A column about my favorite commentary subjects: unnecessary laziness and flashy brilliance.

Your weekly Transcendentalist Horoscope
Random yet oddly appropriate quotes from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

Welcome to FCD, Schellas.

FCD 0-1 New York Blue Balls

I’ve spend a lot of time recently watching Euro 2008 (every game as a matter of fact), and Monday Morning Pescadito has suffered as a result. Compared to that tournament, this was a pick-up game. No real momentum, no real ideas. Clearly no one thought about anything more than the next pass on both sides of the ball. The fact that the only goal of the game came off a corner really clinches that for me. After Euro 2008 is over its going to take a couple weeks before I can honestly enjoy an MLS game again.

Empirically speaking, if someone had told you we were going to go to New York and lose 0-1, what would your reaction be? I would probably have shrugged, no one should have been surprised. Certainly on form for this season. Granted, this is a Red Bull team without Angel, Reyna, and Jozy, but the goal came off a set play (see below), so I’m not going to read too much into this game. Dario Sala earns MMP Man of the Match not only for so many great saves but for this dumbfounded look on his face:

Ultimately, this game shouldn’t matter. The only way it could matter is if we miss the playoffs by just one game, but I’ll not think about that possibility right now.

Meanwhile, is that our new coach in the doghouse?

And so it begins, FC Dallas has their very own Ron Zook. People are already dumping on Schellas Hyndman after only 3 days with the club (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exibit C). Ouch, guys. A dude can’t screw things up that bad in 2 days of training!

Let’s start with the formation. The common argument goes like this:

1. We’ve played 3 at the back all season, and
2. Two of our starters (Drew Moor and Adrian Serioux) are out for international duty, thus
3. If we go to a 4-4-2 we’ll have a backline with only 1 starter (Davino)

Well, yes. But how bad is this? Let’s look at the 3-5-2 that would have happened:

Blake Wagner would have started in Serioux’s position (he’s played there before) and Aaron Pitchkolan would have started in Moor’s position (the obvious choice). Pablo Richetti, Andre Rocha, and Juan Toja are basically locks as starters. Saragosa has been playing games lately and Bobby Rhine would get the nod over the still-recovering Dax McCarty.

Now instead the 4-4-2 that Hyndman chose:

And, if I remember correctly (which I do), both Wagner and Rhine played those positions last season. Point being, this was just not a big adjustment. It wasn’t the Che Guevara of formation changes. It was never going to cause an overnight, Luca Toni style plummet in offensive play. And I’ve never bought the argument that a 3-5-2 is better in possession than a 4-4-2. I always considered it a wee bit worse because you force the defenders and the strikers into their roles — no fullbacks coming forward, no real way for strikers to come back and help defend an overly crowded midfield. There are certainly advantages to each, but I think that ultimately a 4-4-2 is the best formation in the long run. Do we have the players for it? Steve Morrow didn’t really think so, Hyndman (hopes he) does. Seeing as how Morrow played at Arsenal and my mother was graduating from college when Hyndmann got his first head coaching gig, its safe to say they both know better than any of us do.

Quickly, I want to talk about possession. What possession, you say? This reminds me of an interaction I had with a tennis coach of mine:

Coach: KirkBhoy, you need to get yourself back in shape.
KirkBhoy: Coach, you can’t get back in shape if you’ve never been in shape to begin with.

Thats what I think of our possession game. It was honestly the biggest problem I had with Morrow. I don’t expect a midfield of Xavi, Fabregas, and Iniesta, here. No silky passes and through balls. I just want possession to be defined as something other than:

Step A: Find Andre Rocha
Step B: Pass to Kenny Cooper
Step C: If ‘keeper is off his line, chip shot. Otherwise, run towards the goal line.

Perhaps I’ll start keeping track not of possession percentage, but possession length (without that passing around by the defenders crap). Having lots of possession is frustrating for the opposition and eventually opens up good chances. But only if the possession forces the opponent to run around chasing the ball. Will Hyndman satisfy my standard for possession? No. But I think, with the level of offensive talent we have and the way Sala has been playing, if we can have a New England or DC United style possession game, we’ll get over our playoff troubles sooner rather than later.

And give the dude a break. He’s going to be the coach at least till the crystal ball drops on 2010. He’s done enough for SMU and the city of Dallas to place some faith in the guy.

Apologies for the sparseness of silly pictures, that is the kind of shape I can get back into.

WTF Commentary of the Week

Listening to Max Bretos add tidbits of information to his mediocre play-by-play is like having a migraine while riding in a subway car. The CIA does more fact-checking than this guy. At least 2-3 times a game he tries to be cute and makes some sophomoric mistake. For example, he stated Blake Wagner was from the hotbed of soccer that is Atlanta, GA. Go look at Wagner’s profile, he left ATL when he was 10 months old, which is not enough time to pick up soccer skills. For the record, I was drunk for at least 10 total months while in Atlanta. When he was four, Blake moved to what he considers his hometown and another city I am quite familiar with: Tampa, Florida. For the record, I have not spent 10 total months drunk in Tampa.

Point is, Bretos has all these little tidbits he likes to throw around, and so many of them, while cute, are flat wrong. If he wants to be a major soccer play-by-play man, he has to act like one. Stop looking at some stat sheet and do actual research. Do you think JP Dellacamera or Derek Rae make these amateur mistakes? Certainly not.

Minutiae

Anyone else hate it when teases run 23 days past when they should? It is clearly some group of soccer bloggers centered on www.designatedplayers.com led by The Offside Rules‘ Shawn Francis. I’m sure I’m not the first fool to find his way to this GoDaddy page as evidence of what is going on. Get on with it guys, and if it doesn’t have an RSS feed, I’ll likely visit it fewer than 10 times.

Is anyone else not enamored with the number of foreign-born players playing for countries in the European Championships?  Legal reasons force FIFA to allow some Brazilian who went to play in Warsaw in 2006 to be eligible for the Polish national team, similar situations for Turkey, Spain, Portugal, etc etc.  I considered having a Most Euro section that, instead of discouraging such activity, highlighted the players who I thought most typified their country.  But when I got into it, I realized it was essentially just my stereotypes of Turks, Swedes, Croats and the like.  Basically it was borderline racism.  Hell, I still might post it.

and your Weekly Namesake Update
Ripped the mighty St. Lucia to pieces the other day, scoring a quad. Was a part of the 2nd leg team that won as well, putting Guatemala through to the group stages.