Ante Razov will score his 100th goal soon. He's on 99 career goals and he scored three goals last season against Houston (today's opponent), Real Salt Lake (next week's foe) and the L.A. Galaxy (Chivas' opponent two weeks from today).
I uncovered some interesting stats while researching a story I wrote for MLSnet.com.
Razov will join Jason Kreis (108) and Jaime Moreno (105) as the only members of the MLS century club. Kreis scored his goals in 24,972 minutes. Moreno has scored his over 20,438 while Ante's got 99 in 16,988 minutes. That's about one goal every two games. I wanted to see how good that pace was and it is good but Roy Lassiter had 88 goals in 13,789 career minutes.
I don't know if we'll see a 100-goal, 100-assist man if Jaime Moreno doesn't make it. He's got 83 assists. Kreis has 74. Razov had 52. The century assist club consists of Carlos Valderrama (114), Preki (112), Steve Ralston (107) and Marco Etcheverry (101).
Jason Kreis is the all time shots leader with 807 (before this season). Ante has 790. Preki finished with 773 and fourth was Mark Chung 624. Jaime Moreno is fifth with 578.
Anyway, statistics are big among U.S. sports fans. There isn't much in the way of stats in soccer. Goals, assists, minutes played, games started, shutouts... I don't know that there are other meaningful stats. I don't pay much attention to shots (I didn't use the above shots statistic in my story).
Still, goals scored is a nice statistic. It'll be good for Ante to get that 100th goal. Later this year, Jeff Cunningham should join the club. He's on 92 right now. Carlos Ruiz has 76 and Taylor Twellman's got 75 so they'll join soon enough.
So, for now Jason Kreis is the all-time leading goal scorer in MLS but he won't be for much longer. Someone will pass him up. It could even be this year, just like Bonds and Aaron... on a much smaller scale.
1 comment:
Interviewing Kreis, I asked him, trying to kid a little, whether Jaime Moreno ever called him up to say, "Hey Jase, I'm coming for you!" or anything like that.
Kreis answered, "No. A word has never been spoken between us about that, and I think that’s the way it should be."
He's probably right, but soccer could stand to have a little fun by celebrating the competition of all-time records more. Look at the attention Romario is getting for his thousand goals. Remember the hype over Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire chasing the single-season record. This year could be like that (without the steriods, hopefully) in MLS, with Cunningham, Razov and Moreno closing in on a still-active Kreis.
Post a Comment