Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Week 18 Spotlight

Technically, Monday's RSL-Toronto match was in Week 19 of the MLS schedule, but that doesn't really make sense. Playing a Monday night match doesn't make sense either but that's what went down in Utah last night.

Anyway, that caused a minor ripple effect out here as we waited for the fifth of five matches in a two-day span to be played out before handing out or weekly kudos.

G: William Hesmer
D: Jamison Olave
D: Chad Marshall
D: Chris Wingert
M: Roger Espinoza
M: Amado Guevara
M: Brian Mullan
M: Darren Huckerby
F: Dominic Oduro
F: Kenny Cooper
F: Robbie Findley Abe Thompson

Coach: Schellas Hyndman gets off the schneid and notches his first MLS coaching victory. Ironically, it came against the club that ended his predecessor's run.

Jason Kreis: RSL moves over .500 for the first time in history. Props.

Top goal: Okay, I tried to keep this on league play but was there anything better than Cuauhtemoc Blanco's backheel to Christian Gomez and his subsequent finish against West Ham? That backheel was a thing of beauty and Gomez did well to find the inside of the net as well.

I'll take a goal from league play - Abe Thompson's late stunner.

Top save: Will Hesmer had about four saves worthy of MLS Save of the Week... if there were such an award. I think the one he had early on Mehdi Ballouchy was probably most difficult.

Best game: Okay, keep going back to the All-Star game. In a perfect world, the all-star game wouldn't be followed by a full slate of league games but MLS doesn't stop for the World Cup so why stop for the ASG? The rest of the games this weekend seemed mild compared to the win over West Ham.

LOWLIGHTS
Did you realize that the Rapids had 17 corner kicks in their 2-0 loss? Terry Cooke took 13 of them but to no avail. Columbus, meanwhile, had zero. It's the biggest disparity since... uh... a while ago. Sorry, don't have the energy to put that into perspective. But consider the other corner kick numbers of the weekend: LA had 4, FC Dallas had 0; Chicago 4, KC 3; San Jose 9, New York 3; Toronto 6, RSL 5.

Toronto fans, but I won't repeat myself.

The Galaxy's offense had been rather pedestrian in the last four or five games before FC Dallas. Now, the club has hit a new low or at least a low that hasn't been seen since March. For the first time since the season opener, David Beckham and Landon Donovan failed to produce a goal. They don't have Abel Xavier around this time to blame the defensive failures on either.

Yeah, what a crappy debut for Dominguez.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hesmer gets props for several potential "saves of the week" but doesn't even get an alternate GK in this week's best XI?

L.B. said...

That was an error. I had Busch in there originally, changed it to Hesmer but the computer didn't save the changes. Hesmer had the better saves and the better game overall.