Something New For Real and the RCB
For RSL, something is new again
Clint Mathis, one of the big signings the first year of Real Salt Lake is back after a strange couple years. There is some paperwork remaining but according to the Deseret News Clint will be back with RSL very soon, but under some very different circumstances.
For me this is a great move, I thought Clint was a sparkplug of the original RSL, a team with a bunch of guys going in different directions, with different goals, and a coach that couldn’t or wouldn’t get them all on the same sheet of music. He was a fiery force, who stood up for his teammates with other players and officials, a bit of a hothead who got more than his fair share of yellow and red cards. He brought a bunch of talent but without a team willing to play together it often went to waste (think about Andy, who had the same problem for years here). Clint quickly became disillusioned with the team and it showed, and he wasn’t the only one. There is a reason only two players remain for RSL’s 4th season, and only 6 remain from the start of last season.
Clint isn’t without his issues, he often is brutal to his teammates that he thinks aren’t giving 100%, or have blown a play. He has been known to not be match fit all the time, he has been known to lose his composure on the pitch, and is often outspoken in a bad way. His past is checkered with incidents of his attitude hurting his play, after MLS blocked his move to Bayern Munich his attitude and performance went in the dumps. When he finally made it to Germany he had early success with Hannover, 4 goals in 5 games, but when the coaching staff changed, Clint’s playing time decreased. He then did something no player should do, when he came into a match as a late sub, he scored a game winner and then ran up to the new coach and pointed to his watch, and that was the end of Clint’s time there.
All of those things could and will factor into how Clint does this time with RSL, but I know this both Garth and Jason have made it clear that players coming to this team must hold up the standards that have been established. Fitness, team oriented play, compete for playing time, be a good influence on and off the pitch, give 100 percent at all time, and if they believe that Clint is willing to do those things, then I am excited for what might happen. Perhaps I am setting expectations too high, but I have seen Clint play great football, his first stint in New York where he scored 33 goals in 67 matches, in 2002 with the US team at the World Cup, last season on his second stint with New York 6 goals in 26 matches.
Only time will tell if the second time around will be good for both Clint and RSL, but I am holding out hope that he will be a good boost to a team that is struggling offensively.
For the RCB
So for the past week, I have tried something new with the RCB. If you not sure who or what the RCB is, please follow this (link), in short the RCB is a supporters group for Real Salt Lake. This blog grew out of my interest in Real Salt Lake and since I am the admin for the RCB websites, I simply connected it to the larger site. Well since there was a nice 3 week lull in the RSL season, I thought I would try something new, something “fresh”, something “web 2.0″.
The end result is http://connect.roguecavaliers.com which is a facebook like social networking site. It allows a user to create their own page, write a blog, upload videos, pictures, and many other things. It is one of the things that I hope will allow our little group of Real Salt Lake supporters grow as we move into our new stadium. Well that, and the fact that you can get 2009 season tickets for RSL for just $275 if you are a member of one of the 3 “approved” supporter groups.
So there is a ton of information available on the internet about web 2.0, social networking, and all the related catch phrases and terms, but basically it all is about changing things from a very small number of people creating online content and pushing it out to larger audiences, to having a larger number of people creating, rating, adding to content and the ability for those who want to be part of the creation process to do so easily. Does it work? Only time will tell but sites like MySpace are now have more members than most nations have population (110 million), facebook has over 60 million and even niche sites can have millions of users.
So if you want to give it a try, sign up at http://connect.roguecavaliers.com and get your own site, create your own blog, share your pictures. Who knows it might just catch on. I will warn you that all new pages must be approved, so it might take a couple hours.
A very cool update
Who’s he representing again? theoriginalwinger.com
Yesterday Beans threw up this picture of Rancid’s Branden Steineckert wearing a DC warm-up at the Team Shop when he was in town for last night’s Rancid concert at the 9:30 Club.
Now I didn’t want to get too involved in this, BUT……. Now we know who he represents
OFF MY SOAPBOX
OK back on my soapbox to bring you a couple more names that we can add to our rumor /available player list from yesterday:
Benny Feilhaber – the 23 year old attacking midfielder is looking to come back to MLS after a very questionable stay at Derby County. It will be interesting to see where he lands in MLS.
Carlos Ruiz – Rumors have been going for months that Ruiz was on his way out of LA, the 28 yr. old “diving whore” has only one goal in his injury ridden time with the Galaxy and his huge salary needs to be dumped to make room for Eddie Lewis coming into to the team. There were rumors a while ago that had him going back to Dallas, but I hear they didn’t want him back. His reputation as a cancer in the locker room is well documented and his stint last year as captain at Dallas didn’t go very well.
Still waiting on any other names you might want to add to the list.
Back off my soapbox
This entry was posted on August 14, 2008 at 12:16 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.