Category: Life

Tonight’s game against Portland was very disappointing. We were up one to nil for most of the game, and Portland tied it in the 90th minute to eek out a draw. I looked down and missed that last play. Our own goal was a nice play where Steve Zakuani anticipated a Portland pass, intercepted it, ran the length of the field, then placed a cross perfectly at the feet of Eddie Johnson for the score. I think Zak should have received the Man of the Match award, not Eddie.

Oba Martins entered the game around the 70th minute and played well despite almost no practice with the team. Zakuani is starting to look like the Zakuani of old. Andy Rose had a poor game, giving the ball away a lot and holding onto the ball for too many touches. And for god’s sake Sigi, please please please drill Eddie Johnson on getting his head back into the game quickly after a blown play. Blown plays happen. Eddie laying on the field in frustration or slowing walking back onside when the Sounders are mounting another attack is just not cool.

I had great company for the game too.

Tonight the Sounders played Tigres UANL in the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions League. My team started the game down 1 to 0 after losing the away match in Mexico. Then we went down 2 to 0 when Tigres got an early goal. While the Sounders didn’t play particularly poorly, play was overall pretty sloppy.

And then just before the half one of the Tigres players kicked the ball away to waste time on a Sounders free kick. He got a yellow, his second. Off he went. The Sounders moved to a 3-5-2 after that, and started tearing Tigres apart.

First goal, O’Dea High School graduate, DeAndre Yedlin knocks it in from 20 yards out.

Then new Sounder and former Liverpool defender Djimi Traore nails another long distance goal! Defenders don’t get goals from the run of play all that often, so this was especially awesome.

And then finally, with a shot that didn’t look as impressive, but was an extremely skilled shot from a tight angle to the near post of the keeper, Eddie Johnson scored what was the winner. As Darren put it, we need more skilled goals like that in MLS.

The best part was the Tigres fans sitting behind us. They were talking all sorts of smack when Tigres was up 2 to 0. It was so delicious yelling I can’t hear you now! at them. Well, and a few other things.

Today was the first game of the 2013 season for the Sounders. My team lost, one to nothing. Unlike a lot of my friends, I thought the Sounders played pretty well. They frequently moved the ball forward without resorting to the long ball and did not get stymied in the midfield. They created a lot of chances on goal, and had a lot of corner kicks. Deandre Yedlin showed much promise, though he really needs to work on his crosses. Andy Rose had a great game. The bad though? Sigi Schmidt’s defense was vulnerable to the counter-attack, and I thought Michael Gspurning made a bad call coming off his line and then watching the ball go over where he couldn’t get a hand on it. And the Sounders finishing was awful. Two shots hit the goal posts, and the rest were right at Troy Perkins. I’m generally a fan of peppering the goal with shots and taking advantage of mishandled rebounds. But to work, those shots really can’t be right at the keeper’s torso. It was a good enough showing that I am hopeful for the season.

I was not thrilled with the new operator of stadium services. It certainly wasn’t worse than last year, but it wasn’t any better. The pro shop was closed for something, as they are constructing something in that space. But the substitute locations had undertrained staff and were understaffed as well. After waiting in line for 20 minutes, the woman working the cash register announced they were out of ponchos and we should all go over to the other location, which had an even longer line. I decided to skip it, and was walking back by the other place, and someone had brought them another couple boxes of ponchos, but now we lost our place in line. Thankfully, one of the fellows in line bought ponchos for me and we were on our way. The food vendor didn’t know how to run a credit card that wouldn’t swipe electronically. I think they were attached to a non-profit that gets a cut for providing volunteers. Which I think is a stupid way to operate stadium services. Get people in there, train them, and pay them.