June 30, 2008 by f4denz.

So about 5 weeks ago I offered player grades (http://blog.roguecavaliers.com/2008/05/22/ ), and after this weekends match at KC, RSL has 15 of their 30 regular season MLS matches completed. Last week I looked at the numbers which even with the KC loss are still decent and very close to what will be needed if RSL wants to make the playoffs. RSL is still in second place in the West and would make the playoffs if the season ended today so the team has moved from a grade of C- to a solid B, having gone from the basement to the playoffs, which is what is expected of the team this season. Some players have improved, some have remained where they were, and a number have dropped. It is interesting that while individual grades may be lower, the ability of this group to play as a team and work together (classic example was the comeback against New England). This had to go into the column of improved coaching and familiarity with each other.

Anyhow here is the grade scale and the grades

A=Exceeds Expectations
B=Meets Expectations
C=Meets Requirements
D=Below Requirements
F=Failure to meet Minimum Requirements

That is it for player grades, the high marks go to: Olave, Beltran, and Morales whom all have shown great play and potential for RSL. The lowest marks go to: Deuchar, Movsisyan, Cordoba, and Mantilla, most of them have injuries that have set them back; perhaps the expectations of Deuchar were too high at the start of the season. To me the largest improvement has been the collective effort as a team, instead of having 11 fairly talented players on the pitch, we now have a team and that is making all the difference. Just look at the standings.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

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June 29, 2008 by f4denz.

It hasn’t happened often this year, but last night RSL was outplayed from start to finish. Usually it RSL playing better than their opponents and coming away empty handed, but KC had an ace up their sleeve, Jim Conrad. For 88 minutes the Wizards outplayed RSL and could not score, RSL took fewer shots but had more shots on goal (shots 21-13 KC, shots on goal 5-3 RSL) but it was a set piece in the 89^th minute that is scored as an own goal but the end result was a goal for KC and enough to get 3 points from a match that should have ended 0-0.

RSL had played with fire for most of the match allowing KC to control possession and pace of the match, far too much time was spent in the RSL half of the pitch. There were some bright spots for RSL, once again the play of Olave was impressive all match long, Yura and Tino played well in their 20 minutes of playing time. Several players had a decent effort; Beckerman, Dema, Wingert, Beltran, Borchers, Williams, and Rimando did well, nothing special or spectacular but solid efforts. A couple players did not live up to expectations, first Kenny Deuchar, who worked hard but failed to connect many passes and turned the ball over far too many times: Second, was Robbie Findley, who may still be a bit slow from the injury last week, but he simply did not look like the aggressive attacking player we have seen in recent weeks.

I have to say that I thought this was one of the worst performances of the season, it was close to the 4-1 debacle against DC United. I am not sure what happened, if KC just played that much better, or if our guys let up a little based on their recent success? It seemed to be almost a mirror image of the match a couple weeks ago when RSL dominated KC but only got a draw, but this time fate, luck, or karma was in the Wizards favor and they get the points from the own goal.

RSL will need to quickly regroup if they want to prove to the world, MLS, their fans, and themselves that they are to be taken as real contenders for the Western conference title, or even a playoff spot. Houston did not look incredible against Dallas and the Dynamo have only one win on the road, but 4 ties. In RSL’s favor is the fact that the Dynamo have a first round LHUSOC match on Tuesday, and while they will probably not play all their starters, it should impact their entire roster having to travel from Houston to Charleston and then to Salt Lake all in 2 days.

Home matches are going to be very rare for RSL towards the end of the season and we have to find a way to get points on the road, if not the recent success may be very short lived.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

Oh as a footnote, I am picking DC United 3-2 over LA and Germany over Spain by the same margin in extra time.

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June 28, 2008 by f4denz.

3 weeks ago revisited

So it was a cool June 7^th evening when RSL faced off with the Wizards at RES, but the play on the pitch was anything but cool. RSL really dominated the match but were not able to get any shots past Kevin Hartman who had an incredible night in goal. RSL was able to keep KC from doing much on offense and did well to shut down the scoring chances off set pieces, the Wizards bread and butter. That night RSL took 19 shots to KC’s 7, but could not bet anything to show up on the scoreboard and ended up with a 0-0 draw at home in a match that should have ended with a RSL win.

A lot has changed in 3 weeks

So when the two teams faced off 3 weeks ago both were near the bottom of their conferences each with 11 points, both were really struggling to find a team identity, but in three weeks a lot has changed for RSL who has claimed 7 points in the last 3 weeks on a draw with San Jose and victories over Chivas and New England. For KC they have gotten one more point since leaving Salt Lake City, a draw at Toronto in which KC played similar to how they did against RSL, in which they had few scoring chance but could not put anything on the board and got out played in almost every aspect of the match. RSL has scored 6 goals in their last 5 matches and allowed only 2 to be scored against them, while KC has scored 2 in their last 5 and allowed 7 goals to be scored against them. KC sits at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference and even a win against RSL would not move them up a spot, RSL sits in second place in the West and a win would put them in first place at least temporarily.

Winless in 7

KC has not won a match since an April 20^th victory over the Chicago Fire, they have three draws since that date and 4 losses. Not very impressive but a majority of those matches have been on the road, and the offense has simply not produced goals for KC, their forwards have only scored 5 goals this season and the other five Wizard goals have come from either their midfield or defenders. In fact their captain Jimmy Conrad (one of the best defenders in MLS history) is tied for the scoring lead on KC with 3 goals, same as their DP forward Claudio Lopez. It is clear that with out Eddie Johnson, that KC has not found a way to score goals on a regular basis, their 10 goals on the season is tied for the worst in MLS with San Jose.

The only real shining spot for KC this season is their defense, which has only given up 16 goals this season and is the second best defense (Chicago is first), in part due to the play of Conrad and Hartman. KC’s Hartman has 5 clean sheets on the season which is tied with New England’s Reis for best in MLS. In looking at the projected lineup from KC, they are going to put a lot of effort into getting a win at home, and have put a line up together that includes the players that have scored 9 of their 10 goals. They will be missing Roger Espinoza again, who is serving his second red card suspension of the season, they may also be without a couple players due to injury as; Zavagnin and Souter are unlikely to play.

Further proof of KC’s desperation to put on a great show for their home fans, is the fact that will have a celebrity duo on hand at the Community America Ballpark. First up, is Brandi Chastain, the US Women soccer legend, who will appear at the match to sign autographs, and also appearing is Disney Channel star Selena Gomez of the hit series “Wizards of Waverly Place”. Will any of this help KC, no, but it should mean another sell out at the tiny stadium. Tiny both in seats with only 10,385, and size, as fitting a soccer pitch inside a minor league baseball park is always a bit of a challenge. The pitch at CAB is only 110 yards by 70 yards, but it sure looks even smaller on TV.

Looking for more firsts

RSL is looking for a couple more firsts; a win tonight against KC would give RSL sole possession of first place in the West (if only for a night), it would give them the first 6 game unbeaten streak in team history (they did have another 5 match streak in 2006), and it would be our first ever win in Kansas City. We could also see Javier Morales extend his lead as the top assist man in MLS, he currently has 7 assists.

As I talked about earlier in the week, RSL is in rare air for the franchise as we hit the midway point of the 2008 MLS season, they have team bests in points, goals, and goals allowed. A win tonight would put us into the positive goal differential and with the recent performances of the RSL defense and Nick Rimando (only two goals allowed in last 5 matches 3-0-2) it is likely that our biggest focus has to be getting goals on the scoreboard. It could be rough as Fabian is still listed as out, and while Robbie Findley is probable, one has to wonder if he is suffering any affects of the mild concussion suffered last week. One good thing for RSL is that Yura Movsisyan should be available, and on Wednesday he was chomping at the bit to get on the pitch and help his team, and he didn’t seem to mind a chance for a little revenge against the team that traded him away. Yura has struggled with injuries this season and has only played 170 minutes, this could be a chance for him to get some playing time and how sweet would it be for him to get his first goal of the season against his former side?

Two RSL players have to play with a little caution as both Kovalenko and Olave will get suspended with their next yellow card, and it would be nice to have both of them for the upcoming July 3^rd face off with Houston at RES. Both players will have big jobs tonight, as Dema has to be able to keep an eye on Lopez all match long, and Olave and others will have to prevent Conrad from scoring on set pieces. If RSL can stop those two threats they really will have neutered the Wizard’s offensive threats, leaving them to rely on Sealy, who has only one goal this season but is very speedy, and Jewsbury who appears to have been moved to the back four of the Wizards.

What to expect

I think we will see a match very much like we did three weeks ago, as RSL is playing with a lot of confidence, but KC knows that their defense is among the best in the league. I expect RSL to control the possession by using quick passes in the midfield as Williams, Beckerman, and Morales continue to develop into one of the best creative midfields in the league. I think this match will come down to a very simple match up RSL strikers vs. Kevin Hartman, the last time Hartman was up to the challenge, but a couple things could play in RSL’s favor this time. First, after giving up an early lead to the Rev’s last weekend, RSL came back and dominated the best team in MLS, something RSL has struggled with in the past. Second, KC may get a couple surprises from the RSL offense, if Tino Nunez gets playing time it could be to his advantage, since KC has never had to face him before, and Yura, you simply never know what a former teammate will do when he gets a chance to get a little revenge.

If Robbie is really healthy and back to 100 percent, I think we will see him and Deuchar finally show the “one, two” punch on offense as RSL breaks down the Wizard defense and pick up a 2-1 win on the road as RSL make history on the road.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

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June 25, 2008 by f4denz.

Supporter Groups

So I have to admit that couple weeks ago when the RSL front office offered the south end sections of the new stadium to be exclusive to supporter groups I was impressed. When we were offered a chance for the RCB to come out to the stadium last week, and then treated very well and allowed to pick tickets a week before the official relocation event, I was a bit taken back by the new approach of the revamped RSL front office. While an offering like this is a very new venture between the organization and the supporter groups, I believe it will lead to all the groups being able to grow, and RSL getting a solid supporter area that will help add to the environment that is so important to both the club and overall soccer experience.

Relocation Event

Today was my day to visit the new stadium site and deal with the relocation of my season tickets, well since I had put my deposit down last week during the RCB night at the stadium I was a bit torn on going, after all I was a bit peeved on how my priority number dropped a very large number of spot from what I was told last year. Then I figured why not, at least I would be able to go out and see how the organization was handling what could have been a major disaster, and to see what types of seats I could get. During the 2005 season I was in the second row of section 37, and for the last 3 seasons I have been in section 38 on the front row, so what types of seats could I find at the new stadium?

So my time was 10:00 am and I hoped on the Trax just after 9 am to head that way. I arrived at the 94^th South trax station and walked over to the stadium site, it took me about 7 minutes walking at a very casual pace, and that is going to be a very nice feature. So when I arrived there were a handful of people there and a good number of RSL staff members, I was asked to go sign in. The sign in process really was filling out a survey form, which I am sure RSL will use to establish some basic demographic data about their season ticket holders, and putting my info on the back of a ticket which went into the drawing for the cruises that RSL is giving away. So since it was still about 20 minutes before 10:00 I decided to take my tour early, and while this was not the same very behind the scenes tour one has to realize that it was a very active construction site. I got a chance to take a couple pictures:

(from just outside the site)

(the west side stands)

(the beautiful new sod)

(the logo’d seats of the north end)(I took this one on my second tour of the morning)

So after the tour I went back down to the office and RSL had set up a ticket sales room

and even had a merchandise table

One very cool feature was that each person was given a photo frame and for my time frame I was allowed to take a picture with Yura Movsisyan, and he signed the frame and they printed the picture in just a couple minutes. This was a great idea and major props to the FO. Within a couple minutes a ticket sales person (Spencer Warne) was available and I sat down to see what the best non-club seats available were and there were a few in section 21 (the section just outside of the premium seats) but most of the first several rows were full, impressive considering the $900 price for each seat. Next I looked at seats available in section 22 just north of the last section on the west side and at $500 each, the first several rows were sold out and it looked like the 6^th or 7^th row was where seats were open.

So I then asked to look on the east side of the stadium south of the $900 sections and section 3 had a couple front row seats and a few scattered around, not surprising since this is one of the $500 sections just next to the more expensive seats. I then took a look at section 4 which is similar to where section 38 is on the east side of Rice Eccles Stadium, there were some front seats still available, but I was looking for something on the row and the first open seats on the aisle was in row D (4) and both seats 1 and 2 were available there. So I plopped down some more cash and reserved these two seats, which I am sure my friends at work will use more than I do, or I can resell to others (reality is you will only get this one chance to get these seats without waiting years).
.
(if you look real close two seats on the foot of the “A” in lake are yellow- those are my seats)

After I was done I went back into the main building to talk with Davy, Trey, and Kris to get a little info on how the relocation project has been going the first couple days. Here are a couple of facts:

• Despite daytime hours the first day saw the vast majority of people with scheduled times show up, that number dropped a bit on the second day but still the attendance was better than expected.
• People are increasing the number of tickets they own, this doesn’t surprise me since I have done this as well.
• On Monday several dozen “Club level” seats were sold as people upgraded to premium seats
• The number of $900 seats (both front row and sections) is impressive based on what I saw, it is higher than I expected.
• On July 1^st the sale of 2009 season tickets will be available to the public, people should call or contact the front office to set up a time to visit the site

I then took a chance to take a second tour of the stadium going to the south end of the east side in order to get the picture of the north end stands, and spend a little time chatting about RSL, the new team in the front office, and other MLS issues. As I headed back down to turn in my hard hat and vest and say thanks to all the staff that had done such an outstanding and professional job, I was able to get another picture frame and take a picture with Alex Nimo.

Then it was off back to the trax station to head home to watch Germany advance to the finals of the 2008 Euros. I have to say I was very surprised, the last three encounters with the front office have been impressive and the changes in personal and attitude are a good sign for the future. It is clear that Kris and Bill brining in the “Nordstrom” attitude of customer service is taking root and will only lead to good things for the organization.

Blog Update

I am going to wait until this weekends match before I publish my updated player grades, sorry for the delay. I will also be working on a new design of my blog, this should be completed sometime next week. I want to thank everyone for all the support on this effort we are now averaging over 500 page views per day and often are over 700, and the number of unique visitors has climbed from a 150 to over 350 in the past few weeks. If you have any ideas or suggestions for the blog either leave a comment or email me at roguecavaliers@comcast.net .

OFF MY SOAPBOX

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June 24, 2008 by f4denz.

Well almost at the halfway point, we have completed 14 of our 30 MLS regular season matches for the 2008 season. It was just over one month ago that I gave out my player by player report card, and I will update those grade tomorrow, but today I will take a look at the numbers.

So if you compare the weeks from years past leading up to the midway point, you can see that clearly this is by far the best season in RSL history. With 19 points we are 7 points ahead of the 2005 and 2006 seasons, and 10 points ahead of last season.

If we look at the other numbers that often get tracked Goals For and Goals against, we will see similar trends:

At week 14 we have our lowest total of goals against in team history with 18, the closest year to that was 21 in 2006. We also see that RSL has scored more goals in the first 14 weeks than any other year in team history with 18, and once again the closest year is 2006 when we had 17 goals. What these number show is that the recent improvement in defense has mad a huge impact on our performance, when you have a even or positive goal differential you will get more points from your matches.

So if you look historically at RSL’s performance in the second half of the past seasons, in 2005 the worst year in RSL history we only scored 8 points in the last half of the season (that would be in 17 games), in 2006 we scored 26 points in the same time frame, in 2007 when we went to the current 30 game season we racked up 18 points in the last 15 matches.

The All Star break is 4 matches away, with two matches on the road and two at home and RSL will need to gather 6-7 points from those matches before the break. After the break RSL will have only 5 home matches, and with our performance on the road will have to improve if we want to make a solid effort at the playoffs this fall. Last year it took 40 points to make the playoffs in the first year of 30 matches, that means you needed to average 1.33 points from each game you play, and RSL is currently sitting at 1.35 so there can be no let up as that margin is very slim.

My prediction is that RSL will actually do better in the second half of the season than they have so far, a team with 20 new faces from the start of last season takes time to gel, almost every team in MLS will face players involved in international action (World Cup qualifying and the 2008 Olympics), but RSL has built in a lot of depth. As we have seen with injuries to Sturgis, is that Dema has stepped up, and even Kenny Cutler has shown the ability to step in and the overall quality doesn’t drop off as much as many teams that rely on a very small core of players. Fabian and Yura have been hurt in recent weeks and we have seen Robbie Findley step up, Kenny Deuchar still hasn’t caught on fire, but as we saw last weekend even Tino Nunez was able to step in and score against the best team in MLS. The defense has really stepped up and new players Jamison Olave and Nat Borchers have help RSL give up just one goal in their last 4 matches.

Everyone laughed at the start of the season when Greg Lalas picked RSL to finish 2^nd in the West, when he stuck with that prediction a couple weeks ago people continued to laugh, well here we are almost at the halfway point of the season and in a very even Western Conference RSL is sitting alone where?

One other topic

So I have stated how displeased I am with the local coverage of RSL both in print and TV media, here is just the latest in a very long line of coverage that simply seems to be agenda based:
June 12^th before the local primary elections and when RSL is struggling with just 12 points and near the bottom of the Western Conference here is the coverage of the progress at the stadium:
Sandy officials: RSL stadium won’t be ready for projected October opener by Rebecca Palmer in the Deseret News
The $110 million Real Soccer Stadium will host its first game Oct. 9, but city officials and project management say the structure won’t be completely finished in time.
Today June 24^th, the primary polls are closed and the team has a 5 game undefeated streak and sits in second place in the Western Conference, here I today’s coverage from the same source:
Real Salt Lake stadium nears completion by Rebecca Palmer in the Deseret News
Coordinating construction of the Real Salt Lake stadium has been as complicated as orchestrating and conducting a symphony, said Layton-Turner Construction project manager Jake Greenland. But the effort has been a great opportunity, and the result will be a charming structure and a great community asset, he said.

So what changed? Did that much progress get made in just 12 days, or did something else change? Is it simply that the press has jumped on the RSL bandwagon this week? I am not sure but I have to say I am confused to say the least about how the coverage can vary so much in such a short time, I don’t expect it to last, since for the last several years the coverage has tainted to the negative.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

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