Thought i'd make a place for discussing the other results in the playoffs. Last night Houston won 2-1 on the road in Chicago to move on to face SKC. Here's the breakout as of 11/1 (taken from MLSSoccer.com)
Houston is the only team we would host for MLS Cup (53 points to our 54). I've just become a big Houston fan for their next 2 games.
Chicago went out on the field with no Fs Given like sandy was gonna come and post pone the match, i expected a better battle ohh well....
I'm watching Salt Lake play the Seahawks, apparently. If Seattle can't get a legitimate stadium, the team should be moved. I hope RSL destroys them so we don't have to play there after we destroy SJ.
Game ended up 0-0 and Seattle in danger of losing in the 1st round of the playoffs for the 4th year in a row.
The Seahawks expect to have Johnson back, and RSL hasn't been scoring a lot of goals. I don't see either team having a real advantage at this point. Rimando saved RSL tonight. I loved the class of the Seahawks fans after Tiffert rather shittily elbowed Rimando and drew blood; they booed him for having to be bandaged up, then booed him every time he touched the ball.
Do you guys really want to share a downtown stadium with an NFL team? We're gonna end up with NFL lines on the pitch just like tonight's Seattle-Fake Salt Lake game. UGLY.
But what about the sadists who want to broaden their horizons? Aside from that, Nick Rimando will be hard to solve if we are able to solve the Quakes next week.
That was an amazing goalkeeping exhibition. By both goalkeepers. I remember when many (me included) thought Rimando's skills were starting to decline way back in 2005 - he had a rough last year at DC. At only 5' 10" (in heels) his game depends a lot on having cat-like reflexes so it seemed natural that he would become less effective more quickly than a keeper of say Ricketts size. Wrong - his reflexes seem as good as ever these 7 years later. Kudos to Nick. Gspurning had a couple awesome saves as well. His 1 hand reaction save was world class - that's one strong paw. Just hope we get an opportunity to put one of these two fine keepers to the test in the next week or so.
Thank you!!! He was annoying me on Thursday night. I think he talks out of his ass 80% of the time. Arlo: so Kyle, how did Keane miss that? Kyle: well, his plant foot is diagonally 34 centimeters away from his shooting foot, and with the distance of the moon from the Earth, and the king taco burrito I had this morning means Keane flubbed it! I like the guy but he needs to keep it simple.
I am having a tough time calling this one. Clearly Hans Backe, Andy Najar, Kyle Martino, and the ref Maruffo all displayed astounding levels of idiocy tonight. But which one was the biggest buffoon? It's so hard to decide - they all reached such high levels. Oh, whom am I kidding? We all know it was Marrufo. One of the worst reffing jobs I've seen in MLS since, well,.... hmmm, when did I last see a ref go out there and just completely fail to do his job? Oh goody I remember it now! It was the last game we played against SJ and some random joke of a ref allowed repeated body slams and random wild kicks to ankles and shins and blind side shoves in the back to happen all over the field and he just pretended he didn't see them. Yeah now I remember - that ref was as grossly incompetent as this one. Wonder who that was...? Couldn't have been Marrufo because I know MLS trains and reviews the performances of their refs and gives them feedback and it is clearly impossible for a minimally trained ref to have two such horrible nights in a single season. Right? OTOH I will give the Red Bulls credit. They soon figured out that you could shove players to the ground or if you prefer just push them off balance when they are airborne in the box (even gk's!) and you could especially do it in the box because there would be no chance of a call and so they smartly added those moves to their arsenal at both ends of the pitch. The horse collar at the top of the 6 yard box to prevent a scoring chance was truly a thing of beauty. And the RB keeper Robles took the thinking even further when he realized that Maruffo's incompetence had no ceiling. That meant that when a ball was passed back to him by a teammate and he felt a little pressure there was no reason to risk scuffing the kick; he just started using his hands. He knew he wouldn't be penalized as long as this bozo was reffing. Back to Martino. Upon further thought I realize I've probably been unfair to him. At first I was astounded how any former player/current color commentator could witness so many obvious and blatant fouls on a TV screen in slow motion and then decide none of them were actually fouls. And I was really confused by this because I also knew that Kyle had convinced Susan Sarandon's super hot daughter to marry him; obviously he couldn't possibly be that dumb. Then it hit me! Martino was mocking Maruffo by agreeing with each and every one of his horrible non-calls. Sort of like you know how at a party you get stuck with the rabid Tea Partier who starts telling you about how Glenn Beck has just revealed Obama's secret plan to transfer America's assets to Kenya and she starts reeling off all of the evidence all of which is 100% wrong but you know its pointless to argue and its kind of entertaining to listen to so you just keep nodding your head in agreement while sighing silently to yourself? Well I bet that's what happened with Martino. But he knew he was on TV and no one could hear his head nodding so he did the equivalent by pretending to agree out loud. But you know he had to be rolling his eyes in his mind the whole time. He and his partner must have laughed like crazy about his little stunt after the broadcast was over. Well played, Kyle!
Throughout the year whenever Henry would do something pretty spectacular, I would just kind of chuckle when Shep Messing would always say he's the best player in MLS. Sure, Shep. Was Henry even playing last night? I would expect more effort from the "Best player in MLS" and a highly paid DP. Give me Beckham, Keane or LD ANY day.
Maruffo's reffing (or more precisely, lack of reffing) ruined this game for me. And worse he robbed DC of at least two goals, maybe three. Olsen is going to be livid when he sees the tapes. First - Hamid's "own goal" was bs - he was clearly shoved as he went up for the ball. In every game in every league around the world that is an immediate whistle, free kick DC. Second robbery - Holgersson wraps both hands around Pajoy's shoulders and pulls him to the ground as he is trying to shoot from 5 yards out. A clear penalty. Third robbery - Under pressure Holgersson passes the ball with his feet to Robles who has a brain fart and picks up the ball with his hands. Should have been an automatic indirect free kick from about 3 yards in front of the goal. So those three missed calls alone add up to a likely 2 or 3 goals stolen from DC. A good color commentator would have been pointing out these non-calls as either mistakes or possibly more diplomatically as 'controversial' decisions. You could tell that Kyle's partner in the booth thought they were bad decisions but for some reason Kyle went out of his way to explain away all three of these, as well as the rest of Maruffo's mistakes: The shove on Hamid wasn't a foul because he didn't shove him that hard. And somehow Holgersson wrapping both hands around Pajoys shoulder joint and pulling him to the ground wasn't a foul despite Pajoy clearly trying his best to fight off the foul and get the shot off. Because, as Kyle said, you couldn't see any pulling motion? And Robles handling the backpass from Holgersson was ok because maybe Holgersson wasn't passing the ball to Robles? And then Kyle adds that the fact that Robles picked it up and he knows better than to pick up back passes shows it wasn't a back pass? Well I might agree with Kyle on this one - if I were blind and hadn't just seen the play. Maruffo is awful and should not be allowed to ref at all AYSO. And certainly not in MLS playoff games. And Kyle needs to move on to something like doing the before and after game announcing and leave the color commentating to someone who knows the game and has the cajones to point out when the ref is stinking up the game. But other than that it was a great game!
It drives me crazy when commentators work so hard to explain away bad refereeing. Do they get a bonus for ingratiating themselves to the league? I'd rather they just speak the truth. What's wrong with saying the ref blew a call? They miss a few every game.
No doubt Henry is a World Class Player and a Player any team in the world would wanna have on their line up , but he seems to be getting Lazier , same thing with Freddy Montero