Mauricio Wright played the entire 90 minutes yesterday in AEK Athens' 2-2 draw with Real Madrid in Madrid. Another Tico, Centeno, scored Athens' second goal. He played a disciplined (I can't believe I wrote that about Mauricio Wright) match, probably didn't have more than 5 or 10 touches, but was responsible for shutting down Guti (who was terrible) and Ronaldo. He was fortunate, in the announcer's (and my)opinion, not to have a penalty called on him late in the second half when Wright displaced Ronaldo in the penalty box, but otherwise, he was solid in the center of the Athens defense. Not once did he venture up the field, leaving John Doyle, I mean his teammates, to try to clean up his mess. Tommy Smyth, who did color commentary, said the Revs probably could have used him on Sunday. What Wright did yesterday was show how good a player he can be. He stayed back, took care of business, let the offense take care of itself. There were more than a few of us who acknowledged Wright was a talented player while he was here, but his constantly mistimed upfield runs, not getting back on defense, and his complaining drove me crazy (ok it drove Quinn and Lothar crazy also). Go Quakes Tony
Yes. Lack of discipline was a problem with him. He was instrumental in Costa Rica's success in the WC, he scored as I remember, and did a hell of a lot of good work. There were several days when we thought CR would go much further, in fact, wasn't this the first WC that three CONCACAF nations got that far?
Tony, Good summary. I think the Mauricio who played for the Clash didn't have a great supporting cast (I.e. team and coach), and therefore, he tried to do too much for the team. He played incredible at the WC and had a decent match for AEK against Real yesterday. QuakeAttack
I don't know about that. He showed the same tendencies in N.E. Ah yes, back in the Kraft poaching days.
Yeah, who knows? If we had Wright this year, things might be totally different for him and for the Quakes. Team chem makes a big, big difference. With a coach like Frank he might have wanted to play the right way.