I must say I'm pleasantly surprised by Nowak's approach to his team's first 2 games..I'm not one to give cheap praise (much less to DC ), but simply put the coach and his team deserve it... Nowak exemplifies what i'd like to see more often in MLS: teams that know to hold possession and try to keep the ball from the opponent in a smart way, whether at home or away. DC erased LA completely out of the game....LA played like crap and hardly deserved to earn a point.... What's sad from a neutral fan's point of view, is to see Sigi make his team look so pathetic at home, and how they kept defending with 8 players back throughout most of the game...And then it's no wonder to see no midfiled or offensive chances......It seems as if the coaches do not understand there are 30 regular season games, there is an 80% chance of playoffs appearances, and that parity in the league allows you not to play it so damn cautiously....Nowak does understand that playing for 3 points instead of playing not to lose the 1 point IS BETTER, both for a team's confidence and for the fans in the stadium or watching on TV The crowd was great, but like Loney has said in the past: Sigi lost LA so much money by playing his overcautious/creativity lacking crap last season (paraphrasing here)... So what will LA management expect for next home game in terms of attendance...Probably not a sellout, as the team that was worth paying a ticket for yesterday was the team that just left town.....I mean one thing is to play bad, another is to play horrible and with seldom a shot on goal..... Ruiz saved LA in a moment of inspiration and that was about it for his team, besides chances off corners, but nothing really inspirational besides Ruiz' play to talk about. May we have more coaches that have guts/initiative, the way Nowak has so far..... And sorry fellow Metro fans for praising the "enemy", but damn it, watching the game on tape one knows what team made the effort and tried to make the game exciting.... Can't wait to see DC match up with Metro, it should be a great game....
Herzog has a great left foot (as the FSW guys never tire of telling us ), but his work rate defensively is Valderrama-esque. If a DC guy happened to come his way with the ball, he went after him. Otherwise.... In a 4-4-2, if one of your mids doesn't contribute much on defense, it's hard to maintain pressure. Then throw in that JoKi and Ruiz aren't exactly McBride-like scrappers out there.... It's a personnel issue. If I were an LA fan, I would worry about my team's ability to win. Score great looking goals? Won't be a problem. Rack up points? I wouldn't count on it.
As far as Herzog is concerned, I've said in both weekly analysis threads I've started under the MLS board that Herzog looks really out of shape. I don't know if it's that he doesn't want to put in the work rate like Valderrama so much as it is that he needs go gain match fitness. He's one of those guys that can always be dangerous with his touch on the ball no matter how tired he is, but if he reaches the point where he can play 90 minutes at full speed it would be interesting to see what he could do. I loved the way Freddy put him to the turf too. The kid played a lot better after that.