Sunday, March 30, 2008

Week one trends

The first week of games in the 2008 MLS regular season is in the books after Chivas USA and FC Dallas played to a 1-1 tie on Sunday afternoon. Some of the trends I noticed from this weekend's slate of games:

- Home teams outscored road teams 13-2 and posted a 4-0-2 record.

- Foreigners accounted for 11 goals. Three American-born players scored - Steve Ralston, Adam Cristman, Colin Clark - while Chicago knocked a goal into the back of its own net.

- Some of the more high-profile acquisitions paid immediate dividends. Kansas City's new frontline accounted for both goals in a 2-0 win over DC United as Ivan Trujillo and Claudio Lopez each tallied in their first game in Kansas City blue. Meanwhile, Christian Gomez scored on a penalty kick in the Rapids' 4-0 rout of the Galaxy.

- New coaches went 0-2-1 in their debuts, though all three debuted on the road. Denis Hamlett's Chicago Fire tied 1-1 at RSL while John Carver's Toronto FC and Ruud Gullit's LA Galaxy lost their MLS coaching debuts. Hamlett of course was the interim boss in Chicago a year ago so if you count that as his coaching debut, then scratch him off this note.

2 comments:

Joseph D'Hippolito said...

l.b., you forgot to mention one long-range trend: The Galaxy will do a perfect imitation of a vacuum cleaner this year...

Dan Haug said...

Ouch :|