Espinoza Called Up for Honduras World Cup Qualifiers

To go along with the announcement yesterday of the US roster for their World Cup qualifiers, Honduras today announced their roster for their World Cup qualifiers coming up as well. Sporting Kansas City’s Roger Espinoza is one of five MLS players to be named to the Honduras roster along with FC Dallas’ Maynor Figueroa and the Houson Dynano’s trio of Boniek Garcia, Alberth Elis, and Romell Quioto.

Honduras will be playing a pair of away games in this set of qualifiers first traveling to Estadio Azteca for a game against Mexico on June 8th before traveling to Panama City to take on Panama on June 13th. Honduras, who has qualified for the last two World Cups currently sits outside of qualification at the moment, in fifth place in the “Hex” with four points. A pair of away games against two teams currently ahead of them in the standings will certainly be no easy task for the Hondurans.

For Sporting Kansas City it means that they will have two games without Espinoza, as he will miss Saturday’s game against Minnesota due to red card suspension and next weekend’s game against Montreal while on national team duty. The good news is that Espinoza shouldn’t have to officially report until after Sporting’s game this weekend against Minnesota, which means it will count as his game served for his red card he picked up over the weekend in Colorado. If Espinoza had reported before the Minnesota game, his MLS suspension would not have been served until his return as MLS rules state a player cannot serve a suspension while on international duty.