November 6, 2009 by f4denz.

I got some good advice last night, “let the haters hate”. That same sentiment was expressed earlier in the day by RSL midfielder Andy Williams who posted “If u have never done anything in ur life you will never have any haters, fortunately I have tons and I expect to get a bunch more tonight, hahaha. Kiss Da Baby” and Is feeling like “The Bomma” from St. Georges days. 1 outta di CANNON tonight. Oh yea and 1 assist too. Trust me peeps, it’s on” on Facebook earlier today and the reality is that I am sure Andy does have more haters today, not sure I could call that a CANNON shot but hey it was enough to give Real the win and that is a mighty good thing.

So Columbus went out and were selling Eastern Conference finals tickets since the playoffs started, but now they are stuck eating crow and issuing refunds. I wonder if Michael Lewis still thinks “After all, the team really hasn’t done anything yet.”? I wonder how many of those who have spent most of the season calling for Jason’s head will finally cut him some slack? I am sure we will still find a lot of haters, cynics, and critics, heck winning the Cup would probably not change some of their minds.

So as I have been thinking about the match last night and to be honest I think we got lucky, now before you jump up and down and call me a hater, let me explain my thoughts. We knew Columbus would be attacking and that we didn’t want to play defensive but we also didn’t want to get behind in the match, but that is exactly what happened and for me it is a bit of a question of why. So we battled fairly evenly for the first 15 minutes, but then we started breaking down bit by bit, our passes got a bit sloppier and we started turning the ball over, when we created offensive chances some guys looked a bit sluggish or tentative.

Wait, names, I am not going to play the toss it over the fence game, I thought early on some of the passes from Andy looked a bit off and at least twice it looked like Javi was going to be able to break away from a defender and score but each time he was either too slow (I know better) or a bit tentative. More than once in our effort to push forward in attack we left ourselves open to Columbus to counter and got lucky they couldn’t convert, they ended the match with 10 shots on goal from 19 shots. That is far too many to allow and thankfully GBS and Hejduk weren’t passing the ball very well, I thought Wingert was pushing too far forward for his ability to get back into defensive position and his passes and crosses were off target as much as they were on target. Go back and watch the highlights and look at the fact that nobody attacked that ball played in by GBS, well one RSL player( I think it was Wingert) half jumped at it but other than that Nick was hung out to dry despite us having 8 guys in the box to just 5 for the Crew. It was horrible, but it was going to get much, much worse:

Why when you have so much room would you chose to kick the ball towards the guy attacking you? Perhaps one of the biggest RSL defensive blunders of the year was followed by Olave playing too far off GBS who made us pay dearly for the mistake to give Columbus the 2-0 lead in the match and the overall 2-1 lead in the series. If you simply watched the first 35 minutes of the match you would not have been impressed by the results, after 15 minutes you likely wouldn’t have been impressed by the effort and at this point I almost did what I rarely have done over the last couple years, I almost doubted.

Then something I had been critical of for some time, the RSL habit of making too many passes in the final third and often not getting off a shot paid off it was the series of short passes in close quarters by Javi, Andy, Robbie and Kyle that allowed a ball into Javi who got beyond the defender and made Hesmer pay the price to even the series at 2-2 and get back into the match. As stoppage time in the first half was about to end RSL had a free kick from distance but a shove to the back of Espindola by Hejduk was enough to get the attention of Toledo who pointed to the spot, and despite the chants of “BS” from the Crew fans you notice Frankie didn’t argue about it too much as he knew he had been caught. It is interesting that Hesmer hadn’t faced a PK all season (1700 plus minutes), and there was no debate about it as Robbie Findley took the ball to the spot and buried it as Hesmer guess wrong and all of a sudden the team that had looked “mediocre” for 35 minutes, was tied 2-2 with the “best team in MLS” and once again held an edge in the series. The confidence level of RSL improved after Javi’s goal just minutes after Columbus got their second goal, but after the goal by Robbie they seemed that maybe they finally believed that they weren’t just capable of winning at home but that they can also play this game on the road.

The second half started with a Columbus team that was desperate to get another goal and they tried and tried again but Nick Rimando made his case as being the RSL keeper for as long as he wants. In the 74^th minute RSL had a corner kick but they played it short which hasn’t really been successful for them in the past but this time they caught the Crew defense napping and just like the GBS goal in the first half, Andy played a ball into the area and nobody seemed interested in it until it was in the back of the net. Andy had again called his shot on facebook earlier in the day. Columbus would try and try to get even but in the end it was great work by Rimando and much better defending than in the first half that saw RSL pull off the upset that very few saw coming before the series began. In the end RSL not only won the series but won the match 3-2, considering they only scored 9 goals in 15 regular season road matches this year, that was an impressive effort. I didn’t think we played up to our capabilities we allowed too many chances, made too many mistakes, and failed to take advantage of several scoring opportunities, but in the end winning is what matters and last night that is exactly what RSL did.

I will do a much more complete look at the match but wanted to get up my thoughts.

So I asked the question of who would you like to see RSL face in the Eastern Conference Final and here are the results so far:

Show a very slight edge to New England, I will be posting tomorrow who I want to win between those two sides and why.

OFF MY SOAPBOX
win 1 go to Seattle, win 2 make history

Posted in The soapbox | 9 Comments »

November 6, 2009 by f4denz.

Well we know one team going to the Eastern Conference Final but who do you want to face next?

Just as a point of note here were the final results from the last poll:

Will the coast to coast support continue as RSL make their way to Seattle and MLS history?

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