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

Its been a busy run of days for FC Dallas, and the whole MMP staff has been struggling to put this latest one together for you on time. Big group effort. Since there were 4 games in 9 days to cover, analysis of each game will be slim on greatness (similar to the team’s performances). The Charleston game will be included in next week’s edition.

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

The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.

FCD 1-1 Houstank

Something was wierd about the Houston team in the first half. I managed to find the team photo from the game:

Top Row: Boswell, Clark, Onstad, Davis, Mullen, Ianni
Bottom Row: Barrett, Waibel, Ching, De Rosario, Holden

I can’t quite place it. Moving on…

FCD 1-2 Chivas de Actual

People are going to harp on giving up the late goals. But are Dello-Russo and Wallace starters? Close to being starters? Does this result really matter? Could any of this possibly phase Dario Sala and hurt his confidence? If you answered yes to any of the previous questions, go drown yourself in a puddle of kitten blood. I’ll even provide it for you.

I actually thought the game was pretty. Sure, there were some times that we resorted to mad scrambles to get back on defense, but did anyone else pay attention to the flow of the game? Chivas dominated, natch, but FCD managed to put some great passing sequences together. At one point I counted twelve consecutive completed passes in the first half. And Dominic Oduro managed to touch it twice in that sequence, only giving it away once! I’m not giving Dallas all the credit or Chivas’ defense, for that matter. Chivas didn’t attack the ball on defense like a typical American team would. They weren’t constantly clipping at heels, but rather keeping their team shape. It was very subtle, but it made for a much more attractive game. Also, probably why our goal didn’t come during the run of play. If American youth teams played like this, the USMNT wouldn’t be ranked 13 places behind Bulgaria (name a top Bulgarian player not named Berbetov or Petrov… go!). Point is, that style of play is how ball skills develop. Unfortunately, the entire league would have to work together to make the game that pretty.

What I am not endorsing, however, is a league filled with 4 ft tall players and a 3 ft tall referee. Juan Toja looked like he was Gulliver.

FCD 2-1 Miami Vices

Did anyone else think Miami was composed of a bunch of players who wanted to be Denilson? Seriously, waaayy too many fancy passes and waaayyyy too little possession. They must hold their practices in the moving walkways at Miami’s airport like this commercial:

Like MIA, Miami FC is a total hunk of trash. I’ve been following the story of the Cuban defectors, but I find it frightening that a team in Miami cannot find a place for these guys. It doesn’t bode well for them. However, a Brazilian, Alex Alfonso essentially was the offense. He scored a goal out of nothing and was the only real threat all night (hey, Dario’s left post was _always_ going to stop that shot, you hear? Every. time.). Unfortunately, we’re plum out of international spots it seems, so I’m not sure we want to bring Alfonso in on trial and just put him on other teams’ radars. I was going to say something nice about Toja, as he did dominate the entire game, but I was a little scared how much everyone else seemed to rely on him.Oh, Abe Thompson, you say? That’s just what the Iron Man does (exhibit A, exhibit B). There will be more on him below.FCD 1-1 Kasas City (insert Blazing Saddles reference here)

Kansas City is really not a good team. Fortunately (from a neutral’s perspective), neither are we. So that made a game of it.While criticized by fellow Los Toros members for not wearing FCD’s appropriately red, white, and blue jersey on the July 4, I think in the end, the shirt I did wear brought just enough luck to the team:

That’s right, I’m taking partial credit for Abe Thompson’s equalizer. Take your objections to the Geek Complaint Department. Though we might have to give Abe’s nickname a subtitle: “Iron Man Abe Thompson: The Man with the Iron Touch”.

In all seriousness, I really don’t have much to say about this game. Rather, I will hand out the Monday Morning Pescadito Man of the 4-Matches (MMPMot4M) in this section. As a reminder, this award may be given out to anyone embodying any of El Pescadito’s enigmatic traits. The first finalist (representing the not-no-fabulous) has to be Marcelo Saragosa. Now many people would be willing to pay for his taxi ride to the airport for his Pescadito-esque passing abilities. I, however, have somewhat of an appreciation that we have someone like that on our roster. However, when provided with Saragosa’s address, I will pay for this shirt:

(as seen on Du Nord) It’s really an insult to both the Italians and Pescadito. Because Marcelo makes Paris Hilton’s acting skills look professional. But hey, if he’s gonna do it for the team, then giving him a cheap t-shirt is the least we can do.

Instead I’d like to award the MMPMot4M to Eric Avila who, prior to this 4 game match streak, none of us had ever seen before outside those cute FCDTV videos. True, his game has a ways to go. True, his lack of size scares the crap out of me. True, we haven’t seen him play many minutes. True, it will be hard to get him on the field with Juan Toja, Andre Rocha, Pablo Richetti, Dax McCarty, and Marcello Saragosa all earning minutes. True, he looks thirteen. BUT, I like how he plays. He’s more aggressive than all those other midfielders save Toja. A key difference, from what little I’ve seen, is that JT has the very aggravating habit of coming to a dead halt when on the ball, while Avila seems to be more of a link player. I can’t recall watching Toja make a good cross for FC Dallas [UPDATE: I'm an idiot, and a forgetful one at that. I guess my point was that Toja just doesn't look to make a cross very often, he almost always looks to go inside. How many times have we seen JT take on a double team needlessly?  He certainly can make a good cross. Lesson learned: don't say bad words about Toja or you're likely to get burned.] (though he made plenty against Celtic, to my chagrin). Yet Avila’s stopage time cross was, in his own words, “perfect”.

In many ways I agree with the Koolade that Buzz Carrick has been dispensing that the team should be built around a core of American talent and that foreigners should be brought in to supplement. I don’t think that means a certain percentage of the roster should be American, and I don’t even know how to describe (I doubt Buzz can either) exactly how you’ll know that when you achieve it. But I do believe that if we’re able to hold onto Dax McCarty (damn it was good to see him play again) and Avila continues to progress, I do see us having a great American core to our midfield. Go look around the league, successful teams have stable midfields. (Having said that, the Uni-brower is welcome to stay in Frisco as long as he wishes.) Anyway, congrats Eric. Hopefully we’ll be seeing you more often.

The outgoing transfer rumors deserve their own post.

WTF Commentary of the Week

Jim Rome cares just enough about soccer to not do any fact-checking (although here’s hoping the lead-in is totally factual):

Sure, John Harkes mistakes Gonzalo Martinez for Luciano Emilio. But Rome’s interns producers don’t bother reading the back of the dude’s jersey or bother to find out how he grew a quarter inch of hair over a period not longer than 90 minutes. Poor GoMart doesn’t even get any love for taking one in the groin. By the way, if I’m somehow the first person to use that nickname, it is hereby copyrighted and I demand royalties.Also, 2nd WTF Commentary: me during the Open Cup game. I made about four pronouncements during the game, here’s how I did:

1. “When was the last time you saw Abe Thompson win a header?” Fail. 20 seconds later he connected with a corner (though hitting it out of bounds for a corner). After both the Open Cup and KC matches, I’m upgrading this to Epic Fail.
2. “Just get it into halftime guys so we can re-group, you’re looking ugly out there.” Fail. Abe Thompson scores in first half stoppage time.
3. “All we need is about 15 minutes of Kenny Cooper against these guys.” Partial Fail. KC created chances but didn’t do as much as we’ve expected of him. But only a partial due to my making this statement while we were still down.
4. “We just need to get this game into overtime.” Again, Fail. My logic was sound and I still stand behind the probabilistics: we stood a better chance of scoring late in regulation than Miami, but we stood a much better chance of scoring in extra time against a 10-man mid-table tired USL club. However, Abe Thompson is the Han Solo to my C-3PO (”Don’t tell me the odds!”) and so I sit there looking like the Pro Poker player who lost to some chump on an inside straight draw.

Minutiae

and your Weekly Namesake Update
Has totally just been beat out by Edson Buddle. Talk about a tumble down the depth chart. I haven’t watched any Galaxy games since Pescadito got back from injury, so I’m not sure if Buddle is better at converting that Limey dude’s chances or (more likely) just possesses a nicer cap value. Pescadito might not even be with the Galaxy the next time MMP hits the stands. If he goes to the Crew as rumored, that means fewer appearances in PHP. *sniff*