Yeah I meant after the game. Earthshaker was relishing in the memory of his beloved Sounders making laps around the stadium to greet fans. If only makes sense that they’d follow that with a wholesome snack. We OTOH, had George Best, who had a different idea about postgame (and mid-game!) snacks.
When I played youth soccer it was oranges at half time and nothing after the game. As a coach I could have used some of George Best's treats at half time to dull the pain for some of the games.
When I played high school soccer in the late 70s, the Pattonesque ex-baseball player turned soccer coach (who preferred a 2-3-5 formation) begrudgingly let us line up and drink a couple sips from a fountain once midway through the daily three hour practice. He said he only did it because school administrators had recently forced him, and he thought hydration would give us cramps.
I love the 2-3-5 ambition. Based on goals against, you'd think the Quakes play that formation. On a side note, I played indoor ~4 hours a day through most of college (2 classes). I knew better but still didn't drink water (or anything) except between classes. I would go in weighing about 160 and leave at about 150. Young bodies are remarkable.
No need for the snark, Jazzy. For those who were around during those NASL years and followed the Quakes or the Sounders, it was a special time. Both cities had similar experiences of how the team embraced the fans, and the fans the team. Maybe the current Quakes could learn something about fan relationship and engagement from what the NASL team did.
Don't have to be young bodies. I've experienced doing five games at a higher level tournament and losing ten or 15 pounds over the duration - and then going back and doing the same thing the next day (and sometimes the next) in my 50s and beyond. However, I had the workweek in which to recover...
It was all great, especially those desperate “please like us” NASL postgame player trips around the pointy ball stadiums!
They do this every game, right, win or lose like the wondrous NASL Sounders? And then, the orange slices and disco party! Ah, the 70’s, the apex of human civilization!!
Sounds like the bikers in the Tour de France, i don’t understand how these guys participate in such a brutal event.
One of the reasons that I don't follow Olympic sports (along with ten minutes of commentary on their lives before showing an event)...I don't trust the controls in place to "catch" the athlete's.
Supposedly no PEDs anymore. Are there any Russian athletes participating? If not, then I would think undetected PED use would be pretty low. Frankly, even if those guys were on steroids, to do what they do would still be unfathomable.
Jackson at times is a great player but others, seems to disappear into thin air. He is a very inconsistent player and far from being a team leader.
I suppose there were times in the past where I thought he had the potential to be a very good (not "great") player, but to my eyes he has regressed. This season has been perhaps his worst, and I'll admit that I'm not basing this on any researched stats or analytics. Just the "eye test". He just looks less and less confident to me, more conservative (even when a situation calls for being more aggressive in terms of driving the attack forward more urgently) and more and more sloppy and careless both with the ball and without it. I don't think I need to explain the "conservative" part to anyone, as he's been more and more liable to pass the ball backward even when it sometimes seems totally unnecessary. But this season, it's been the sloppy and careless tendencies (with a bit of laziness thrown in here and there) that has really bothered me. His turnover rate seems to be higher than ever, and he attempts a lot of diagonal balls on the ground and through traffic which often get stolen. Worse than that, he's made major individual contributions to some of our losses this year. There was the game where he clumsily handled the ball in our box, giving up a crucial PK; the game where he attempted a long back-header to JC that ended up being an assist to one of our opponents' attackers (ouch, talk about amateurish); and most recently, the second Dallas goal yesterday where he failed to make any effort whatsoever to close down the goal-scorer who was all alone in our box. Come to think of it, he also recently failed to track an Austin runner who got an easy goal as a result. Again, it's just the eye test, and of course he's playing on a crappy team right now, and we have plenty of blame to pass around. But I'm actually at the point where JY seems like more of a liability out there, and I'm tired of watching him play. I'm ready to see him take an extended seat on the bench, and give some of our younger guys an opportunity.
I liked Yueill the first 1-2 years, but he’s been shite since he started making the big bucks. That’s maybe what I think makes Covelo look really weak, that he can’t see that JY needs to go to the bench and the team needs a new captain.
I think I am criticizing Yueill in many games. Even at PPP, I got so frustrated by him and I screamed "You know you can pass forward, right", "Yueill, run towards the ball" for all the ball-watching and "You so stupid" for all the bonehead plays. I am a big fan of CMs like Xabi Alonso and Toni Kroos for their calmness on the ball and the vision to dictate the tempo with short and long passes. Both of them are not very agile and physically strong, but their diagonal cross-field passes are just beauties. The flight, the trajectory, the perfect power and spin applied. I saw glimpse of that in Yueill in his first one or two seasons. I was like, wow, we finally had a midfielder directing the traffic. Fresh air to me back then. We found another Richard Mulrooney. Well, not sure what happened but now we see this version of Yueill every game. Not even close to Sam Cronin who always put up the fight. Now whenever I see Yueill in the starting lineup, it's like he embodies all the shortcomings of the team -- can't run, can't pass, can't tackle, can't jump, can't attack, can't defend, can't track runners, ball watching, slow to react, mistake prone, no courage. We as a team do not do anything well and that can also be said to the version of Yueill we see today. I don't blame all the bad results on him but when I see him every time, and as the captain, he is just a big reminder to me the overall quality of the team.
Coaching can suck the life out of players who don’t have a strong sense of personal identity. They’re ruining Cade Cowell, too. He was timid last night when he came in.
Hand Jebo a longer contract and make him the captain. The contract is important cause I suspect he might be out of here when he gets a chance.
We can try playing Niko as the a-mid and move Monteiro back a bit to more of a #8 role in place of Jackson. I think that would work better then the reverse. Monteiro plays kind of an 8/10 anyway. I tend to be more positive on Jack than most here, but if nothing else, the guy could use some rest. He plays every minute of every game.
OTOH, Benji is playing with continued verve. So other than playing time, what are the coaches doing to suck the life out of Cade or whomever (which has to include ALL of them, not just Covelo)?