I was unable to go to the game, was it as bad as it looked? I guess Wolff is back, how did he look? A win is a win, even if it doesn't mean anything...
Breakfast is always better after 4 straight wins Ahh, but it does mean something. It's 4 straight wins. It's 12 points in 22 days. It's beating 3 of the 4 teams in your conference. It's beating a team that was pounded 5-1 last trip here and was probably reminded of that all week. It's defending your own turf in 3 straight. It's a much needed shutout for Tony and further proof of a solidified back 3 in Garcia, Guti, and Conrad. Most importantly KC is now in second with COL's 4-3 loss to the fire. If KC gets a win in dc then the limited home field is KC's for Round 1 and possibly the Semi if SJ continues their recent ineptitude. A tie in dc may not help as COL owns the season series with KC and travels to Dallas next Saturday. You can't assume a win, but it's pretty close. RFK is always a tough house for KC. KC is 0-5-2 since going back to '97. One tie came from a power outage and the other was Tony's 2 pk save performance in a scoreless tie. Not much to hang your hat on there. Here's how KC finish is complicated: dc has CLB at home today on ESPN2. CLB must win to stay alive and dc just needs a point. It would be better for KC if dc takes at least a point today as the playofff seed would be clinched and there might be a letdown or rested veterans, etc. Might be but probably not. Metros losing at home last night hurt KC's chances slightly. dc can still catch MET for third and maybe even NE for second if they win both remaining games. The perfect scenario for KC would be for dc to tie CLB today and have MET beat NE (more likely than it seems after losing to NE at home- more later) in the afternoon game next week. If that happens, by the time KC and dc kick off, dc will be locked into the 4 seed and likely rest some people. CLB winning at dc does not help KC at all as CLB plays Sun next week. So, dc would come like the proverbial wounded cornered animal...no good for KC. Back to MET. I saw most of the second half of that game last night. The new Polish guy is skilled and will greatly help MET. He isn't in shape yet and came in as a late sub. 2 minutes later he had a goal that looked like most of the better highlights from the Premiership. I'm not kidding. He's good. It's worth noting that he's built just like all of those Polish guys that ripped the US in the WC. I'm glad he's in the East. Wow. To KC: just win and they are #2. Simple enough. To do that they will have to raise their game several notches over last night's effort. KC was classy for about :35 and then not much from either team the rest of the night. Finishing was less than average. Hustle wasn't good enough for anyone but Dallas. It'll get addressed, I'm sure. Jimmy with his fourth. That's 2 more that Wolffie. Preki on 110 assists. Etch's record is 113. Preki's 17 on the season ties a career high. Conrad should have finished to give him #18, defender or no. Dallas didn't play with much of anything. KC shut them down pretty well on attack. Still, DAL looked ready for Thanksgiving, pronto. Ben made a comment to Ezra about how it must suck to be traded to Dallas. Ezra smiled more than a bit. He didn't look happy other than that. Too bad. Countess' double black eye and broken nose...his own mother might not have let him sit at the dinner table. He said it was an elbow. Apparently Dirk Nowitski showed up to practice... BTW, the Comets ran Monterrey out of town to even their record at 1-1. Jamar Beasley snagged a Jan Goosenens-esque turn and shoot goal for KC late. Worth noting becasue Jan was 6'2" 195 and JB is a piece of paper compared to that. I guess Germany taught him something. Maybe he comes across town next Feb. ala Zoti, who knows. Hat trick for Dino and...Andonovski? Passmaster for the newest Macedonian. The new keeper was pretty good and everyone was off suspension so KC had a full roster. 6k at Kemper. MLS did well with about 85k for 4 games. -oot
welcome back to second place Could not agree more...neither team looked particularly good in the second half. Dallas, for their part, seemed to have the ball in our end the entire second half, but didn't really test Tony. They had a scary free kick just outside the area, a forward 1-on-1 with a shaken up Conrad, and a nice run down their right side, and they didn't get a shot on goal in any of those situations. I can't help but think we got let off the hook tonight, but I'll take the points. Great to see us score on a set play, too! What was that, the second goal off a corner kick in team history or something? I thought he was going to have two, as Conrad narrowly missed a second goal from another good service on a corner. After watching Vaca run all over us back in August @ Dallas, I was a little concerned that he might cause our defenders some problems, but that certainly wasn't an issue. And for those of you playing along at home...we are the hot team in Western Conference now!
Re: welcome back to second place I like this, considering a month ago we were as cold as an Artic winter, we are now considered the hottest team because of four wins in a row. It is nice though that we are picking it up at the right time of the season.
Meola had one of his best games of the year. He was only tested a handful of times, but a few were bery dangerous, and he had them all covered. Nice punch against Johnson to clear the ball. Jimmy looked great again, he got tripped up a couple times against Curtis early, but held his own and slotted home a header exactly like the one he had last week against LA, and nearly had another. Guitierez was as solid as he's been in central d for us. He had a few offensive runs that looked promising, and still kept the back undercontrol. Garcia kind of disappeared. He did have two runs forward that were out of place, but not unwelcomed, but I don't recall him really standing out in the back. Igor seemed to be playing back much further than usual, and seemed to me to prove that he's better up front than in the midfield. He seemed to get stopped rather easy and didn't get through the middle well. Wollf looked stiff and not match fit. He pulled back on a couple of balls that he should have had easily. Quill seemed to revert a little back to his old self, but didn't commit any glaring errors that I saw.
dude, my grandmother is more match fit than josh wolff...but on a more serious note... I want numbers, who all whored themselves at the autograph session just to get a player's jersey? I can think of at least 5 people I saw doing it, and those were just the ones near where I was in the line... alas, my whoring days have been over for a year... I died the day KZ gave me his.
My wife might have been the biggest one Sat night. A ball Klienie kicked into the cualdron before the game. And after, Mr Wolf peeled for her. She was on cloud nine the rest of the night. Stu got Tony's glove's. Hell the "Fav Five" should stay away more often.
My first game since spring. I was disappointed in the attendance, but the atmosphere was good. We sat in front of someone with a horn, so we moved back a little and about a section away. The horns sound OK if you're not sitting in front of them. It may have just been the Burned (a typing slip, but seemed appropriate), but the Wizards defense looked pretty good. They controlled the ball most of the game. My only complaint is that they should have finished a little better. The Flags were a good addition since my last game.
From Sunday's KC Star: The Wizards' current four-game winning streak is their longest since the 2000 season, when they won the MLS Cup championship.
Talk about ups and downs. Their longest winning streak since 2000 has followed their worst NON-winning streak ever. Turn out was nearly 15,000. Last seasons last game was a huge crowd if I recall, and with fireworks more could have been expected. Is the long season taking away from attendance, or were you impressed with 15,000?
Glad you liked them. The international flag is relatively new (second game). The blue flag has been a fixture every gameday with rare exception since '97. (It used to be on the other side of the field previous to this season) MIA was the larger blue and white sectional flag with the black "KANSAS CITY" in huge bold block letters on it...FYI. I'm sure it will return for the first playoff game.