The banner headline in Panama’s leading newspaper got the mood, if not the vocabulary, right.
Regresa el Fantasma, The Ghost Returns.
But it’s not so much a ghost that has come back to Panama in the form of the U.S. national team as it is a haunting memory that never left in the first place.
In the final game of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying four years ago, Panama was 90 seconds from a win over the U.S., one that would have sent it to a playoff with New Zealand and a chance to win the country’s first World Cup berth.