Second half was awful to watch as everyone has already pointed out. The cramps guy who was being subbed was brutal. The goal keeper with the delayed injury that migrated from his side to his knee. Why cant the ref tell them to get up or they get a card? The thing is that the most time any ref ever adds is 5 or 6 minutes. You can wast 15 minutes but they will not add more than 5 or 6. Gerso has had so many great opportunities the last few games. I think he is like a golfer with the yips on his puts. He is not confident in the box now at all. Rubio is another perfect Vermes "striker". Can't finish. Have you ever seen a pro player look at their feet while trying to dribble as much as Rubio? I would try gerso and blessing on the wings and Salloi as the striker in the middle. The big question for me is, if Sporting looses all the rest of their games, do they miss the playoffs entirely?
If they fly him back real quick, could the eleventh count? Maybe they could challenge the red at the last minute, just to show that he would have been available for selection for the 11th. Maybe there are stipulated coverage periods, like 24 hours or something...
I really hate this about MLS. To be more accurate, I hate this about Concacaf/FIFA. If Zusi is there he damn well better play. Leaving him on the bench as an option, when he could be in stands serving his red card suspension and at least getting that out of the way would really suck. Yedlin is healthy again and has been called in and will almost certainly start. Putting Zusi on the bench is a dick move for Arena. No idea why he's brining Benny in. He isn't going to play. And Besler will go from injured for us to playing for them? I get Besler because Brooks is injured, and he will probably be in the 11, but i find this really annoying. Is Opara just hurt, or injured?
Someone please remind me what Lobato brings to the game? Going to start referring to him as Slow-Bato! Surely there is some SPR guys with more fire than this guy. I sure hope him and Saad are gone after this season.
Yeah. As soon as I saw that he was being brought on at the half I just got a bad feeling about the outcome of the game. Has he even done one memorable thing in the time he has gotten on the field? I would have rather had SAS brought on and move Zusi up to the wing than have Mr Invisible come on if we wanted more link up play and less speed in the attack.
I was thinking the exact same thing about the time wasting, and then I realized that not only would SKC do the same stuff, but I would and have done the same stuff time after time. I must have spent a couple hours in total "searching" for balls that went down into the creek at the old complex on Holmes (I'm sure it's long since become a housing complex, this was in the 80s). Everyone has done the slow walk, the move the ball from side to side of the box, etc. It does suck, but it is not exactly a new and different approach to killing the game. Our problem was in not scoring. Make the penality, and there's no time wasting, make any of the seven shots he saved, and we're okay. etc. As far as that is concerned, i really don't understand the issues PV has with Gerso. He didn't score on a couple great opportunities, true. But he had chances, and he made those chances. Are we heading into an off season where we cut him loose? I would hate that, because he's always a threat
That's something I've heard and wonder about since the 11th falls outside the international window. It's possible, I haven't watched the highlights, but when I saw the 1 replay it looked like Zusi didn't get a touch. I wouldn't be bothered by it much, he's a DP, the second half of the season he hasn't played like a DP IMO.
We need a better angle than the SKC broadcast for Zusi's card. It looks like Zusi was clean, but if he touched him, at all, that's not going to be overturned. As for Gerso, I'm not at all sure SKC is in this position right now without him. It's not just that he's our leading goal scorer, it's that he unbalances teams even when he's not at his best, his speed is a huge distraction and it opens space for others. I hope we hold on to him, but I get the sense he's not a Vermes guy, and we all know how that ends. Guys with his skill set cost a bit. you can play without them. but you look dull and lifeless, as we did in the second half last night.
I really liked the Medranda played this weekend, and I usually do. but he's not a threat to score/ Benny hasn't been playing well lately, but he is a threat, and the PK... well, who knows. This gets at what i believe is too often a fatal SKC flaw. We don't need a Dom or a Nemeth or Gerso for 25 games a year. we can get by with a great defense and offense by committee. But the reason goal scorers make a crap ton of cash around the planet is that true goal scorers are rare and beautiful things, and they will grab a goal when you need it. Right now is when we need players like Gerso and Benny on the field, it's the reason we keep them on the roster and I believe they tend to come good under pressure. Salloi might become that type of player, Rubio might, Blessing might, but the money players make their money because of this sort of situation.
While it's true that all teams would waste time when they are up away from home, imo this vancouver team was way beyond what is normal. I mean, apparently the player doing their corners had a stroke sometime around the 60th minute and forgot where to put the ball when doing a corner. And the two injuries were just beyond ridiculous too. While I am and continue to be in favor of VAR, I can somewhat understand how people can be against it. Wasting time is something that every soccer fan can agree on is super annoying, and moving towards a net playing time system would mitigate this problem immensely without any drawbacks that I could think off. What is most annoying about this game to me is that if it were played 100 times with the same people, we'd maybe lose 2 times. Vancouver on Sunday was the worst team I can think off to visit us this year at CMP. Lose our unbeaten record against a team like Portland that really brought their press to KC and arguably were the better team, or to a team like Seattle or the first Dallas game that keeps us to zero shots in the first half and counters quickly? Fine. Losing to a team that had absolutely no idea how on earth they wanna score a goal other than hoping they will get a couple free kicks to launch on their big dudes? incredibly annoying. Since I'm mostly watching German soccer other than SKC games, this game reminded me very much of a DFB cup game where the bundesliga team plays a 4th division team. Their entire back line was less comfortable on the ball than my grandma - put the slightest bit of pressure on them and they just kick it over the outline. I cannot find a page with more expansive stats on this game, but I'm pretty sure their passing accuracy on Sunday was below 50%. The guy that eventually scored the goal must have lost every head-to-head before the goal - which I don't blame him for since Vancouver never committed more than 3 players upfront, and yet they still managed to leave our lone center forward unmarked in the box 3 times in the first half. While all the criticism voiced here are valid, I think we also have to cut the team some slack and admit that they've been quite unlucky this game as well. hit the post two times, had the potential for another 3 penalty kicks, had a ref that did absolutely nothing to prevent them from time wasting, took way too long to give their holding midfielder a yellow for persistent infringement, etc. The next game are def gonna be tough.. potentially without 3/4 of the backline, with the second backup CB suspended for who knows what, without Feilhaber, possibly without Gerso.. hope we can muster up at least a few points somehow.
I sit close to the SKC bench. Throughout the first period PV was yelling at Gerso who was getting visibly irritated at the criticism. At one point just prior to half time, Gerso turned and was yelling back, so I wasn’t surprised to see Gerso come out. This may not end well.
Yeah, we were in the field club noticing the same, plus that time where he brough gerso right over to him, was gesticulating wildly for him to do something, and gerso was completely disinterested. Also, yelling down the sideline near the end of the half at him during a run, he was mad as hell.
I'm having a bit of a knee-jerk pessimistic reaction here, but those were a big three points to drop at home. Thankfully Portland and Seattle lost as well, but we're on the road three of the last four games (we've only won two away games all season) and two of those will be without Besler, Zusi, Feilhaber, Saad, Musa, and Oliveira. We're pretty much a shoe in to the playoffs at this point, but those top two/four spots are going to require some results to claim. We're going to have to pull out some miracles with a depleted squad on the road to make it happen.
Vermes wanted him pinched in, because ... Zusi wasn't effective? It was not only the best half for Zusi but perhaps for a right back in MLS history. It was a stunning display of how the position can dominate a game. Whatever our problems in that half, they didn't seem to be coming from the right side. We created a lot of danger, a ton of chances. We all got angry at Gerso for his lack of belief in his right foot. He should have at least taken two shots. But he was in consistently dangerous spots. Our problems seemed pretty simple: Rubio's shots were getting saved, bouncing off the post. Until he switched Lobato for Gerso, I was thinking, 45 more minutes of this and we have to score.
Three things. First, can Zusi's red card be appealed? Will the club appeal it? Zusi didn't touch the guy. You could see it clearly on replay. The Whitecaps forward slipped while trying to kick the ball. He missed the ball and went down on his own. There is a good chunk of space between Zusi and the forward. Very bad call. And since it was a Red Card, couldn't the ref look at the video to confirm or overturn? Second, I think PV needs to learn a lesson all great coaches learn, you can't just yell AT every player. Some respond to it. Most do not. It's one thing to yell to them to be sure they hear you. But yelling AT them doesn't really do any good. And since Zusi was playing so well during the first half, why didn't PV switch Gerso to the other side. Daniel wasn't really doing anything to get on the end of Zusi's crosses. So why not give Gerso a chance from the other side? Finally, where was Ike's head? He was completely out of sync with the rest of the team. It's like he was trying to do too much or more than usual. And why did he let that ball get past him? I'm not putting the loss entirely on his shoulders. The team should have scored three or four goals, but didn't. Ugh.