Full February Day of Football
by sidereal on Feb 22, 2011 11:21 AM PST
in Sounders: MLS Regular Season
Email
Print
Despite our local custom of summer soccer and the occasional snow flurries drifting around the greater Seattle area, today is chock full of games that will be of interest to local fans.
At some unholy hour this morning (which explains the lack of a game thread), the Sounders kicked off a friendly versus the hated Houston Dynamo: the team that knocked Seattle out of its first ever MLS playoff run — a victory that both of Houston's fans were very excited about.
The game thread is here, but the summary is that the Sounders went down 2-0 through the first half, exhibiting a now familiar tendency to have a lot of offense and not put the ball in the net (including a Montero shot that rebounded off the bottom of the crossbar but bounced out), but in the second half O'Brian White drew a penalty (which Montero converted) and then Tetteh scored on a give-and-go with converted formidfender Roger Levesque (who was playing right mid at the time) to tie the game, which is how it finished. The Sounders are now 2-2-2 in the preseason and their next match is on Thursday against UCF, alma mater of Michelle Akers and Terence Trent D'Arby.
At noon, the United States U-17 team will be playing their first match in the knockout stages of the CONCACAF U-17 Tournament after cruising through a pretty punchless group last week. Their opponent today is El Salvador, and whoever wins makes the quarterfinals, which means they qualify for the U-17 World Cup later this year in Mexico, so this is arguably the most important match of the tournament. Winning the whole thing gets some pleasant silverware, but the goal is to make the World Cup. The game is on ESPN3 and Deportes and will be covered on Twitter by @ussoccer_ynt.
Later tonight — at 5pm — the Columbus Crew and Real Salt Lake will kick off the first leg of their Concacaf Champions League quarterfinal matchup. RSL has to be favored after the Crew blew up their team in the offseason (and are suffering from injuries, including both their starting and backup keepers). Jeremiah has a detailed preview of the match on SBN. Regardless of who wins, there will be an MLS team in the CCL semifinals and we get to match up with the not-Mexican teams, which could create a path to the finals, though it's hard to see Columbus there in their current state. Teevee coverage will be via Fox Soccer Channel.
33 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
Levesque
Two years from now when we are all reading the Zonal Marking piece on the evolution of the ForMidFender and its impact on the global game, i want the record to show it started here.
formidfender or should we just cal him the Wild Rover?
Levesque plays hard and trains hard. That work ethic is just as valuable around the newer class of Sounders as he is as a super sub coming off the bench.
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
Wasn't Tyrone Marshall a forward until he shifted to CB?
My prediction is that Levesque will be the starting RB on the USMNT in a year. OK, not really. ;)
US/El Salvador has kicked off
Also some European matches going on. . Chel-C versus Lions or something
Nos Audietis
85th minute and still tied at 1-1
El Salvador has been playing very physically and US has been playing tentatively. Some good counter attacks by US but no major threats to score.
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
Still tied at the end of 93 minutes
two 15 minute halves starting soon
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
US score in extra time 2-1
Good patience on the attack Pelosi brought it across to Rodriguez who blasts it past the salvadorian keeper.
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
12 minutes or so from the end of extra time
still 2-1 US is ahead, but El Salvador looks tired.
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
What a mess at the end of the game...
US GK, Pina and Pena for SLV both get red cards and Salvador scores on the resulting PK.
4 minutes left in the game US down to 9 players, El Salvador is down to 10.
But the US are up 3-2.
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
Bizarre last few minutes
US goes down to 10 men after a player gets a second yellow. Then the keeper gets ejected and forces a penalty for kneeing someone in the head and a SLV player gets ejected for punching the keeper. So the US has a 1 goal lead but is down 9 men to 10 with about 2 minutes left.
Nos Audietis
US wins. In the world cup
Crazy, ragged end of the game, but they got the main prize despite taking what should have been an easy match into extra time.
Nos Audietis
I think the ref lost control of this one
10 yellows, 3 reds
It was a physical game that was played on a sandy field but the ref lost control….
Nos audietis in somniis
Nos audietis in altum
I would like to point out that Tetteh did not score from midfield
but only after he was moved to defense. Off an assist from the Formidefender wunderkid. Simply remarkable.
Probably waaaaay too early
to be getting any ulcers, but I’m just a tad worried about how things are going so far in the preseason. I’d be a lot happier if we were losing games 3-2, 5-3, to be honest. Yes, it’s preseason. Yes, Columbus lost every single preseason game a few years ago and then won the championship. But for every Columbus, there’s a ton of teams who also lost in preseason and went on to do very poorly (I DO hate it when these types of one-off statistics get trotted out as if they mean anything at all). We’re not scoring. Not even today. That was a second and third string Houston team (a team that most expect to be, at best, in the middle of the pack this season) we scored on. Even worse, the pattern of the first two seasons is rearing its incredibly ugly head: dominate possession early on, produce some offense, only to give up a counter 10-15 minutes in. Last two games, this was the exact scenario.
Yup…. I AM worried. But not too much. I try to not read too much into this stuff. But you’d think that a coach whose team’s biggest negative tendencies in its two-year existence are lack of scoring and giving up early goals on the counter, would put a slight amount of attention to exactly those two things. I see absolutely no evidence that it’s even being addressed or even acknowledged.
starter offense
I’d like to see the starters get it going a bit more. Has Zak scored yet this preseason? Has Montero scored from the run of play? Has anyone passed Alvaro the ball yet?
AHHHHH sky is falling.
That's kind of where I'm at
Sure, it’s preseason. But we all said that last year, too, and then the team sucked it early on, even before the injury bug bit. There have been a few times I’ve seen where Sigi has said he’s been unhappy with the starters’ play so far. I’m not worried yet, but I’m starting to feel a little questioning going on in the back of my brain. I agree this script is starting to look very familiar.
It is, but the one thing to hang your hat on is that you want to be the team that is hot at the end of the season
instead of the team that is hot in March.
I just can't see the point in getting worked up over preseason
I mean, if your default position is “worried,” I guess I understand. I only ask this: If the Sounders were winning every game 2-1 or 3-1 or 5-0 would you be getting really excited? I know I wouldn’t.
Editor/writer at Sounder at Heart, North American soccer editor SB Nation and of course follow me on Twitter
by Jeremiah Oshan on Feb 22, 2011 1:58 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Well, you know
I did say…. “tad worried.” The sky is definitely not falling and it’s far to early to see these games as an indicator of anything concrete. At the same time, I was really hoping to at least see some progress on our inability to consistently score and tendency to give up counters.
I'd be worried if we weren't creating chances.
But most of the commentary is full of Sounders get a good shot, but it goes wide. Hopefully the finishing comes with time.
Training is training..
If anything I feel like the players get to try different things and see what works for them. Maybe they find something new, maybe they don’t. They all know how to play when they have to get something done. But now is the best time to try new things without the penalty of costing the team real games. The majority of the line up is set as is, so I’m not shocked to read about the team playing with little fire. Plus its pre-season, I don’t want anyone hurt. Having the first game being the MLS kick off also prevents worry of a slow start, adrenaline will kick in for our boys and provide for that hot start. I’m confident that results are meaningless here.
Unofficial Sounder Fan Club President - South Dakota Division
RSL 0 Crew 0 at the half
Pretty slow game so far. Columbus has looked better in the first half with more opportunities on goal. It’s a chilly 27 degrees out in Columbus and the ground looks rock hard.
RSL 0 Crew 0
Beltran the right back for RSL picks up his 2nd yellow. RSL will play a man down for the remainder of the half.
RSL 0 Crew 0
Both Renteria and Borchers sent off with reds. Now it’s 10 men for Columbus and 9 for RSL.
I guess you could call this a Macbeth game
Nasty, brutish and (not all that) short.
Not a particularly fun game to watch, but at least I feel a little better about the Sounders starters playing medicre in preseason because neither of those teams were very sharp.
A lot of it was the weather and the field
RSL looked like they just wanted to get the hell out of there and neither team could string any passes together.
Nos Audietis
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
