Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Rising up

Back on the street. Let's track the matches and upsets today.

Upset, though not in U.S. Open Cup -
Vancouver takes down its MLS big brother.

Coach John Carver, as might be guessed, is not pleased.

Upset! Crystal Palace USA wins by TWO goals versus the Red Bull New York. The Baltimore team played a man down since the 34th minute of the first half.

Another Upset!
The Battery win in penalty kicks versus the defending MLS champs! Houston was 1-1 versus the Charleston Battery in regulation. Charleston played a man down, but with the lead until Houston leveled. The Battery lost another player to cards and played two men short in the second overtime.
Upset!

No upset!
Richmond Kickers and New England Revolution - Defending champions, the Revs, win by three goals.
Chicago Fire scored 3 goals on the Cleveland City Stars in the first half. Cleveland got a consolation goal in the second half.
Fire scored another, 4-1, final.

FC Dallas scores in stoppage time to down Miami FC, 2-1.

DC United wins, 2-0 versus the Rochestor Rhinos. Both goals by Marc Burch.

Wizards Score Again - again and again! In overtime, the Wizards score,
having really turned it around from a 2-0 deficit to the Carolina Railhawks. Another PK to the Wizards. It's now 4-2. Carolina came close to scoring, but couldn't manage it, playing a man down too big a handicap.

Thus, Houston, New York and Chivas USA are out of the Open Cup as Charleston, Crystal Palace and Seattle pull off the upsets.

Watching these games is like MLS deja vu - oh, that's where that guy ended up! David Stokes, for example.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dynamo are down 1-0 to Charleston at the half. They are playing their reserve team like last year and getting beat again. USL-1 teams are not that far from salary cap MLS teams. What are they thinking? I'm a Dynamo fan but they are getting what they deserve.

Anonymous said...

How can we expect other soccer fans to take the MLS seriously when its own teams don't take tournaments seriously? This tournament will be awarded by a trip to the CONCACAF Champions Cup and still MLS teams don't care. Very sad!

Michoacano

Anonymous said...

Claudio Lopez just tied on a PK.

Michoacano

Anonymous said...

Seattle is up 1-0 at the half.

Anonymous said...

Bahahahahaha!

Another year without hardware for the scum of the Earth!!

Give me the Sounders over the scum 10 times out of 10!!!

Anonymous said...

This sounds like another friendly comment from our friendly galaxy fans. Thanks guys Hope you win the MLS, lol Not!

DrewVT6 said...

Andrea-
The importance of these lower tiers of soccer in the US is so important.

The USSF is putting so much into these "Youth Academies" but without these lower tiers, more than 90% of these Academy players will never have jobs playing soccer.

Something has to be done to bolster the lower levels if we want continued growth of players in our country. Otherwise we'll have the same point without a base that the NASL had.

Right now guys like David Stokes, Luke Kreamalmyer, Nelson Akwari, John Wilson, Jay Nolly, etc have a place where they can gain experience and make money doing what they do best. Without the lower tier fall back, a lot of these guys would have gotten out of soccer very shortly after their first time being cut by an MLS team.

Anonymous said...

Catamount said...

Reality check indeed. There are players on USL teams that are there by choice because they can do better financially, and play more on a USL team than than on an MLS team. So the USL starters are better than the reserve players in MLS.

If MLS plans to be the legitimate top league, then they MUST increase the minimum salary for all players, development or otherwise, at least 20K. Otherwise they will need to play their starters to win these early round Open Cup games.