a one match suspension to be served June 6 against Honduras. Costa Rica enters the match with seven players on their roster carrying yellow cards—Ricardo Gonzalez, Junior Diaz, Michael Umana, Armando Alonso, Celso Borges, Esteban Granados and Bryan Ruiz.
- The U.S. is 9-1-1 in qualifying so far this cycle, with the one loss coming in the last game of the semifinal round in Trinidad & Tobago after clinching a spot in the final six.
- Costa Rica enters the game also 9-1-1 in qualifying, winning four of their last five.
- The U.S. is playing its second away game of the 2010 final round campaign after tying 2-2 in El Salvador on March 28 in San Salvador.
- The U.S. has a lifetime record of 11-10-5 against Costa Rica, but has never won on the road and holds a 0-6-1 record in qualifying in Costa Rica. In their last 10 meetings, the U.S. holds a 5-3-2 advantage against the Ticos, with all five wins coming in the U.S. and all three losses coming in San Jose, Costa Rica.
- Six players on the current roster started in the last match in Costa Rica, a 3-0 loss in World Cup qualifying on Oct. 8, 2005, on the artificial turf at Saprissa: Tim Howard, Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra, DaMarcus Beasley, Pablo Mastroeni and Brian Ching. Danny Califf was on the roster but did not play.
- Of the current pool of players, Landon Donovan leads the team with 28 World Cup qualifying caps. He’s chasing the trio of Eddie Pope, Kasey Keller and Claudio Reyna, all tied for the lead in World Cup qualifying with 32 international appearances.
- Overall, Donovan leads the roster with 108 international appearances.
- In the last game against Trinidad & Tobago, the 19 year old Altidore scored the third U.S. hat trick in FIFA World Cup qualifying, with all three goals coming off assists from Donovan.
- Altidore is now the leading U.S. goal scorer of this FIFA World Cup qualifying cycle with five goals in six appearances. Ching, Dempsey and Bradley are all tied for second on the U.S. squad with four each.
- The three assists put Donovan’s U.S. all-time leading total to 36. The next closest on this roster is Beasley with 12 assists.
- Dempsey recorded two game-winning goals in FIFA World Cup qualifying last year—against Barbados on June 15 in Carson, Calif., and in a 1-0 win on Sept. 6 in Cuba. With his next appearance, Dempsey will have earned 50 caps for the United States.
- Michael Bradley also has two game-winning goals in 2010 qualifying, striking against Trinidad & Tobago on Sept. 10, 2008, and Feb. 11, 2009, against Mexico.
- Beasley (Oct. 11 against Cuba), Bocanegra (Aug. 20 against Guatemala) and Altidore (April 1 against Trinidad & Tobago) are the other players on the roster with game-winners in 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying.
- Beasley has played a team-leading 822 minutes so far out of a possible 990 in World Cup qualifying (83 percent of all possible minutes)—quite impressive considering he is just over one year removed from a six-month injury layoff due to a torn PCL in his right knee.
- Beasley, Bradley and Heath Pearce all are tied with nine starts in the 2010 cycle.
- Bob Bradley’s men are also on a five-game streak of scoring multiple goals, with four of those games qualifiers. It’s the first time the U.S. has scored multiple goals in four consecutive World Cup Qualifiers, besting the previous record of three that was set three times.
- Counting the friendly against Sweden in January, it is the third time in history that the U.S. men have scored multiple goals in five consecutive games. This is the second time the team has achieved this feat under Bradley, the only coach to lead the team through two such streaks.
- By scoring a hat trick on Jan. 24 against Sweden, Sacha Kljestan became only the second player in U.S. history to score his first three goals in the same game. The first was Aldo “Buff” Donelli, who tallied four goals in a 4-2 victory against Mexico on May 24, 1934, in the lone qualifying match for the 1934 FIFA World Cup in Italy.
- This is the second FIFA World Cup Qualifying cycle in a row that the U.S. has only met Costa Rica in the final round of qualifying. In 2005 the teams split the results by holding serve at home on their road to Germany 2006. The two cycles before that (’98 and ’02) saw the two sides face off both in the semifinal and final rounds for a total of eight games in five years, with the U.S. posting a 3-4-1 record.