After an early morning game, now a late night game. I'm definitely gonna need an afternoon nap for this one. Imo as close to a must win game as possible, not only obviously cuz it's the knockout stage, but also because Vancouver is missing all their best players. Vancouver odds on the MLS HP are at +475, making them the biggest underdogs by quite a margin. Which probably means that we will lose.
Yeah. We are way too well-suited to kicking Vancouver's ass for an MLS game to play out so predictably. I mean, I'm chuffed as hell we aren't facing Columbus (who are 4-0-1 with one goal conceded this year) or San Jose (whose chaotic attack is well-built to annihilate our chaotic defense). This is by so many degrees our best shot at winning. A clean sheet and a Pulido goal is all I really want from this.
The fact that Vancouver is so depleted, give me the fear. This is like varsity team playing against its own JV. The varsity better win, or else don’t show up at school again.
such a classic skc game. short-staffed opposition, tremendous favorite to win, dominate the play, boatload of shots, very few on target, nothing to show for it.
well, at least we advance. prolly a good thing there wasn't extra time. we were never gong to score and we'd have just tired ourselves out even more for thursday's game. melia's awesome, by the way.
+ Melia - I cannot remember every seeing a gk with that much of a knack for penalties in my 30 years of watching soccer. + Corner kicks - where were those in 2019? In 2019 i felt like every time we got a corner we might as well just kick it across the outline since there is a bigger chance of us catching a goal on the counter attack than us scoring from the corner. This year they are dangerous all the time, although this game they didn't result in a goal due to bad finishing. + Russell - finally a good game by him. Finishing was bad (though obv that was true for the whole team), but other than that he finally looked dangerous again. Just as I was surprised that it took Vermes so long to take Russell off the last couple games, this game I was surprised that he would get subbed before Shelton, who was pretty quiet this game. - Pulido - embarrassing the amount of sitters he missed. Also, while his moving all over the place worked pretty well in the first half, with Espinoza and Kinda making runs into the box to replace him, in the second half I would have liked him to be more of an actual striker as our midfield was tiring out. - Martins - yikes , providing overlaps so nicely but then screwing up on every single cross.
Agree. First game where I was not impressed with him and the first glimpse of a weakness in his game. He is not able to create his own shot when the defense is packed in. As soon as the 4-4-1-1 from Vancouver came out, you knew it was going to be an ugly game. Even with that, the way the team attacked the bunker was reminiscent of the strategies used before Benny F. The whole game felt like a flash back to the pre-Benny era of cross it till you drop soccer. With no Kamara, CJ, or Dwyer to direct service to, who exactly is supposed to get on the end of these? Our No.10s don't have the passing and technical ability needed to beat that low block. I think Vancouver just gave the league the template for how you approach playing SKC.
I think that's different with Gutierrez out there, though. And a fully fit Russell. Vancouver giving the league the template for how to beat SKC? Heavy, heavy bunkerball, especially when it goes to a shootout after 90, is the template for how to beat any team a couple notches better than you. Frankly, if they had pushed their attack more, they might have won--I think they gave us way too much respect and it allowed SKC, which might be the best shootout team in modern MLS (I can't recall all the stats), to go to our familiar well. I know everyone is so upset about finally getting blanked this year (it took a team stacking 10 men in the box for virtually the entire game to do it), but really all things told, this isn't that depressing or scary... Vancouver put in a monster shift defensively and it worked their way. Yeah, Sporting threw out some pretty poor shooting--though this is a side effect of there being minimal reasonable angles to try to sneak a shot on goal in. Not much for me to take away from this one, honestly. Vancouver has finally learned how to try to nick a game off a better team, so maybe our days of kicking the everliving shit out of them are winding down. That is a bummer. Here's what I learned or had reinforced: Kinda is a dribbling and shooting 10. Less the central playmaker and more the inverted winger. This is actually a great combination with the kind of forward that Pulido is and the winger quality we have otherwise. Especially if we get Gutierrez playing CM behind all that (and whichever of Ilie or Roger that won't screw us over defensively). It didn't come off last night, but in a more open game he will shine a whole lot more. If he isn't threatened defensively, Zusi is still a ********ing monster. We focus too often on him getting beat, but he was the source of our best attempts all evening. And... SKC are absolutely terrible at corners. We put an attacking head on the ball, several times with no coverage, and didn't put any on frame. We really have fallen far in that department--defensively too. How do we not have a single decent header of the ball on the entire squad?
with regards specifically to heading the ball i agree.. but we have 3 goals after corners and 2 after free kick crosses this season - if not the top team we gotta be among the very best in this regard this season.
Maybe. I guess I wasn't counting scrum goals, haha. I know we've been spoiled with monsters in the past like Kamara, Collin, Opara... It's just really hard to see missing numerous easy headers in one match. I just think scoring in the chaos following a set piece is the kind of thing that diminishes as teams get into better form, usually, so we'll need to learn to put the first ball in, not the eighth... I think you have a point though. I might be recency biasing myself a bit too much here!
Agree... this looked like 2010-2013 with a bozillion shots, 3 on target, and no goals. Tonight was largely a function of 10 players behind the ball for VAN instead of just having Kei on the team. I hoped we'd be able to break the defense down, but it's simply tough with that many people packed in the box. This game would have been very different had we been up a goal sometime in the first half. I agree with the above comments for Zusi - when he's not getting skinned alive 1x1 on defense, he's great. The engine was there last night - there was the obvious gut-busting run he had in the second half where Russel picked him out and dropped a dime to him, resulting in a solid shot on goal, but also he had some nice hustle runs back in the defense. What he has may not be blazing fast anymore, but it gives you all of it. And corners - he's not taking them and they are coming in with pace and danger. And Smith had what? 4 shots? (I've not looked at the stats) Dude needs to take some more header practice. He got in some nice spots, but argh, get it on goal. Melia's a stud. I laughed at the commentator on the save where he made the standing catch to his left. "he saw where that one was going yesterday" He really can read the shooter. 4 shots, 1 miss, 1 make, 2 saves and he went the correct direction every time. Lastly - kudos to Hasal. What a great showing by the kid. Didn't get flustered, made some huge stops, and was better than competent as a 3rd string keeper. The only knock was the second PK where he just didn't grab it even though he guessed correctly and the shot wasn't well placed. Still, he did well for himself.