Gotta say that I really like the play of Morelia in the SuperLiga. Face it, they were the stepsister invited to the SuperLiga ball when the original club asked to participate, Cruz Azul, declined because of schedule conflicts.
Cruz Azul is my fave Mexican league team, but I've a soft spot for Morelia as well. Thier press liason people are nice, and there's an interesting backstory to their goalkeeper, Moises Munoz.
He lived in the U.S. for about seven years when he was young, going to elementary school in Northern California. Basically, he started playing soccer in the U.S., not in Mexico, where he was born. He speaks English fine, so of course he was doing the bulk of the interviews for the team with our local press.
Anyway, Morelia fought back to score a goal and tie their first match versus DC United, even while a man down. Versus Houston, they also had a late equalizer. They're a scrappy, never-say-die squad.
Moises had some great saves to keep his team in the match and in the SuperLiga in general.
Morelia have to knock off Club America to advance, but they've given a good account of themselves thus far.
They're not getting any love in our SuperLiga poll, though. No one has picked them to win it.
UPDATE: Someone finally voted for Morelia in the poll.
Though I give Morelia credit for not giving up. The game goes to show MLS clubs how in competition against talented teams one has to put away all those goal scoring chances and also can not make any defensive mistakes. Morelia had that one good scoring opportunity but they took advantage and scored the equalizer. Houston should know better from this year's Champions Cup and watching DCU do the same thing on Wednesday. I hope in the long run that these games show MLS teams how to upgrade their play during MLS games.
ReplyDeleteI agree AC. Even before Superliga I was on record as saying that Morelia helped themselves immensely during the off-season (draft) and signings.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I like is they armed themselves with some physical players and scrappers to compliment.
Also, if Landin flourishes I can see them making a deep run for a championship. By the way the red card that first match was bogus. DeRosario did the same thing this past game vs. Morelia and got a yellow.
too bad they thugged it up against houston and half of their players should have been red carded. a real class group of players morelia has... diving, handballing, and slapping other players like girls.
ReplyDeleteive enjoyed this superliga, but this was a really sad game.
Both teams got pretty physical. Mullan could have gotten a red card for his push after Barrett was knocked down.
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