Tuesday, August 7, 2007

On to the semis

Carolina and FC Dallas advanced to the US Open Cup semifinals with wins over Richmond and Charleston, respectively, but the result of the night was Seattle's 5-0 manhandling of Colorado. Seattle ripped apart the lowly Rapids with three first-half goals and continued the onslaught with a a pair of early second-half tallies.

Seattle moves on to host FC Dallas while Carolina, in their first year of existence, will play the Harrisburg City-New England winner.

Colorado did a poor job of representing MLS, as their five previous counterparts had done. However, those games were fairly close - Seattle didn't even let the Rapids into the game on Tuesday. If this result doesn't scream for a coaching change in Denver, I don't know what does. Seattle is a fine club but losing by five goals in a cup quarterfinal is nothing short of embarrassing.

Seattle, meanwhile, is growing stronger by the game. With FC Dallas coming to town next, the Sounders should be favorites not only to win that game but to take the whole cup. What a magical run for the Sounders.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was at the Sounders game last night and it was one of the most amazing games I've ever seen. Beautiful, near-perfect soccer by Seattle -- very European in style and precision.

Rapids are very lucky there's no promotion/relegation system in the US, because Sounders deserve to go up and Colorado should be going down. Actually, the Seattle team I saw last night would fit easily into MLS and probably end up close to the top of the table. They have an amazing, almost telepathic synergy this year.

Anonymous said...

It's funny how when USL teams beat up on MLS teams, there's never anyone claiming that the USL has surpassed the MLS or silly talk like that. But I have a feeling that if it was Mexican team at the end of that 5-0 whipping, we'd have every MLS fan proclaiming the death of the Mexican league. Congrats to the Sounders on the win.