Who: Seattle Sounders (dlD) vs LA Galaxy (WdW) When: Saturday, 5/8 @ 1pm Pacific Where: Qwest Field, Seattle, Washington Television: Telefutura, KONG 6/16 Radio: KIRO 97.3 FM, Ke Buena 1210 AM Internet: ATDHE.net, Justin.tv, Veetle.com, Vimeo.com, etc. Added Vimeo.com to the internet list, but as per usual, can't guarantee that the game will actually be shown on all of these. ATDHE and Justin.tv are the ones most likely to carry the game, but they also tend to be lower quality. Another early start and another game against one of, if not the, best team in the league. This will be the Galaxies third game in 8 days with a game at home against Philly on May 1, away against Colorado on May 5 and away against us on May 8, so they will more than likely be resting players. The Sounders seem to have finally gotten their offense clicking with the 4-3-3 formation and having Evans and Zakuani playing as forwards. While they seemed to dominate the Crew for almost the entire game, they made a few critical mistakes, both on offense and on defense, that cost them the three points. The Sounders still have the finishing problem, but Zakuani seems to have turned the corner and is now the Sounders leading scorer with 3 goals. On the other side of the pitch, the Galaxy are clicking and have been clicking for the entire season. They are currently MLS's only undefeated team with five wins and one draw. They have only had 2 goals scored against them and kept a clean sheet in 4 or their six games. They also have a goal differential of +8, versus the Sounders 0, with 9 of their 10 goals coming from Edson Buddle. Keys to the match: 1. Contain Edson Buddle. Plant Hurtado on the guy and try to keep him from getting the ball at all. 2. Continue the offensive progression to the next step and go beyond controlling the ball and into the realm of actually scoring a goal. 3. Control the defensive blunders. Every game has had the Sounders make several key defensive blunders that in many cases has resulted in a goal for the other side. If any team is going to take advantage of these errors, it's the Galaxy.
LA is overrated. Buddle has been great at converting basically every chance they've had. But honestly, if the Sounders were converting at that kind of rate instead of dinging crossbars and posts, we'd be winning games by four or five goals. There's no way he's gonna keep it up... You always come back to your average. And if you look at their KC game, LA was thoroughly outplayed and KC got in behind their defense with ease (remember the famous Kamara handball goal?) Our offense is similar, with speed at the wings that their big, slow defense isn't built to stop. Sounders passing the past 2 games was vastly improved over the start of the season, and we just outmatched a strong Columbus team. All we need to do is score a couple of the dozens of chances we create every game... the only worry is that our defense against crosses has been horrible, and a bunch of Buddle's goals have been coming off crosses.
Stop Buddle, you stop the Galaxy. They're so one dimensional it's almost ridiculous. And all you got to do to stop Buddle, is don't give him space. The two LA matches I've seen, teams gave him ACRES of open space. And when they got on him, he couldn't do shite. Close the space, you close Buddle, and in turn close down the Galaxt. Although, they do have a very solid back line. I can totally see this ending 0-0. But if we have the same success with the 4-3-3 as we did against Columbus, I can also see us getting some free haircuts outta this game.
Yeah, we didn't even need to win the Dallas game, we were already qualified for the playoffs but it was must-win for them, and our D really stepped up and shut him down for 90 minutes.. And we could have just mailed it in after going down a goal... But our team fought back and I thought overall played its finest match of the season to close it out. Back then Dallas was running the same kind of streak that LA is on now... a lot of similarity. And LA plays at altitude a tough Colorado team on Wednesday, so we really have every advantage going into the game. No excuses.
I don't know if I'd say LA is overrated. They do what teams at the top of the table do...make their opponents pay for mistakes. Yoshou hit it dead on, too many blunders in our defensive third whether it be horrible back passes, egregious marking, or whatever. Tighten it up back there and LA can be beat, but I worry about our sloppiness. Buddle and Donavan are not the guys you want to offer gifts to.
We win this game. The Galaxy seem decent (I haven't seen them play this year, but certainly watched them play a lot last year), but they are not head and shoulders above us in talent or execution. Buddle isn't a superstar, and believe me, he has terrible games, just ask any fan who has watched him these past few years. Donovan is, arguably, the greatest player in the league, but we have some nifty stars of our own. He's an entire class above Buddle in quality. Anyway, I think we win this game, which would be nice, because maybe we'll spared a week of posts about how the refs are all against us and how allegedly terrible Montero is, neither of which are true.
La is not overated and they certainly are not one dimensional. Between Buddle. Donovan, and the new guys from Sao Paulo, they can certainly open-up space in a hurry. Their D is a bit slower, wherein lies are opportunity to score. With our current run of play, Im hoping for a 2-1 Sounders victory.
Pre-match/In-match/Post-match. Or, game if you wish. Hope that helps. I've noticed there is NEVER any in game comments during the actual match in this forum. I think it's simply a courtesy for those (like me) outside of the local broadcast area who have to wait for the replays usually. It may be because most of the usual posters are at the match however, not really sure. The lack of PBP has really pissed me off at times in this forum. It's one thing I'd like to see here for those of us who can't catch the match live on TV.
Club news and notes posted on Examiner: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-...ers-FC-begin-preparations-for-LA-Galaxy-visit
I can't speak to everyone's financial and internet situation, but as someone who has to miss all the home games in May because of work travel, I found the MLSSoccer.com Match package a very good deal at $40. The site has issues but the Match presentation hasn't been one of them. I bounce around from match to match waiting for Sounders game and got a nice smooth stream with only 1 buffering delay the whole game...and this was on free hotel wi-fi which can be very unreliable. As for the PBP, I suspect most folks from this forum are at the game. Joshua Mayers at Seattle Times does some good PBP commentary (although not for last game), but I think most local fans are either at game or watching on TV so not as much activity in-match on the internet.
Artesian got the description correct. In other team's forums they have threads specifically dedicated to Pre-Match, In-Match, and Post-Match, but we don't get enough comments to justify having three threads, so it's all put into one thread. It's just a way of letting people know that a different thread won't be created and that once the game starts the thread will contain results. As for the lack of discussion during the match, I'm either at the game, or I'm watching it on TV without the laptop in front of me. I've noticed that on games where I've done the PBP thing that I'm not nearly as into the game as games where I'm not.
yeah I only do pbp for other teams. It's fun chatting during a game that's really not that important to me. But I've got to see SSFC matches uninterrupted.
I couldn't get a working stream this past weekend (and haven't gotten one all season) because atd and justin.tv both suck and never work and are covered with spam, so being the lucky guy that I am, my girlfriend (who lives in Tacoma) got on skype and set her comp in front of the tv for me, I watched the whole game through our skype stream and it was awesome haha gotta love her that won't be an issue after this weekend, I get in to Tacoma on Tuesday May 11th!
Heh. I've never had problem getting atdhe and justin.tv to work. Problems telling who is playing? Sure, but getting the game running hasn't been an issue for me.
You could also try channelsurfing.net often it is just the justin.tv link but I have found a few MLS streams that were not justin.
My P2P is very good. The good streams require software to download. A good safety tip is to download them to a jump drive and run them from there. I know the TVU player has this option for sure, but not sure about others. You can often bypass IT firewalls by doing this method. For those of you not fully computer literate, they are these and cost about $12: heh, my aunt thought they were lighters
I've used that before. Maybe we can get a list of all the streams that could possibly be available? I have no clue past Justin.tv and ATDHE.
With LA being on the road today, I'm hoping they'll be tired Saturday. I think that this is entirely winnable.