U.S. loses Jay DeMerit for key World Cup qualifier against Honduras

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Good news from San Pedro Sula, bad news from Watford. Despite the political turmoil embracing Honduras, it appears that the country’s Oct. 10 World Cup qualifier against the U.S. will go ahead as scheduled. There had been talk of moving the game elsewhere, but a FIFA spokesman has indicated that that will not happen.

‘It seems that for the time being there is no reason to move the game,’ Jerome Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general, told the Associated Press in New York. Valcke said that as long as security could be assured, the match would go ahead in San Pedro Sula.

Both countries are poised to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and a victory for the U.S. would secure its place in the tournament.

Meanwhile, U.S. Coach Bob Bradley’s team has suffered a blow with the loss of starting central defender Jay DeMerit to a strange eye injury. DeMerit, who plays for Watford in England, said he cut his eye trying to remove a contact lens and then it got infected.

DeMerit’s absence from the Oct. 10 game and the final qualifier on Oct. 14 against Costa Rica in Washington, could cause Bradley to move Carlos Bocanegra into the center of the defense and start Chivas USA’s Jonathan Bornstein in Bocanegra’s place at left back. Does that make the U.S. more or less likely to win and clinch its World Cup place, or was Honduras, which is unbeaten at home, always the favorite?

-- Grahame L. Jones