Just a few off the top of my head: - No way Beasley can play "up top" in whatever 3-4-3 alignment they're playing in Chicago these days without suffering a serious injury. Going against wingers and outside backs is one thing; going against centre backs and defensive mids is another. The guy's goign to break in two before the season is 1/2 way finished. - Ching seemed to play a lot bigger v. the Rapids than the Wizards. - Arturo Alvarez, in about 15 minutes of his first ever MLS action, had two or three of the sweetest moves so far of anyone this season. It's the first I've seen of him, and this guy's got potential. - Guevara (or however you spell it) is going to be a star in MLS and probably make a winner out of the Metros before all is said and done. (Presuming Mathis works himself back into shape which at the current rate may not be 'til December.) - Can anyone in MLS take free kicks? Boy were there some bad ones on Saturday. - Sheesh, how does Spartan Stadium look like when it's full? It looked 90% full tonight and yet they "only" got just over 17,000. - The sound and fury coming out of DC is signifying nothing. Bradley may have been right; who's going to score the goals in D.C.? And Stewart seemed to be so deep as to be playing d-mid half the time...say it ain't so, Ray! - If Donovan AND Mulrooney leave for the Confed Cup and the Gold Cup, the Quakes may not earn a point. It'll be skeleton city in the Bay Area. - Preki still has it. - Wolff is still trying to get it back. - The Columbus Crew actually look like a real soccer team, at least until they took their foot off the pedal in the 2nd half of today's game. Martino is already a star in this league and a joy to watch. Hopefully Buddle's injury isn't too serious. - Clark, the d-mid of the Metros, is a FUTURE star. That guy's a stud. - The trap and one-timer by Richie Williams today was probably the greatest offensive play I've ever seen him make. Great save by Hartman on the play. - J.P. Dellacamera looks one step out of his grave. - Tim Howard, despite the pressure of Man U scouts in the stands (just guessing; I actually have no idea), is still the best. Meola hasn't slipped that much though; he had an outstanding game. - Enjoyed 3 of the 4 games today, the Fire v. United game was a snooze-fest played in the midfield 90% of the time (not without its bright moments of course). Hopefully Joe-Max will help the Revs fortunes 'cause otherwise they look D U L L...dull. I wish tomorrow was Soccer Sunday as well.
Thats what happens when there are a total of twelve players in the midfield. Columbus IS very impressive and although Waldo and Ty said it a lot, it is pretty nice when Jeff Cunningham, despite all of his lack of intelligence baggage, comes off the bench. It was nice to see Wolff making runs through the defense. Thats what I was concerned about. The finishing will sort itself out.
Those three guys played well, but the refs better learn to protect them....Franchino should have been given a red for taking out the legs of Martino...If this is allowed to continue, we won't have good players to write about as the season progresses
Games have been low scoring. Too often the away teams have played bunker ball to try and squeeze out an ugly tie. That DC game was a ************ sandwich.
From memory, I'm guessing that the entire lower bowl at Spartan was full. And by that, I'm counting the upper bleachers at the north and south ends as well. The upper deck would have to be opened in order to accomodate a full sell-out, and when that's full, it's more than 30,000. Sounds like a sweet crowd, though.
As per the "day after" effect, tomorrow will be Soccer Monday for me here. ESPN Int'l-Pac. Rim's airing the New England v Columbus game at 2 a.m. Melbourne time, in its entirety, and I'm taping it. So I get to enjoy it when I awake, or whenever I have two hours to spend with my wife in front of the TV...
Re: Re: Further observations of the young MLS season (R) I agree 100%. I'm still pissed off about that foul on Martino this morning, and I'm a Burn fan.
Good post Flash - totally agree with the Clark comment -- it is a lot of fun to watch him jump over everyone and dribble around and past people with ease. Pablo better watch his back, because Clark is already amazingly good. Given the fact that Guevara may not be playing much defense, it will be good to have a player with a lot of skill, desire and athletic ability out there. I know Onstad looked horrible on that play and should have caught it, etc. - but did he deserve full responsibilty for the OG? I haven't read the Quakes board yet, but what was that defender doing? I think he shares some of the blame. Unfortunately, I wasn't that into that game so I missed the Alvarez moves and I've already deleted it. Mathis had a bad game, but I think he has shown signs of getting his mojo back. It's irritating to watch him yell at the refs all game, but at least he's got some of his fire that has been missing. Now that he has Guevara feeding him, I expect him to spend less time coming back to try to patch together the midfield and more time going at the goal. Mike Magee looks at least 2 seasons away from being a starter in this league. It's too bad we didn't get to see more of Alecko. Note to Ben Olsen -- in the box, leave the ball to players with different speeds other than full speed ahead. I thought it was interesting the way Evan Whitfield seemed to really dislike his old teammate Dema Kovalenko who earned a high score yesterday on the thug-o-meter. There was some grumbling about pandering to ethnic groups, but I thought Korean Heritage night was a lot of fun. Got to eat kimbab and watch a Korean drumming performance outside the stadium, and the Korean fans -- who were spread out in the stadium -- provided a buzz that made the game entertaining. I had very brief flashbacks of being in the stadium of U.S. vs. Poland when Koreans were cheering for Poland, but this was a whole lot less irritating. Is it me, or is Jack Edwards slightly less annoying now that he's not on National TV? (Emphasis on the slightly.) Armas played well, but I still don't see what Bradley sees -- it's hard for me to get excited about a team that relies on Faria, Razov, and Williams for offense. He'll probably prove me wrong, but when Earnie Stewart signed with the league, I wondered if he would be very productive in this league given the fact that he has become more and more invisible with the National team, and I haven't seen anything yet to dispel those doubts. "Consummate professional" aside, I think the Burn may be happy that they didn't sign a player that they would pretty much have to start and who spends most of the game on the side of a milk carton.
-kyle martino looks a notch better than everyone on the field. he's ready for europe at the end of this year. i don't know what his contract situation is, but he could play right now in europe. -joey franchino is a dirty player. every team in the league should offer to trade their left back to New England to get Franchino off the field. -the crew are playing very good, but still don't use Mcbride how (i think) they should. Brian McBride is like a great basketball center. give him the ball close to the goal and he'll find a way to get it in or give it to someone who has a really good chance to score. McBride shouldn't be getting the ball at midfield or 40 yards out, just as a center shouldn't touch the ball at halfcourt. right now he's playing pretty good as an 'attacking mid' (i say that because how much passing and dribbling he's doing and defense he's playing) but he could score 20 goals easily if his only responsibility is put the ball in the net.
Not sure I'm on the Kyle Martino bandwagon yet, Ty and Stone were comparing him to Tab Ramos yesterday, ok .. maybe. I think his finishing needs to improve before he'll be a complete player.
My observations through week 3: -I defy anyone to name a worse offensive midfield than my beloved Galaxy. Horrible. I would trade Simon Elliott right now for a Jovan Kirovski used sweatsock. -Carlos Ruiz and Landon Donovan are the attacking class of the league. Did you see the saves Tim Howard amde stoning Ruiz a couple of times? Unreal. -MetroStars are gonna prove me right that they are the worst team in the league.
Yeah, but what about Ralston, Cullen, Joseph and Noonan? Joseph needs to work on his touches, but I thought that looked a LOT better for you guys. Run with that, get Llamosa back from injury, get Rusty the hell out of the starting lineup, and replace Harris with JM Moore up top, and you're much improved. Later, COZ
The teams are not playing full speed. And some of the players are not playing 110%. MLS games look a bit slow. Also too many ties because of bad playmaking and finishing. I just hope it's not cause of too many young players on the field. Hope MLS is not counting on young players cause they will work for $25K. Hope too see it get better or MFL will keep kicking are ass next year.
I think, as Falcon6 pointed out, most games have been low-scoring and a little ugly. I wondered how they were going to come up with 4 goals for candidates for the Fox goal of the week... BUt I also remember someone complaining about this last year. It WILL get better (and despite the complaint, I was left wanting more games...) Martino is awesome. Beasley was off, but he's awesome. Buddle is great too. Convey didn't look too bad either. So why can't any of these guys finish?
Because Martino's job is to feed the plethora of Columbus strikers, not score himself (although he better learn soon, since he's blown two breakaways already this season), Beasley's knocked on the ground every time he gets the ball, Buddle doesn't have much of an excuse other than that he keeps leaving games early, and Convey's on a team that's too busy passing to each other to remember to shoot.
EARLY impressions: Differences in MLS are miniscule. Results swing on one break and nobody dominates for 90. Good for us. MET might be the worst team in the league, but I'll take dc for that honor right now. I've only seen Colorado for a half, we'll see. Chicago is brutal to watch unless you like hitters like Curtin (I do). The hope is they will be watchable when Razov returns. Speaking of hitters, the guy for dc that continued to brutalize Beasley deserved a card for every single one of those 3 rugby tackles. He didn't get even one. Beasley is so dinky it always looks worse with him, but still. This has been something prevalent in several MLS games. Hard contact is a great part of the game, but not from behind, and not when it stops an unimpeeded rush at goal. C'mon refs, pull the cards. KC is playing terribly everywhere but in net, yet is in first through gifts and effort. I disagree that MLS looks slower this season. I do believe some of the East games have been so disjointed and poorly played that it appears that way. The roster blow-ups of the off-season will take some time to "gel". Two other things - LA has always played levels better at home and we don't get that for another 6 weeks. Also, it seems the majority of talent coming into the league the last 3 years has been defensive. There has been no shortage of offensive talent to leave MLS also. It's early, but the combination might be reflected in a drop in scoring this year. I'm anxious to see how Colorado will put the pieces together after the Grimandi defection. I really thought they would be a good team with him. I think Columbus has already won the East. There's every reason to think that being that good in a division of weak teams they get to play 16 times will be at least 10 points good enough to win. They have made 3 teams of 3 play their worst game of the season - twice away from Columbus. Coming in everyone said defense was the weakness. 2 goals in 3 games; one fluke to Ruiz and the other after the games was well decided. I'd live with that weakness. Busch might be more than solid. Even if Buddle is out with the skull ding, Cunningham would start on most other teams. Midfield doesn't make mistakes. SJ lost 4 starters and still has a team capable of dictating pace and style to you. LA visits next week. NE isn't that bad. They will be better with Moore in. You can worry about LA if you want to. They have not impressed and are getting breaks. They are equavalent to 1-2 right now, but in '02 they went 5-8-1, 16 pts. on the road and won the Cup. No eventual champion has won more than 5 on the road since ties were instituted. Last years uniforms were better, except I do like dc's new road uni, best so far. (the home one is still brutal, next they will change the badge to a white feather). COL, LA, and Met would be better off in the '02 version at home, especially MET. The home jersey was a great design with the broad stripes, too bad. KC changing the road letters from blue to black was a step backwards. Chicago's are OK, but I still like '02 better. Killing off the "F I R E" chest logo on the road just seems wrong. The Shootout is the best $49 you can spend as a soccer fan in the US. If we continually have to watch CHI/dc type games and draws they should refund part of it, but not a bad deal overall.
Re: EARLY impressions: That was Ryan Nelsen, and only one of those fouls was bad (the one where he stuck his leg out and blatently tripped Beasley). The other two were clear shoulder-to-shoulder contact, and Beasley got the worst of it because Nelsen has 6 inches and 70 pounds on him. For his part, Beasley did a lot of embellishing and time wasting while rolling on the ground, so it all balances out.
Martino looks really good apart from when he is alone on goal. He pulled one move yesterday that mesmerized 3 defenders. From the highlights, Howard looks great. DC has bored me both games. No firepower. I'm not convinced on Quaranta. Just glad MLS is underway.
Re: EARLY impressions: Actually, with injury its 5 new starters and a bench composed of 4 players, the only returner on the bench was a DP last year.
My friend, you have just defined the "Keough factor" to a T. EVERYBODY who has ever done pxp with Ty was better before they worked with him and better after they worked with him! EVERYBODY. With all the "1st generation" MLSers now working with a mic in their hands, there is no excuse why Ty is still on national TV every week.
Everybody seems to be wondering where DC's goals will come from. I'm wondering the same thing about the Fire. DC has Quaranta, Stoichov, Kovalenko and Stewart. The Fire have...uh...thinking...uh...Andy freakin' Williams? Beasley is quality, but he's not much of a scorer. Razov will pick up some slack, but not nearly enough. The Fire will be lucky to score 20 goals this season.