3-2 TFC The good: - Both of Davy's goals were dynamite. Dude's completely taken control of this team, which can only bode well. - We got a lot better offensively in the second half. - Hirsig looked pretty good in limited action. - We never looked like giving in despite going down two goals. This team seems to have a certain sticktuitiveness that I think will serve it well as the season progresses. The bad: - Disappointing result. - Several players (Lopez and Leathers in particular) played really, really poorly. - The defense looked totally unorganized, especially on the first and second goals. - We're still giving up the same kinds of goals we gave up last year. DEFEND THE WEAK SIDE PLEASE. - Midfield looked lost going forward...which once again is not really anything new. - Our forwards still struggle to hold the ball up when it actually comes to them. The ugly: - Anything having to do with Amado Guevara. Discuss.
Why is it always like 5 degrees colder out at the CAB!? When was the last time we lost the season opener? They've defiantly got some kinks to work out, but whatever it's only the first game. Man of the match, Davy hands down!
both of Davy's shots were spectacular... can't wait to see them A. Sober, and B. in a slower motion that what I saw... but yeah, Toronto made the most of the opportunities, despite the 2nd half control of the ball that we had... the ref on the north and east west side of the field was clueless first half... not that it mattered... 1st half we were dominated... good crowd... massive props to the Toronto crowd who were impressive... and at times, seemed louder than the cauldron, which seemed disorganized to me... lotsa season left...
I'm not going to get into any of the later game drama - or for that matter, much of the pre-game drama either - but if the old-school folks in the Cauldron spent half as much time cheering for the Wizards as the few new transplants spent cheering against Toronto, we would have been very loud..
About the game - I thought Lopez looked lost except for about 5 or 6 times of brillance out there from a wide ball (this might be attributed to the crowd that would go crazy everytime he got the ball right behind me), but did not make up for lack of tracking and the last 4 free kicks/corners that he couldn't get over the 2nd wall of defenders. Santiago Hirsig - should have a starting position in 2 weeks - hands down. I'm not sure he ever gave up the ball. Didn't track back that well - but great possession and 1v1 attacking. Davy Arnaud - nuff said. Weak side defense.....when the ball was switched (especially from an over the top mid-fielder ball), we were always 2 feet behind the forward. Hartman saved us from 3 more easy goal opportunities. Off-the field - and this is why i replied to previous post. If we would spend half the time that we did telling the Toronto fans to F-off, i think we could have given some positive cheers towards our own boys.
Disappointing turn out for the home opener. Should have more people to cheer the Wizards. Starting 11 girls look nice, but the cheerleader thing really has no place in Soccer. I think it cheapens the atmosphere. I liked them better the way they were last year. What in the world happened to the defense? Toronto cut them up all night long. Without a couple of nice saves and a missed PK, it could have easily been 5-2. Harrington looked weak and made a number of bad decision and bad passes. Hersig definitely needs to be in the starting line up. You could see the quality of his play right from the time he stepped on to the field. Lastly, I really like Josh Wolff, but he is no longer a threat up front. He is no longer fast, too short to get his head on the ball, and is usually knocked off the ball by the defenders. We are in desperate need of a scoring threat up front. The team needs lots of work before next weeks game.......
Lopez's dead balls were very bad. Wolff was nearly invisible. Didn't think Gomez had a good game, seemed like most of his touches were giveaways. Zusi had a bad first game - he tried to play around with the ball too much and ended up losing it too often, which directly led to the first goal. Guevara is a whiny little diving crybaby. I now hate him as much as I used to hate Ruiz. Is Souter injured? He wasn't on the roster. I would have rather had him start than Zusi. The 3-4-3 in the 2nd half led to more possession and more scoring opportunities, but worse defense. Our center/backbone is fine - Davy, Jack, Jimmy and Hohlbein were all good. Hirsig looks good also. I'm out of the MLS Survivor game after picking KC FTW.
According to the article on mlsnet, it was officially a sellout. Can't help it if they don't all show up.
1) The referees were absolute trash. So many knick knack fouls took place and 90% of them were called on us and the other 10% were called on Toronto. It really pissed me off when they awarded TFC the penalty kick and the EXACT SAME FOUL happened 30 seconds earlier in our favor (except not in the box) and they didn't call it. The yellow team sucks. 2) Our passing was horrible. We had so many long balls way off target. We ended up just throwing away possession so many times it was ridiculous. Definitely something we need to work on. 3) The defense needs to learn to stick with the wide guy. Absolutely silly mistake but it 100% led to the second goal. Basically let Amado walk in and score the goal. Not acceptable. 4) Arnaud is the double shit. 98% of the work rate on our team. Both goals were classy. 5) Hirsig looked great. If he's not a starter in the next few weeks I'd be very surprised. 6) Thank God Lopez costs less and doesn't take up a DP spot. Onalfo needs to bench him a few games to rile him up again. 7) It is absolutely sad that we let up 3 goals in front of a home opener crowd. EDIT: Eh, never mind, the foul in the box wasn't the same, it was an intentional hand ball. I couldn't see it from all the way across the field.
Yes, he was out this week with injury. We did not look good tonight, plain and simple, that was bad. Hirsig definitely helped when he came on the field. Looking forward to seeing him get full time. Davy's two goals were great. But we were just bad tonight overall. Leathers didn't look good Zusi didn't look good. I'd say bench Leathers, but we really have no one to put in his place, I'd prefer Jack in midfield, and that only leaves Watson or Pizarro to play right back and neither of them is an MLS caliber right back. We have to step it up a LOT before next week. And BTW, why when down a goal and we're pushing forward playing a lot of balls in the air do we not put on a forward like Thompson? I know he's not a favorite around here, but he at least has the body and the size to challenge for those balls to give us a better chance of getting something out of them. Instead of Wolff, Gomez, and Lopez who are not aerial forwards.
Guevara dives more than Drogba and C. Ronaldo combined, and more obviously than Gaven in the playoffs last year. The 3rd Toronto goal is one of the biggest WTF defensive moments I can remember in my history of watching soccer. Leathers was doing pretty good until he fell down, but then instead of maybe 1 guy running near post to try and cover for him... the entire freaking defense ran near post so when De Ro's shot rebounds out in the middle the only thing that could possibly stop Toronto from scoring is if 2 of them fight over who gets to tap it in. Hirsig looked pretty good. Leathers and Zusi seemed to be getting in each other's way in the first half. Harrington played too many pointless long balls. I liked Gomez on the wing last year better than today up front. They need either Abe or Christman in there. Gomez/Wolff pairing is too small if all the balls are going to come in the air. On the bright side the grass was mostly green unlike in Houston.
Maybe try Abe up front where Gomez was today. Gomez over where Zusi started. Jack for Leathers. Hirsig in the middle with Davy. It couldn't possibly be any worse.
The result was dissapointing... also... I think the Cauldron sounded terrible. It may have been because how much we drank, or it could of been how much a group spent yelling at the TFC fans. It just seemed disorganized and like everyone was more concerned about the other supporters then doing the chants we know and love. I was out there all day with TFC fans and never had a problem, then when one has the decentcy to come thank the Cauldron for everything, its embarrassing to have a group chanting obscene things at him. I'm all for s***ting on the bastards below, but there is a time and place..
Yeah, what was up with that? Last year when I started going to games, there seemed to be a lot more chanting/singing and a lot less middle-fingers/shouting at the opponents. I chalked a lot of it up to a few splinter groups. The mood elsewhere though. I spent a lot of my night trying to make sure I didn't catch a stray punch from the five people around me that constantly seemed on the verge of fisticuffs. I'm disappointed in the result, but I think it says a lot about the team that they didn't fold up shop. Lots of teams do in that situation. This much is true: Zusi made a mess of things in our half of the field and was probably overmatched in his first MLS game. I was glad to see Hirsig come on for him -- he looked like he might be a very creative player. Any chance they go 3-4-3 next week? It looked like they were always in possession in that formation.
After something in the neighborhood of three years away from the team, I find myself rejoining the Cauldron only to have nothing meaninful to add. My voice has been gone since my twenties and I've barely got the energy to chant, much less to threaten to rape the opposing GK. That aside: 1. I thought even less of Zusi than most of the rest of the commenters here. Absolutely awful; incapable of holding the ball when challenged and certain to give it away, often in dangerous spots, every time he got "creative." Leathers was likewise feeble, unwise, and flaccid in defense. I was overwhelmingly disappointed by the lack of coordination of the back four (the marking confusion on the sequence that led to the first goal by Barrett, for instance) and probably ought to stay away if it's always like that these days. 2. Lopez was catching savage hell from my side of the Cauldron (the left, "Spanish-language-only" side) and I have to assume that this is because he was our DP at one point. I didn't think he was all THAT awful, though, I'll grant you, certainly not DP material. 3. I'm up for more Hirsig. Anyone else notice it was his clever little side pass that set up Arnaud's first bomb for the goal? There were clearly moments where he wasn't in synch with what his teammates had in mind, but all in all, he struck me as having a lot of creativity, and the skill to make it come to life. 4. Josh Wolff, at this point, is Chris Brown 2.0. If you don't know to whom I'm referring, you're not as old as me, I guess. 5. The Cauldron was...well, the bottom line is that I'm in no position to judge the Cauldron. My heydey there was in the late 1990s and even the last time I returned (again, years ago), it had substantially expanded and was entirely a different animal than I remembered. I guess the thing I missed most about it was any sense of cooperation or community. It was full of enthusiastic people, but everybody was doing their own thing and it sometimes seemed to me that the people I was surrounded by were more into creating an impression on the others around them than influencing the game. Mind you, I'd still take the Cauldron over any other set of Kansas City soccer fans; and again, I'm an old fogey who may be putting a rosey glow on the past. Seemed to me that we were beaten, as a result of stupidity, by a team we should have been able to handle. Foolishness at the back; no ability to maintain possession when pressed; no ability to break down a bunkering defense. Same ol' Wizards. And now, back into my hole for another three years...
absolutely agree. totally dig the new skirts... and what little there was of them. thus endeth the only positive comment about this game from me for this thread.
I'm looking forward to Hirsig being able to go a full 90 - Once Hirsig, Gomez, and Davy really get on the same page, the attacking soccer promise might really pan out. Which will be great given the poor performance of Leathers and let's not forget Harrington. Folks have commented on Lopez looking lost - if Lopez was lost, what the heck was Harrington? I don't buy the argument that Lopez looked lost (to be fair, it wasn't his best game either) - I think it has more to with an inability to work through the midfield and the less than stellar delivery and control from our back line - both of which force us to rely on the long ball. Wait . . . that sounds like last year's problem.
I noted another thing with interest - our starting lineup was made up of Lopez and 10 Americans. Without bothering to check, I'd be willing to bet that was the highest percentage of any team that's played so far this season. I'm all for developing American players in MLS, and I think we've got some quality guys. But I think it also speaks to the fact that we're generally not getting the quality imports that some other teams are.
I remarked to someone at kickoff that the crowd looked too sparse for opening day. We can blame it on basketball this time of year I suppose but it was somewhat disheartening. Hate to say it but it's true. Not for lack of signings but our track record bringing in international players has not been very good the last several years. Impact players have turned into role players and role players into reserves.
WOW guys settle down alot more to go A LOT of complaining- but I guess there is a lot to complain about. First things first- we looked like a club that wanted to get off to a good start but couldn't figure things out. I didn't see the same Zusi everyone else did, I saw a creative young player who couldn't use his talents on a tiny pitch- i predict he will be better on the road (BTW I know this is a result of watching a lot of English football but our pitch just looked so tiny)(not to mention the ball was bouncing up off the pitch a hell of a whole lot) and we were the club that didn't make the adjustments. Hartman made some mistakes but in the end the guys in front of him looked slow and completely lost all night long. That route one ball over the top of Leathers was there all night if TFC had wanted to play it from the back of their mid-field. Jack, Gomez, Harrington, Leathers, and Wolff might as well have been invisible. Gomez and Jack are going to be better, there is no doubt but I wonder about Wolff at this point in his career. The long balls aren't going to work without Cristman or Thompson to hold up OR someone with some pace to run them down- Lopez and Wolff are not those guys. Lopez? Seriously let someone else take the free kicks- spot yourself up at the top of the arc and wait for deflections. In our 7 corner kicks it seemed like every single one that made it over the wall ended up bouncing right around the arc with no Wizards to knock it back at goal. I will be in the crowd next week in Colorado and I expect to see a completely different performance and hope for a better result. I do wish to say that I love that CO came out of halftime in the 3-4-3 and went for the result- Sadly our back 3 wasn't up to the task. This team will still be good and I look forward to the rest of the season.
From my perspective it looks to me like Lopez and Harrington can not get on the same page. Perhaps they simply can not work together on the same side of the field. I have watched Claudio yell at (MIKEY....MIKEY....MIKEY ) Harrington multiple times from different seats in the stadium. Watch the frustration on Lopez's face. Watch Harrington shrug and look like ......what were you expecting I saw this and you saw that. I am not Curt and do not see what happens in practice, but the way these 2 act on the field remind me of some of my first Wizards games after moving to KC where Dave Vandenberg and Eddie Johnson acted the same way. My hope is that Curt can see this as well and correct the problem on the right side of the field. That said Lopez's corners and free kicks were as bad as any I have seen. Wasn't Herc taking corners at one point last year and whipping them into the box?
RE: the crowd It was definitely a late arriving crowd... the place still looked about 1/2 full at kickoff. I looked around later in the first half though, and it seemed like the only area that wasn't full was the 3 GA sections of bad seats behind the home plate area.