I think Bill Archer is saying a similar thing to me over on the Crew board: https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=653135 Now, who would you put money on having a better season: the Crew, or D.C.?
Amen! Still and all, realistically, we should expect that the DynamoHums, the Untied, and CounterRevs will finish somewhere near the top of the table, whilst the SaltLickers, the Hosers, and probably us will finish somewhere near the bottom of the table. Now it may pan out differently. AEG could sell off Houston's best players and or trade some to El-Lay. Alternatively, El-Lay could reignite their own implosion and finish at the very bottom of the table. The Untied by their rebuilding could be wrecking their team chemistry and could finish much lower than in the top three. Kei Kamara could score 19 goals and propel the Mighty San José Earthquakes to an improbable MLS Cup/US Open Cup double! And monkeys might fly out of my butt too. The smart money says that we are going to suck, however, rooting for the 2008 SJ Quakes will be much better than rooting for the 2006 or '07 Quakes. Let us maintain some perspective brothers and sisters. GOOOOOO QUAAAAAAKES!!!!!! - Mark
For the record, this is the kind of thing I refer to as "low expectation." We should expect our club to build a squad capable of winning MLS Cup. Our pre-season roster should be something which makes us confident and excited. If we end up stinking up the league - BTW Toronto and Salt Lake are horrible, completely unacceptable standards - then, in hindsight, we can employ the excuse that we were an expansion team, or we're waiting for our new stadium, or whatever else helps the perennial losers of MLS sell some tickets the following year. But then, I'm the negative guy. I expect us to do better than Real Salt Lake.
I shouldn't, but I still chuckle to myself at Mark's use of "Untied" and the like. You do only get to launch once, and we've seen Chivas USA thinking they could go for it the first year, only to find out its not quite that easy. We've seen RSL take three years to just begin to find their feet, literally squandering players such as Eddie Pope and Freddy Adu. We've seen Red Bull come in and relaunch, and still go through coaches and players like, well, the MetroStars. It's a continuum. Sure, we'd like to have seen the Quakes sign Riquelme and loan him to Boca until the season starts. Besides FIFA rules and all, anyone who has paid attention to the A's and Yallop knows that's not the way this team is going to be built. Having said that, if there were a way to get Donovan up here, I would hope mgmt would go for it. I don't know. I think this team is designed to get into the playoffs. I don't consider making the playoffs to be low expectations for a first year squad. Doyle and Yallop could have gone with all youth and told us they were building for the new stadium, but they didn't. Once you get in the playoffs, worse teams than what I presume the Quakes will be this year have made MLS Cup (see LAG 2005, the Rapids back in the 1990s, for instance). If the team is the finished product when training camp starts, Doyle/Yallop haven't done their jobs. Tony
Actually, the manager and scouting staff at Villarreal are as good as anyone in the business at the discovery and valuation of young players. What I'd rather have than nutty Riquelme is Pellegrini's scouting notes so the Quakes could get the upper hand at looking at players he liked but weren't quite ready to be La Liga signings. .....or, I'd take Guille Franco in a heartbeat.
Oh, absolutely KMJ, but I used Riquelme purposely, as signing him would be a DP signing, and he's relatively young, compared with Becks, Blanco, etc. Sure, he's a temperamental #10 who you have to build a team around, and you have to surround him with water carriers, but still, if you are advocating making a splash, he would have been one of the top choices available on the transfer market. But you touch on what the Quakes, and MLS need to do in terms of spending money, improving scouting (and youth development, but thats another story). Tony
Quakes scouting staff is inadequate. I understand that NY Red Bulls and DC United have a staff well connected to S. America. And have several assistant coaches on the staff. It appears that John Doyle is out scouting? Is he the gm responsible for the business part? By now Yallop's main concern should be training. I think the PR office does a very poor job of keeping us informed and excited about the team.
Back to the topic of Eddie Lewis; he's been named to the US roster for the USMNT match against Mexico. A pretty big surprise, I don't think anyone expected him to be called in, but I wonder if it's tied at all to his checking things out in the US for a return to MLS....and how does this relate to the article from three days ago saying that he needed knee surgery? Pretty strange...
i doubt it. bradley isn't his agent and wouldn't call him in for so he can negotiate with a club. 1. he already knows the us/san jose/mls/etc. 2. that's what his real agents are for.
I should have clarified....maybe he was planning on being in the US anyway, if he is planning to be with an MLS team. So that might have helped Bradley to consider naming him, as he would already be away from his team (not that it really matters at this point with Derby). I realize that Bradley isn't going to call him up to the USMNT to help him negotiate with MLS, that's not what I meant to imply. But, I'm more confused by the injury thing - is he hurt or not?
eddie wouldn't be in the US ... he's got a job with Derby. players don't just fly across the world when they have a day off. also, an interesting tidbit to keep in mind -- in mid to late 2006, England finally got 'phones.' Basically what it does is it allows people to talk to other people from great distances. so, for example, if a 'soccer player' wanted to talk to a 'team' in another 'country' they could use the 'phone.' sorry, i was feeling saucy .... nothing personal.
Do they have them in the midlands? I think the English phone is in Londynne, and so is the back-up. There are treacherous forests and bandits in the between.
I thought this was a damned good question, but now I'm lost. Apparently, it has something to do with managers and international phone rates. Let's see if I can elicit an answer. A few days ago, ESPN reported that Eddie Lewis would need micro surgery for his knee. A day or two later, ESPN also reported that Bradley called Lewis up for the match this Wed. That second article did not mention the surgery, which is interesting because it's unlikely Bradley would have called him up if he were scheduled to miss games w/ his club due to an injury that required surgery. So, there's a bit of a contradiction in what ESPN reported. Does anyone have any insights? Speculative conclusions include that Derby wanted to sit Lewis, which provided a convenient time for a quickie knee operation that otherwise could be put off. Add to this that his surgeon might be in the US anyway (also where the game is on Wed.), and the contradiction would melt away a bit. My guess is that it was really one larger story reported in two bits - OR - one of the stories was wrong.
I don't have any insights beyond that "micro surgery" might refer to a sort of surgery that's elective and you can have it whenever it's best to schedule the rehab. And it's for chronic types of injury and not a required surgery for an acute injury that you can't play with until you've had that surgery.
I give up...you are missing my point. If he was already in the middle of negotiations with a team then he might have been planning to be in the US for the beginning of February to be in training camp. But forget it. As was noted, my real question is whether or not his knee is hurt, why the conflicting stories.
If you read the latest Ives blog, it says Lewis plans to play out his contract with Derby, so the earliest he could return to MLS is summer 2009.