EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — In the litany of one-off exhibitions, charity games and assorted tournaments that make up soccer’s calendar, the Gold Cup is an especially strange affair. Staged every two years by the sport’s regional governing body, Concacaf, this month’s iteration has featured: allegations from Belize regarding a failed attempt at match-fixing; dispirited play, including another disastrous performance from Mexico; and one team, Martinique, nearly advancing to the knockout round despite being ineligible for the prize that goes to the tournament’s winner.

(A quick primer: this year’s champion will face the 2015 champion in a special game to determine which team receives a berth in the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup. Martinique, as an overseas department of France, is not a member of FIFA and thus cannot play in one of its events. If that seems particularly bizarre, it is because it is.)

All that aside, there is still a sliver of import to these matches. Even in the games in which the results are virtually meaningless — like Tuesday’s game here between the United States and Costa Rica, which was only slightly more significant than baseball’s All-Star Game, which was played about the same time at Citi Field — there are at least two players on the United States team with obvious missions in mind.

Stuart Holden and Landon Donovan are, for different reasons, tantalizing enigmas for Coach Jurgen Klinsmann as he prepares for the fall’s World Cup qualifiers and then, almost surely, for next year’s trip to Brazil. Like many of the other top coaches in the tournament, Klinsmann brought something akin to a B team to these games, giving many of his star players — Clint Dempsey, Michael Bradley and Tim Howard among them — a needed rest before the European season begins.