Weekend Update
No I can not offer the humor of the Saturday Night Live (the 1980’s version, you know when it was still funny), but let’s take a look at RSL’s weekend, as well as other weekend events both sports and non-sports related.
I watched the RSL match at Iggy’s (you know the sports bar that would have rather catered to BYU fans-3 tables of them vs. the 50-75 RSL fans), I have to admit $7 for the oil can sized Foster’s was the only good thing I could say about the service Saturday night. Well I barely had time to order before RSL gave up a goal, and it would only be the first of many. If you live in a shoe you may not know that RSL lost to the Dynamo’s 4-3, but it probably should have been worse, we played our worst match in a long time. Did our guys show a lot of heart after going down 4-1, by getting a couple late goals to get back into the match, yes they did. Did Houston take their foot off the gas and let us back in, yes they did.
We failed to control the ball, despite what appeared to be an attempt at a 4-5-1, not sure since it looked a lot more like a bunch of 5 yr olds just chasing the ball for the vast majority of the match. I thought a weak effort was put forth by Esky, Talley (despite his goal), Morales, and Findley in the midfield, Beckerman tried but too often we simply failed to connect our passes or got muscled off the ball way to easily. Eddie Pope, appeared to be out of position on several plays but still looked better than Richie “watch the play” Kotschau. Matias appeared to be our best defensive player, while Kirpre went from decent to great to horrible, Wingert played as well as could be expected coming in at the 53rd minute for Pope. Fabian had a great goal from a very tough angle, proving that he is willing to work hard for a shot and knows how to finish, something RSL has lacked consistency at all season. Andy Williams and Kyle Brown both put in good efforts coming in as second half subs.
Houston simply worked harder and smarter than RSL and it showed on the scoreboard.
Match Recap Links:
Rally not enough a good recap from MLSnet.com
Dynamo hold off RSL 4-3 quick recap from SL Trib
Not sure why Deseret News has pulled their articles off their website, they had 3 this morning, now they have 1 which isn’t worth linking to.
Nate Jaqua scores 3 coverage of the match from The Canadian Press, both Onstad and DeRo will be playing for Canada in a friendly against Costa Rica on Thursday.
RSL’s reserves did pick up a 1-0 win over Houston on Sunday, with Adam Acosta scoring the lone goal with an assist going to Jamie Watson. Wow, Adam scores a goal, I thought he was playing with a USL squad since being let go by RSL. The reserve match also saw a very unlikely appearance by Dunny who played the second half for RSL and somebody names Trey Alexander.
The next 6 days see us having two more road matches (DC on Wednesday and Toronto on Saturday) both matches are on Direct Kick but have no local TV coverage. DC has been red hot of late, but coming off a road match at Chivas on Sunday we can hope they are a bit tired and we can pull out at least a point. Toronto on the other hand should be 3 easy points, if we hold them scoreless for 68 minutes they will pass the 800 minute mark without scoring a goal. Without Cunny (out for the season) or Dichio (out for the match), the punch of Toronto’s attack will be much weaker than the team that beat RSL on the 4th of July. That match was Toronto’s last win and with a victory over them RSL would put us in front of them in the overall league table.
Other Footy news
Developmental Salaries in MLS a great blog post about the number one issue facing MLS in my opinion.
How Lalas and LA learned the hardway a good review of Galaxy’s many issues
Other Weekend news
Other notables from the weekend, the Greek Festival needs to do two things for next year, first bring back Ouzo, and second find more room. In the realm of the pointy ball, none of the big 3 Utah college programs was able to pull out a win.
The NFL kicked off this week, and there were some big surprises and other things that simply were expected. The Colt’s dismantling the Saints was a bit of a surprise to many, but the Patriots destroying the Jets not so much. Green Bay pulled a nice upset of the Eagles, Minnesota beat up on the Vickless Falcons, Pittsburgh destroyed the Browns, and in a battle of the weakest teams in the NFL the Raiders dropped the opener to the Lions. The Chargers beat up on the Bears and the Cowboys won a shootout with the Giants. Also winning were Houston, who shut down Larry Johnson (thus the Chiefs), Carolina, Seattle, and the Titans all won their games. Two real nail bitters with Denver pulling out a last minute FG to win by one, and the Redskins beat the Dolphins in overtime.
All of those results ended up with me pulling in just under $500 in my weekly bets (yes, I have an account in Vegas that lets me bet on the NFL) and so far I have won all my fantasy football matches (6-0) for week one.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
This entry was posted on September 10, 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under The soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.