one of those good draws they talk about
so there are good draws, and bad draws…. when you go down 1-0 and are down to ten men and you are able to come back and get a point on the road…. well if that isn’t a definition of a good draw, i don’t know what is. furthermore, if you add on the fact that we were quite crap throughout much of the game, well then the draw was even gooder. err
honestly, the first half we were as flat as much of the mid west. there was no creativity. passes more than 6 yards to the right or left tended to be off limits for some players, and i found myself screaming at the tv more than i have during any other away sounders game to date. i tend to say the word “balls” instead of other profanity so that i don’t teach my 3 year old something i would rather her not saying, yet for me, the word still has some aggro satisfaction in some dumb way. for example…. “zak, make that pass, he is running into position….!!!!! AH BALLS!!!!!”
needless to say, i said balls a lot this match.
0-0 at the half was lucky as they had 2 or 3 very good balls (no i am not swearing this time) into the box. one of which saw a strick against the post. 0-0 did indeed flatter us.
so a fresh start during the second half is just what the dr needed right? well it seems like the dr ordered a red card. a very very very soft red card at that. so by the letter of the law, montero went up with his elbow high, and seemed to catch some chicago doudche in the temple. foul? yes. yellow card? yeah, sure. red card? no never!!!! well, other than if you are Jasen Anno, the referee. I guess if your parents decide to call you “jason” but think it would be cool to go against years of tradition and throw in an “e” instead of the “o”, you would be a little pissed off and card happy too.
in a total confession, i wasn’t too bummed about it. montero struggled to impress again and i was kind of excited to see what we would do without him. and you know what, we looked quite a bit better!! now, that may be a bit harsh on montero, but a lot of teams tend to pick it up when going 10 man down… that fighting spirit just shows through. so i shouldn’t say it was b/c of the lack of fredy, but we showed that we have much more to offer when he was gone.
their goal came from a blanco cross. blanco just owned sturgis for most of the night. hell, he owned most of our team. how a fat sweaty lard ass can get so much time and space, i don’t know. he has skills for sure. he can put in great balls for sure. but when a player is able to create such a deadly pass, why give him so much freaking space? apparently there was a memo that went around to the team before the game saying “don’t double team blanco, and don’t get within 5 yards of him when he has the ball”. mind you, i don’t blame the defenders. if that guy stinks as much as he looks like he does, i would have given him 10 yards, not 5. well as i was saying, a blanco pass found an open Pappa (great soccer name by the way) who one timed it passed keller. i am not putting keller on the hook for that one, but you can be sure that he would be the first to say ” i really should have stopped that”. he did see it late, but he has enough confidence that he would think that he should save it.
the equalizer came just 5 minutes later. le toux did very well to win a corner and then a ljungberg corner met an outstretched marshalls boot to find us level. when you watched the replay, it looked like 6 Fire players went with jaqua leaving marshall completely alone for the difficult, but unchallanged tap in.
from there on out, not that we didn’t have some decent play, it looked like we were going to be satisfied with the draw. fair enough in my book.
couple more random thoughts…
- i watched ljungberg stand around quite a bit. now i know he is the attacking midfielder so he can’t track back all the time, or you have no attack left to pass it out to. however, there were a few occasions where he seemed to shirk of any defensive responsibility at all.
- freddie and zak may have sat next to each other on the plane and shared defending strategies for the game b/c he decided to forget about the defending as well. i think part of the reason blanco was giving sturgis fits was b/c zakuani forgot to track back on more than one occasion.
- jaqua again leaves little on the field for me to say that we need him in there. conversely, when le toux came in to play the lone striker, he ran his ass off and even stripped blanco of the ball to make his stock go up a bit in my book.
so i know i have focused a bit on the negative… but to be honest, other than getting the draw under some totally adverse conditions, there was not a ton of positives to take from the match.
so let’s get out of chicago with a point. with an RSL loss, it is pretty valuable. (chivas is leading in the 71st minute as i post this so that is too bad).
happy saturday night….
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