Osaka is missing 6 regular starters if I am not mistaken. Houston was pitiful. At least LA adapted and the defenders stayed deep so as not to get burned as often. I really didn't think I was going to see a slaughter tonight. By the end the crowd was clearly supporting Gamba. All those poor people who bought Houston jerseys. Embarrassing.
We just got our asses handed to us. Preseason or not this was a wake up call to our guys that they can never play like that again. We embarrassed the MLS and ourselves. I pray that neither D.C. United or the Dynamo get a result like that in Concacaf this year. Bare = Godzilla
Well that was a slow and steady and repetitive set of kicks to the nuts for MLS fans. I sure as hell didn't see that one coming. That was a man-handling if I ever witnessed one. One that's hard to entirely chalk up to simple pre-season form. I get the MLS salary cap and roster size issues and what not (and I do hope the league took some serious notes based on what we witnessed tonight), but at the end of the day Houston was exposed. This whole we don't need a DP thing is going to get them killed this year as teams are clearly bringing in the type of class and talent that can and will shred that Houston D. We're talking about a western conference that's bulked up on talent in the off season. The Dynamo are rich at midfield, but man are they in trouble at D and forward. That midfield better produce the ultimate 2 way players, or else. I don't really think that this readily translates into the J-League being far better than MLS. I mean if you truly think that way, then how do you explain a seriously undermanned LA holding their own against this very Gamba team? (yes, yes, yes that 1-0 score was not indicative of the run of play, but still that Gals held them to just 1 goal.) Plus you have to consider that Houston wasn't terribly outplayed - It was just a night where one fast, powerful big guy ate up three slow defenders. Also correct me if I'm wrong here, but the nature of the goals were mostly route 1, over-the-top balls to a speedy, nasty, Bare (who Gamba relies on a bit too much for me). So when you factor in the nastiness that comes with midseason closing down speed and the destruction of the source of the dump-and-run offense, then maybe Bare doesn't get to see so many balls over the top. At least that's what the silver lining in me says at the moment. Note to MLS officials: watch this match. And finally...note to Niell (my little fast and speedy DC attacker): I seriously hope that you watched and taped this game. You may not have Bare's size, but me thinks you have his speed, power and finishing nastiness. Now I shall retire for the night and relive this nightmare in my nightmares. Ouch!!
On three goals Ianni didn't track his man. Sure it was 6-1, but that was the difference in the game. Ryan Cochrane is going to be missed way more than was thought. And as for the idiot (FC Dallas) claiming that Houston was all wrapped up in wanting to claim another trophy...no, this one didn't mean anything this year and honestly shouldn't be played again. CCC, SS, and MLS Cup mean something...Superliga and the US Open Cup do to a much lesser degree...this tournament, la manga, carolina challenge, and any of the goofy 2 team best of seasons mean even less (why do i care that we beat dallas?!). This tournament only let us know what we already knew and that is that Houston is great midfield depth and questions up top and in the back.
That's reaching a bit. Boswell and Ianni were bench player last year and at least Ianni showed for sure why he should still be a bench player. Cochrane and Eddie Robinson don't give up all those chances, but at the same time 2 of the 6 goals were just simply amazing strikes under pressure...3 of them were gifts though. And I'm not sure that Houston needs a DP as much as they need Cochrane, Ngwenya, and Jaqua back. Those 3 players are huge losses. How will they get replaced? Ngwenya and Cochrane have been replaced, but they are likely both downgrades.
Juan Carlos Cacho (Pachuca) in Superliga, Angel twice, Emilio twice, don't know how many times Jozy... that's about the extent of the forwards that are at Bare's demonstrated level that Houston will be facing this year. Houston are also just one speedy veteran centerback away from changing that scoreline. Say, an Eddie Robinson. Now THAT would be a fun matchup to watch (I'm already looking forward to the Cacho/ERob matchup). That scoreline was not proportional to how the teams played, including Bare. That was a 2-1 or 3-1 defeat that got out of control real fast and turned into a massacre.
So the Brazilians we're getting are probably using MLS as a stepping stone. Good soccer players will never make this much money in America. The Pan Pacific, for me, was a measuring stick on the qualilty of the leagues. 1) J-League (very Brazilian like play) 2) MLS 3) A league. Watched the A-League final that night too. Wasn't too impressed.
Much like I wasn't so concerned about the scoreline (except for Rivalries reasons ), I'm not too much concerned with this one, per se. Lots of useful things to take away, much like the SFC game. 1) Holden is still a wicked player. He wasn't as good on the wing as he was in CAM during the second half. He was able to generate a lot more offense, which is really important to Houston, than Davis. Look at any game last year without DeRo and you'll see the 1st half. 2) Ianni and Boswell were...were they even on the pitch? Seriously, they were out of position so much I felt like throttling them. That said, anyone who thinks that Dom will let this stand is retarded. I don't want to be those two and am glad I'm 6000 miles away so I don't have to hear it, either, though we'll all see the results 3) Gamba played bunker ball/counter. We played English style. Nuff said. 4) No, LA still played a lot worse than we did and that they only gave up one goals is more a measure of Gamba's lack of finishing than stellar defense on LA's part. We had tons of chances, but couldn't convert. While Wondo wasn't great, he was far more aggressive on goal than Ching was. 5) I'm willing to bet that had Robinson been on the field, the scoreline would have been VERY different. Not only is he a much tougher defender than Ianni/Boswell, but he would not have allowed the defense to be so out of position, either. 6) No, J-League isn't that much better than MLS, at least not based upon a whole two games They do have good players, which no one should be surprised about.
No. Gamba outshot LA 18-6. LA had one shot on goal in the whole first half. Gamba outshot Houston 17-14. Both LA and Houston had slow slow slow defenses, but Cronin was a little bit better than Onstand AND Gamba's distance shooting was much better against Houston. And Houston is far better off the ball than LA's inexperienced players, so the crosses and combination play allowed the Dynamo to get some decent chances. The Galaxy were quite a bit better against Sydney at moving off the ball, but against Gamba they were very static. Had to have driven Beckham nuts.
this tourney might not be important, but for the sake of curiosity i'd like to know how many players on the champion's team are Japanese.... and those who watched how good were they, considering all the players they were missing.... And how they'd compare to our middle to lower level American players in MLS.....
The one thing that struck me is that both of the Galaxy and Houston defenses were getting beat for speed. Something's wrong with that. I understand that we don't produce a lot of creative and technical players. But we should be able to produce defenders with some size, speed and soccer smarts. I wonder if it's because we don't move players to the defense early enough. In the US developmental system, pace and size are enough at forward, so players stay longer at forward then they should. And when they come out of college, they are already 22 years old and an MLS team is at best willing to give them two years to learn the new job.
As good a player as DeRo is, I think not having ERob was a much bigger issue. I don't know why this guy never seems to get the credit he deserves. He's big, physical, fast, and experienced - a great defender. Houston's been very lucky that he hasn't been injured much the last two seasons.
This was only a single tournament, but there are some lessons I think. Houston is a North American team, and I didn't see much difference between them and the domestic players on Gamba. But Gamba, like most of the top J-League teams, import quality Brazilians and insert them where it counts -- as playmakers and finishers. AFC Champions League champions Urawa had six Brazilians on its roster last year, lead by Washington who pumped in 42 goals in 52 appearances for the club during his time in Japan, and Ponte, who controls their midfield. Look at the rosters of some of the top teams like Kashima Antlers, Shimizu S-Pulse, Kawasaki Frontale and you see the pattern repeated. A number of Brazilian players -- not just a single highly paid player -- and in some cases coaches. Many are still in their prime. Baré, for example, is only 26. You will see a very similar strategy by the top teams in Turkey (Fenerbahçe's coach and a half dozen players are from Brazil), S.K, Russia (CSKA Moscow has five Brazilians) and the Ukraine (Shakhtar Donetsk has a half dozen Brazilians), but it would be very difficult to implement in MLS. It comes back to money. Not insane amounts of money, but as has said before, MFL type money -- enough to pay these players between $1.5 and $3 million annually. MLS isn't going to do that. I wish it would.
The Galaxy simply got burned in a manner which was not compatible with painted plastic turf. That game was not played like it was 1-0.
Baysider, I constantly preach on here that the US still does not get good enough athletes in soccer. What it does get is kids who are great milers or 5K runners. We need more sprinters.
MLS teams don't need a ten million doller player on the teams. If they had five two millon doller players you would not have had last nights problem. Beckham is ok because he is selling the league but he brings the attention of the world to a 6-1 loss. That can't be good for the MLS.
Where did you read that? Here is Urawa's Club World Cup Roster. I count two foreigners - Nene and Washington (Ponte was injured at the time.) Perhaps I'm wrong, but to my knowledge the J-League has a limit of three foreigners. Give the Japanese players some credit...
Absolutely the Japanese players were good. The second forward, Yamazaki, was really smart and drew defenders away. The defenders were very well positioned and fast and found the right pass, particularly Nakazawa. I don't have a bad thing to say about any of them, they're really an impressive bunch. But critically, their three best players were the Brazilians, and they were at critical positions: striker, playmaker, and a kind of free role defender-- Mineiro was almost a sweeper at times, an outside back at others. That is a lesson to learn: do not waste DP money on a player who won't address the limits of your other players and make the team significantly better. I'm looking at you, Claudio Reyna (though Denilson's tendency to drift to the wing and waste time dribbling made him a liability as well).
Of course not. The Galaxy had at least 3 wide-open, brilliant opportunities from Becks that you have to believe Ruiz and/or Donovan would have put away that were botched unbelievably by Buddle and our rookies. We could have been up 3-1 by halftime. People (not you) like to point out that Osaka should have scored more than 1 vs. Galaxy...but they fail to mention that LA should have scored more than 0 as well. That said, though, Osaka did outplay the Galaxy by a very large margin in the first half. Not as large a margin in the second half, however.
This is exactly been my point, as long as 4 years in college soccer is the primary development path for US soccer player development, we will be behind technically than other major soccer playing nations. MLS needs to raise its minimum salary for players to encourage more to bypass college soccer.
I think the issue is more player development and the dependency on college soccer. If a country of 300 million can not produce enough good athletes for soccer, how come smaller countries like Holland, Uruguay, Belgium and Portugal produce such players with a much smaller number of eligible candidates to pick from.
I'm nitpicking, but... Gamba Osaka = "Gamba" Cerezo Osaka = "Cerezo" If one was to be called "Osaka" it'd be Cerezo because their hometown is Osaka, Osaka while Gamba claim Suita, Osaka. For those who care, Cerezo is historically better supported than Gamba. Sorry, I'm a dork.
This is the same fellow who was crushed by UNAM Pumas strikers in the 2006? CONCACAF champions cup. He was outmatched. College soccer does not prepare 22 year olds for this this type of action.
Your absolutely right, that was my mistake. I must have had the number six on the brain from CSKA and Fenerbahçe, but the J-League does limit the number to three, and most of the top teams in fact appear to start two -- typically a striker and midfielder. As for giving the Japanese players some credit, I do, just as I give credit to the domestic players in MLS. In both cases they form the backbone of the team, but Brazilian imports provide much of the scoring punch in the J-League. I quickly pulled up each team's top scorers from 2006, and you will see a lot of Brazilians: Lucas Severino, Edmílson, Magno Alves, Alex Mineiro, Carlos Juninho, Washington, Bare, Diego and Alemao. Link: http://www.soccerphile.com/soccerphile/news/j-league/preview-2007.html Brazilians clearly have a major impact on the J-League.