Emery Welshman offered a simple, but loaded statement:
“For them, they probably don’t even know where Guyana is.”
The remark was about the U.S. Men’s National Team playing Guyana on Tuesday night in the 2019 Concacaf Gold Cup.
The match, which kicks off at 10 p.m. ET in St. Paul, Minn., is the first in a major international tournament for the Golden Jaguars. For the Americans, it’s their first in a quest to win a second consecutive Gold Cup.
So, do USMNT players truly know where Guyana is?
When the national team played in Cincinnati for the first time last Sunday, I asked a couple players. They’ll remain nameless.
“I have no idea. It’s somewhere in the Caribbean,” one said.
“I’m not going to even try and guess and embarrass myself,” said another.
Answer: it’s a country roughly the size of Ohio in South America that borders the Atlantic Ocean in the north and Brazil in the south.
Welshman was right.