Season being dead should mean some freedom to just goof around and yell at the game without any skin in it, right? Plus I'm kind of sideways rooting for San Jose as a dark horse to knock LAFC out of the playoffs.
I like the SJ take! LAFC are dominant, but don't seem to do well in single elimination. LAG, SJ and Seattle can beat them in a one game playoff. I can't stand the others and I kind of like Wondo and rooting for the little guy, so SJ it is.
That second half was quite good, the first half was horrid. I’m not ready to make Smith the next second CB, he looked good tonight, make getting rid of Fontas much easier
That Benny goal was nice. I'm not sure that Jimmy meant to chest the ball to him, but it sure did work out well.
Went to the game last night not expecting much but ended up leaving the stadium pleasantly surprised with the result. More optimistic going into Thursday's match v MNUTD. Realistically I'll probably go home disappointed.
The first half went as I feared and expected. Due to SJ's man-marking, slow SKC literally had less than a handful of sequences (I counted) where they strung 4 successful passes in a row, and "maybe" had two sequences where they strung together 5+. The culprits were the usual which plagued us all season: Lack of intensity. Ball holder is mentally slow to pick up on the danger, and/or holds too long and does not get the pass off quick enough. Meanwhile teammates are either not getting in position for relief/to receive the ball, or - my frustration favorite - they just sit there and wait for the pass to come to them, while the other team runs in and intercepts it. With SKC having only 40% possession in the 1H, I feared San Jose would exhaust our 3 day rest team off the field. One of SJ's last 1H possessions involved 5 complete field switches in our defending third of the field before a failed shot - it's like they were toying with us and waiting for us to shift before they quickly ping-ponged back to the other side. And, I can't prove it, but it is almost as if SJ looked to foul early at every SKC 4th touch, just to purposely break our rhythm no matter what. The ref certainly wasn't handing out yellows to anybody early on. This is a viable strategy against us - break our rhythm, then score on us and watch us mentally melt down (see: RSL game). *** But wow, in the second half SKC fixed all of those issues and played crisp, smart, and fast with the ball and their off ball movement. They almost looked like February SKC and finally used their footwork skills - since we have neither superior speed, strength, nor height. Medranda with the changes of pace dribbling to break free, Salloi with a cheeky backheel pass, Gutierrez and Russell doing their best ball holding dancing in traffic. Roger fearless in tight spaces (that yellow card was BS). Quick give and gos and sudden but accurate changes of direction.... The results showed, despite the soccer gods still cursing us with a deflected woodwork shot and an impossible saved upper V shot. Even on defense, different players were stepping up to block the somewhat predictable and near the end, desperate, SJ shots. And someone finally stepped up to block SJ attacks, instead of 5 defenders all dropping back while 3 SJ people dribble the ball up to the penalty area. Now SKC just needs to remember what it took to get this result, and repeat it again, and again (x6 if we want to make the playoffs)....
Ilie subbed on made a huge difference. Almost as if playing your best possession player against a high press team is helpful.
Ilie can break the team if he's not on the field. But he can't "make" the team just by himself. 9 other field players also need to step up the intensity and intelligent movement - and in the second half, we did. We actually started playing better well before Ilie came on - SKC actually had much greater time of possession than SJ for the first 15 mins of the 2H. But once Ilie came on, we could lock down on D or probe more intelligently on offense with what seemed like more ease.