RSL vs. Santos preview and info
Santos Links
Santos Homepage This site is in Spanish only, but navigation isn’t that hard.
Wikipedia page Some good facts about the team and their history. Also has a semi current roster.
Santos Triumph in Mexico fifa.com
Santos Laguna won the Mexican championship on Sunday, drawing 1-1 with Cruz Azul to clinch the title a year after barely escaping relegation.
Santos, from the northern desert city of Torreon, won the two-leg final 3-2 on aggregate to clinch their third championship and extend Cruz Azul’s title drought. The Mexico City team, considered one of Mexico’s four biggest clubs, won the last of their eight championships in 1997. Last year, Santos Laguna escaped relegation on the last day of the season - with a 2-0 win over Cruz Azul.
Santos Hit the Jackpot Again fifa.com
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago Santos Laguna were a mere 90 minutes away from losing their top-flight status. After avoiding the dreaded drop with a nail-biting win over Cruz Azul on the last day of the 2007 Clausura, Los Guerreros surged back in the best possible style, claiming the Mexican title after seeing off the very same rivals in the 2008 Clausura play-off final.
Boasting the likes of goalkeeper Oswaldo Sanchez, midfielder Fernando Arce, and strikers Daniel Luduena and Cristian Benitez in their star-studded ranks, and with the firm hand of Daniel Guzman at the reins, Santos proved worthy winners of what is the third championship in their history. Here to take stock of their achievement and all the ups and downs in the recently-concluded Mexican league season is FIFA.com.
Official RSL Press Release web.mlsnet.com
Continuing its tradition of bringing world-class international competition to the State of Utah, Real Salt Lake again partners with XanGo for the third consecutive year to present XanGo Cup 2008. This summer’s international festivities commence with 2008 Mexican Clausura titlist Santos Laguna on Wednesday, July 9, at Rice-Eccles Stadium, with an 8:00 p.m. MT kickoff.
“XanGo is proud to once again team with Real Salt Lake to create a world-class event in our home state,” said XanGo Founder/Board Member Gordon Morton. “The XanGo Cup is a source of pride among XanGo’s employees and our nearly one million independent distributors, and this year with Santos coming to town, there will be special excitement at XanGo since Mexico has emerged as our second largest international market. We hope RSL fans will fill the stadium to support our home town team and to welcome a worthy international competitor.”
Santos Players
Fernando Arce
Wikipedia Page
Oswaldo Sanchez
Wikipedia Page
MySpace Page
Personal website
Mexico goalie arrested at hotel suntimes.com
Osvaldo Sanchez, a goalie for Mexico’s national soccer team, was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest at a North Michigan Avenue hotel early Monday.
How do you say jerk in Spanish? Blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com
I’m pretty self-conscious about my Spanish.
I understand absolutely all of it without a problem and everyone understands me just fine, but I have an American accent when I speak it. I’m really embarrassed about it, which is one of the reasons I don’t do ESPN Deportes more often (the other reason is that I just don’t like doing TV or radio).
Still, I don’t let my American accent keep me from speaking to players in Spanish. You can’t get shy when you have a job to do.
On Sunday, for the first time ever, a player pointed out my accent. Not only that — he made fun of me for it
Cristian Benitez
Wikipedia Page
MySpace Page
FIFA Stat’s Page
Oribe Peralta
Stat’s Page from ESPN
Footbo page
Match Preview
So the regular season for Santos ended in early June as they captured the Mexican Championship, so this match will be a warmup match for them heading into the 2nd Annual SuperLiga tournament. Their first match will be this weekend against New England, so I expect they will play a number of players both first and second string to see who is in shape and ready to play.
For RSL, this match will be a chance to work on finishing chances, something that has been lacking on the first team. I expect that the second half will see a lot of reserve players getting some playing time, and doing their best to catch the eye of the coaching staff. With another match coming up on Saturday against one of the top teams in the Eastern conference, we should see our starters getting a rest, the only exception will probably be whoever is going to fill in for Chris Wingert who will be serving his red card suspension this weekend.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
This entry was posted on July 8, 2008 at 2:50 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.
July 8, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Wow. Thanks for all of the links. I’m looking forward to this match (although it appears there will be no video feed, and I’m currently out of state). It would be nice to see RSL get some nice looks on goal, and build a little confidence. Of course, in particular we’re all rooting for Deuchar to return to his scoring ways. These exhibitions can be quite entertaining, and I think this one especially has some promise.
July 8, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Giving that I am not really excited about this match, I may be doing a live blog from the stadium to test out my new broadband wireless connection. So check out my blog about 7:45pm MST to see if I get everything working correctly.