Post-match: San Jose Earthquakes - Club Deportivo Chivas USA (Sunday, 5/13) postgame thread [R]

LOL. You are giving Correa the least amount of credit possible for the play that changed the game. He made the right run, got position in front of Hernandez and scored. To me it doesn't look like the ball ricocheted off of Hernandez. It's hard to tell. If it didn't it was incredibly well placed, and with some spin on it to bring it outside in.

As for the other stuff, meh, he's 19, he's making his first start MLS, for most of the match he's being asked to drift into midfield to try to help defend, and you are casting his play in the least favorable light. The guy was one of the leading scorers in Colombia's top domestic league, and is on their national team radar, so clearly he's not the loser you make you him out to be. He's a promising young player who is just getting his feet wet in MLS.

 

It's physically impossible for the ball to spin back toward the goal on a redirect without a double-touch.
That said, the shot might easily have gone in anyway, just not the way it did.
As for his run, he and Jason were just jogging prior to the cross, it's not like he beat him to a spot.
Riley made the amazing play, because a traditional cross gets cut out by Morrow unless it's a high curler, in which case Jason has plenty of time to close the space. And he had to make the cross right when he did because Dawkins had caught up to him and was decelerating.

Agreed. I didn't say he's a chump, he could easily develop into a star, I'm just saying he was a flop in this particular match. Anyone can over-dub my PBP if they want to. He has "Scoreboard" on his side, as it were, but we typically try to look beyond that when evaluating performances, which that announcer apparently didn't do. To be fair, he was asked to do a lot without help, and (I feel) our D was tremendous.

I am definitely coming around to your point of view on Garza, he could be the real deal.

 

It was a double-touch, one from Riley, one from Correa . I'm skeptical. The ball just needs to have counter-clockwise spin to move in that direction. We don't know what kind of spin the ball had on it from Riley's cross, and we don't know how Correa hit it. If he hits under it with the right way I could see it spinning that way. What is it about the 3rd touch that is required in order to make a ball spin counterclockwise?

You don't have to go fast to make the right run on goal and get the right position. He made the right run and got the right position on the play, and the result is proof of that.

I don't think you can say that a forward who scored a goal in a 1-1 game is a "flop", unless it was some extremely lucky goal, like he was standing there and the ball hit him and went into the net. For a field player, yes, you need to look at the sum of his play during the course of the game. For a forward, one good finish would usually be enough to say that it was a good game, and certainly not "a flop".

 

If you redirect goalward a bullet cross from the side, regardless of the spin on the cross, it's going to spin toward the initial destination of the cross because the strikers leg eats whatever spin was on the cross and the ball rolls ever-so-slightly around the striker's front leg. I'm sure you've seen hundreds of plays like that and it's never spun inward without a touch. An outside of the foot shot on a stationary ball can do that, but never a far post redirect.
Once the ball is heading goalward, if Jason's instep is facing to the left, contact with the ball will deflect it away from goal, but impart a goalward spin. Happens on tons of deflected shots.

The result is proof that Riley made a great cross right to where Correa was slowly moving. I guess "Scoreboard" is an argument, but it's not a very impressive one.

Well, you quoted an announcer saying he was the best player on the field, so the bar is a little higher than "Scoreboard". That's why I said I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and rewatch with an eye on him. I mean, no one's claiming Gordon was the best player on the field. I would think you would be able to recall at least one other positive play Correa made.

 

you look beyond goals when evaluating a player? lol

 

First of all, it was hardly a "bullet cross". It was not a lollipop, but it was not hit that hard. You can see that the ball was already on its way down when Correa touched it.

In any case, while it would be an usual play, I'm still having trouble with the "physically impossible" part. Without getting deep into the physics of it, seems to me that spin on the ball is a function of 1) amount of friction on contact 2) direction of foot vs. ball, and 3) where the contact is made. There are of course millions of combinations of these 3 things. Striking the ball with an outside / in motion, across the bottom, with the right amount of friction, for example, could impart that kind of clockwise spin that would cause the ball to go outside in on a shot like that (a little trick that Maradona taught me :--) ).

And in fact if you say that a Hernandez touch caused the spin, then it would have to be just the right kind of unusual touch as well. Whether Hernandez touched it or Correa touched it, it is still a ball in flight that is subject to the same factors: the spin is a function of the amount of friction on contact, direction of foot vs. ball, and location of contact. For a Hernandez touch to cause this kind of spin, he would have had to hit it such that his foot was going along the left side of the ball and forward, with some friction to impart the spin, and yet the contact has to be so slight that it barely causes the ball to redirect from its flight. IOW if he hit it solidly at all on the left side, the ball would redirect the other way back towards the near post.

It was a good cross, and Correa made the right move on it. Again, it doesn't matter how fast he is moving. It's not a race. It's the result that counts. He needs to be in the right position to make the play and he was. It was not a lucky goal where he's standing around and the ball bounces off his leg and into the goal. He made the right play on the ball and scored. This is actually not that hard.

At the end of the first half in a 1-0 game, it is not unreasonable to call the goal scorer the best player on the field when no one else is really distinguishing themselves. I didn't quote the guy because I agreed necessarily. I quoted him for reference because he is someone who knows a lot more than soccer than we do, and he had an opinion on the subject.

 

Here's how I see it: Correa scored the goal that defined the game. Thus, he was one of the most important players on the pitch

 

When a ball is struck goalward and grazes the outside of something on the way, like a leg, it deflects outward, then spins back inward. Every time. (Because of friction).

That's why I think it had to have hit Jason's instep, because that's the only part of his foot that's facing left.

If Correa did in fact deliberately put inward spin on his redirect, off of a hard outswinging cross, then it is a phenomenal goal. I've never seen such a thing before.

 

You are correct. Correa just tried to flick it to the far post. Jason caught part of the ball which cause the weird spin.

 

It's unclear from this whether you think he distinguished himself in a positive way or not with his performance so I can't tell whether we agree.

I think we can all find common ground by agreeing that how we evaluate Correa's performance depends on how much emphasis we put on finishing.

I documented how in the roughly 40 plays he was involved in he was a major contributor to Chivas losing control of this game, and I place a high value on that. He flunked his role as escape valve. (WondoSoWonderful doesn't value that, and that's his prerogative.)

He also got a shot on frame from 7 yards that was going to be dangerous regardless of whether it was deflected, and that can't be dismissed. I can't give him "golazo" status because the more times I see the replay, the more apparent it is that it hit Jason's right instep rather than being a supernatural "massee" shot as the announcer calls it, making the placement somewhat random.

FWIW, I think he's a good player that had a shaky game, not a bad player. Props to you for identifying him.

 

I think you're probably right that there was a second hit of the ball somehow, but I'm having a hard time visualizing what you're talking about here. Seems to me that in order for the the ball to deflect outward (in this case to the left of the goal, facing goal) yet spin inward (clockwise spin), the contact would have to be from the right side of the ball (facing goal). But Jason is on Correa's left.

I was able to do it in my backyard, though admittedly it was a soft toss and I was stationary and no one was defending me, not even the dog. :--) Agree that it would have been a phenomenal goal and the spin was so weird that there was most likely a deflection of some kind. I just don't think it's physically impossible.

 

Jason lunges his right leg across the goal and the natural position would be for his toe to be pointing up. Correa goes far post so the ball grazes his instep, which is pointing left, rather than his studs, which are pointing right.
Come to think of it, ~90% of all deflections probably spin toward goal simply because you're going to graze the side that you shoot toward if somethings in front of you. (Except when you meg the defender of course).

Youtube or it didn't happen! Plus, the dog blew the offside trap, and the ref works for AEG.

 

Still confused about the "pointing left / pointing right" stuff, but in my mind I'm imagining the ball grazing to the left side of Jason's foot. That would cause the ball to go left towards the far post and also to pick up some clockwise spin.

 

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If we think of the guy in red as Hernandez reaching out his foot across the goalmouth (although Jason used his right leg), if a shot grazes his instep it's going to deflect to our left and pick up rightward spin so the ball will hook back to the right. (I hesitate to say clockwise or counterclockwise because that depends on whether you were looking down at the ball or up. If you were looking down it would be clockwise.)

 

Yeah, that's how I imagined it. That makes sense.

...and same with "rightward". It would be "leftward" if you were looking up at the ball. Clockwise / counterclockwise is a little more clear because when you say "rightward", even if looking from above, the top of the ball is moving to the right and the bottom is moving to the left. [Probably best to use the "right hand rule" of physics to indicate direction of spin. You imagine that you are wrapping your right hand around the spinning object such that the object is spinning towards your fingers. Then you see if your thumb is up or down. In this case, it's thumb down, and doesn't matter if you are above or below the object.]

 

I picked "rightward" because when we say a shot veers to the right it's typically assumed to mean the shooter's right. But I agree with what you are saying.