This deserves its own thread but to answer your question it is odd in that here in our U.S. sports culture our very own soccer guys watch a lot of sports on TV. I'd say at least half of our Dynamo men probably filled out a NCAA bracket for shits and grins and probably follow the season a bit. But it appears not very much pro men's soccer is watched when they grew up...compared to their opponents in other nations and how they grew up watching footy with their dads, uncles, brothers and buddies or the like. Now some of the older guys didn't have MLS to follow like it is presented so it would be interesting to hear a Danny Cruz or Cameron on this subject.
Third Goal was offsides Wade has lost a step Boswell and Cameron not yet in sync Mullan missed a sure thing Kamara verbally assaulted a referee and missed the game Ching was away with the Nats On the other hand...FCD 0-2 Life is still good people!
That's funny, at the Dynamo luncheon Brian Mullen was sitting at our table and a friend of mine asked him which team outside of MLS he follows, Brian said he never watches soccer. My friend sort of went ¿¿huh??
Anyone know why the Dynamo only have six subs available instead of the normal seven? Subs on matchtracker: Hall, James, Cruz, Waibel, Chabala, and Hayden...
It's a good thing the Dynamo got our of SJ before the earthquake hit today, especially since they didn't have much success with the quakes Saturday either. http://sfist.com/2009/03/30/did_you_just_feel_that.php
was able to look at a tape of the game, 3rd SJ goal probably onside. on the shot from outside the box by Leitch, Johnson and Weaver onside. I thought there was a touch from Johnson to Weaver at top of box, but no assist to Johnson, and the match report said Weaver deflected it to himself. in any case, Weaver was behind Johnson on that touch, so couldn't have been offside. Houston currently only has 18 players on senior roster, three were unavailable on Sat. Two of the four developmentals were subs, one is the third keeper, so that just left Ustruck. Don't know if he was injured. He was resigned on 3/12, perhaps not match-fit, but I thought he had been training with the team in preseason. Chivas USA had only six subs named on Sunday, I think due to injury. I saw six subs for various teams on occasion last year, and the rosters are even smaller now.
Did you see the Quakes tape? I think they had a better angle than 11DOT2 did on their broadcast - I flipped over to the DK channel and saw the replay but the DVR didn't pick up the first two seconds, thus I only had a glance at it. It was close, but it would be nice to get a break. Expect to see some game with 5 subs this year from some team. I would not be surprised if some teams cut back on the travel squad/roster to save money this year.
One of our Quake rookies Quincy A. was interviewed after a recent game. He grew up in the Bay Area and never once went to a Quakes game. Not only that, but he said he never watched soccer on TV either. He played the sport his entire life, but was never interested in watching someone else play professionally. He said he might start watching to see if he can learn anything new. Very strange we grow up in such a sports culture, but players aren't interested in watching the very sport they play. I wonder if Football, Basketball and Baseball players do the same thing?
Not to completely derail this thread but it floors me to this phenomenon of growing up playing soccer, becoming a soccer player as a profession, but then having it absent in every other aspect of your life leaves me dumbstruck. There are soooo many youth players that fits this description in the US, it isn't even funny. I can't think of a single instance of running into a Little League player who never watched baseball on TV or went to a baseball game or a Pee Wee league QB who never watched the NFL or college football. I think it's something that is really only prevalent in soccer for some reason and I don't know why.
It was pretty damn hard to find more than the rare english-language soccer broadcast up until this decade. On top of that, MLS was pretty garbage for the first 7 or 8 years it was around, so you're not going to find a ton of kids who grew up being inspired by it in the first few years. It's now a better product with a better following and more readily available, so I expect kids born since the turn of the century will have watched it in much greater numbers. That being said, I was fortunate enough that one of my best friends growing up was from Amsterdam, and his dad had tapes of the weekend Ajax games sent over every week, and we would watch them a week late. I never would have been anywhere near the player I was, had I not been watching those tapes over and over, learning from what I was watching.