http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/mls/crew/2004-10-20-playoffs-crew_x.htm Apologies if you've got this posted somewhere already. It's a good read.
I like this bit: "When we got back from the game in Chicago where we clinched the Eastern Conference championship, we get to the airport and there are between 50-100 people cheering, banging those noisemakers together," Fraser says. "It was so great to get off the plane and be greeted by that. I can't imagine that in many other communities in the league."
Fraser made it a point last night during the awards ceremony to say this is the best 'team' and 'coaching staff' he's ever been a part of in his 9 years in the league. You could tell that he meant it, there were obvious signs in the way he said it and the tone in his voice to infer in the past he hasn't been pleased with his relationship with past coaches <IE: Hankinson in Colorado>
I didn't know fans came together at the airport to welcome the players home, that's huge. And it's not even the hardcore nuts like us it seems that made this happen, it was just the regular fans..and that's a good thing.
wow that article made my day. At the end when Robin said "When we got back from the game in Chicago where we clinched the Eastern Conference championship, we get to the airport and there are between 50-100 people cheering, banging those noisemakers together," Fraser says. "It was so great to get off the plane and be greeted by that. I can't imagine that in many other communities in the league." I was there and the whole team was schocked! I guess the fans deserve the title "America's Hardest Supporting Fans"
There was also a little ditty about the fact that HSG had the two top finishing teams in their respective conference...anyone catch it? They had better be pulling for Columbus...
Just more motivation for the guys. Very few writers are giving them a chance depsite the season they've had.
That's fine with me too. They'll still be calling bullsh!t if and when we do take the whole thing. F them.
irony on this thread for me, I replied to a Dure posting as being weirdly short sighted once, now I'm posting on a thread about a Dure piece, responding to a connoly piece as being, well, stupid. new england over c-bus? wtf? Go Crew!! my best chance to catch a match this year is nov 6 at crew stadium if they take care of new england. Go Crew!
since indy is probably never getting a team, and being a life-long mid west guy, my choices are the crew or the fire to pull for. being that I've always been a hejduk fan, and columbus is a much nicer place to visit, Go Crew!
Notice that he doesn't give any analysis - just a couple of well known facts. Nothing comparing the teams style of play. No match-ups. No history of the teams this year or past seasons. Connolly isn't a journalist. Someone with no soccer knowledge could have written that from the press release.
Take it from a neutral fan. I like Connolly, but he's off his rocker on this one. He's got the three hottest teams in MLS (Columbus, DCU, and KC, probably in that order) all going down? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. I'll have to dig through the couch and cough up the scratch to lay 10 to 1 odds against that one.
Take it easy. Connolly just took the safe route, the easy way out: he went with the home team in every match except Colorado, where he picked the vastly superior team. He's just thinks he's being cagey and cute, knowing that MLS teams, particularly in the playoffs, are the better bet. He's not making any judgements about the matchups, which is the disappointing part. He could have written and interesting piece, gone over some of the matchups and then expressed an opinion based on the talent and the strengths, etc. Instead he mailed it in. I was one of Connolly's earliest and most vociferous supporters when he was new and worked hard at it. I said repeatedly here and elsewhere that I thought he was going to be the first great American soccer reporter. Lately though he reminds me of Jeff Bradley or Alexi's kid brother: sitting around contemplating his navel and typing up the kid of "s[ortswriter" crapola you could get from any second rate clock puncher. It's a shame.
Here's a step up from the Connolly piece, though not as nice as the Bure one. Wahl does an OK job of looking into the first-round matchups with history and some insight into player matchups. Then he sort of says "oh I think that's good enough I'll just can the rest of the playoffs." Though to his credit the Conference finals and Cup could depend largely on how the teams play in the first-round series so it can be hard to predict how the rest of the playoffs should go.