Luis Palma was unable to continue his Celtic goalscoring form for Honduras on Friday.
The Hoops winger has struck speculative goals in our last two Premiership matches. He also found the net in brilliant fashion against Lazio, only for the goal to be ruled out for a Daizen Maeda offside.
Palma has his scoring boots on, but he couldn’t translate that into another goal for his country as they were held to a 0-0 draw away to Cuba.
The Celtic star played the entire match but was unable to provide the telling moment on a disappointing night.
The match was the penultimate fixture in Honduras‘ CONCACAF Nations League A group. While that, and a match played in Santo Domingo, doesn’t example scream out ‘hugely important fixture’, it seems like the Honduran press aren’t massively happy with how events played out.
Outlet La Prensa described it as a “nightmarish match”, saying that Palma and co will return home “with their head down.”
Reading a little deeper into things, it seems like the Nations League is vital for Honduras if they want to feature in next year’s Copa America.
The tournament usually only includes teams from South America, but the decision to expand it has been made, with the 2024 version featuring six teams from CONCACAF.
Honduras will stand a chance of qualification if they finish in the top two of their Nations League group. Failure to beat Cuba on Friday means that they must now win their final match on Monday. The opposition? Eh, Cuba again.
Should Palma’s side prevail, they could then come up against Alistair Johnston’s Canada or Cameron Carter-Vickers’ United States for the chance to join Messi, Vinicius and more at the big tournament.
That, by the way, is being held in the USA. However, they still have to qualify.
In other news, the mixed fortunes of Celtic pair Tobi Oluwayemi and Matthew Anderson
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
