It was awfully close, but the angle made it impossible to tell whether or not the entire ball cleared the line or not. Regardless, Columbus deserved to win.

I hope the result didn't spoil Antonio's good time. The sea of red was impressive, although I really could have done without the flares on the field.

The non-goal in the Columbus-Toronto game. Looks over to me.

Had the RSL-Fire game on pause, then checked back in and couldn't believe that Chicago scored. A sweet left-footed volley from Blanco from about 16 yards out, after some horrible RSL defending in the box.

KC's park is mind-boggling. Giant 1984-like poster of a KC player off to one sideline, and a bunch of people standing on a knoll at one corner and behind the goal, a mish-mash of ads everywhere.

And the Spanish-language guys are more audible on the broadcast than the English-language commentators.

That looks awfully close in that pic Inca. Going to have to hit up the youtube.

Interestingly enough, I had 2 of those similar situations in a game I was the assistant referee for today. Neither were in imo. (I'm a ref if that bit was confusing.)

Can't wait to see my boy Ciaran O'Brien stick Beckham tonight. Supposedly he is starting on the left wing for the rapids, and its always cool to see a guy you played against making it into the big league :). Hopefully he reps the Pac NW fully in the beat LA hype.

I guess they decided not to play O'Brien, even though it was posted on the Rapids site.

Nice finish by Colorado. Heres for 7 more!

Terrible send off for o'brien. That was a foul sure, but there is no way the small barely 20 yr old takes him out that far. A bit of a kick to the knee, no red card. Worse tackles weren't even booked many times earlier in the game.

Fuck.

I may be more coherent about this later, but for now...fuck.

The only possible redeeming feature of that game was the way it lowered my expectations for the season, thus making future humiliations seem less painful.

I think we can all more or less agree that yesterday sucked.

Soccer Scrimmage wrote:

QUOTE:
I think we can all more or less agree that yesterday sucked.

Far from it. The Revs 3-0 demolition of Houston last night was fantastic. The two Gambian 19 yr olds caused havoc with their speed, and the the last goal was a brilliant run and finish by the kid. Castro looks like a smart acquisition (under the radar) by Nicol.

And DC 'Media Darlings' FC were pissed on by Kansas City ha ha ha ha....

Vernons Pools finally shows up again in the MLS thread, and it's after a Revs victory. A coincidence, I am sure.

Well, that game last night was a nice hard kick in the nuts.

I didn't think Xavier's tackle was a penalty, but if you slide in from behind, even if you win the ball, you're running the risk of getting a penalty. Notice not even the Colorado player with the ball called for one. But Xavier was an absolute disgrace after that--gave up on the play on the third goal (he probably wouldn't have been able to stop the goal, but when the guy rounded Cronin, there was a chance to try to run to the line. He stopped), and was smoked on the fourth goal. Then his insane tackle for the red card, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, and intimidating the ref the whole time. Like I said, a disgrace. He earned himself a spot on the bench for the whole season, as far as I'm concerned.

From Sideline Views:

QUOTE:
Just got back from the locker room and Abel Xavier walked by a couple of us media guys. As he walked by, he, uh, well, um...

"The ref is a fucking disgrace. Put that in the paper."

Who knows how long Ruiz will be gone for.

Sprained MCL. 4-6 weeks.

There were two good bits to the game yesterday. The first was the fact that the Red Patch Boys hired a plane to circle the stadium for the first half trailing a sing that said "Come on you Reds".

The second good thing were the tifos.



Apart from that, all was suckage. Samuel's penalty was slow and predictable (like all of his runs, actually), Cunningham couldn't be bothered to run in the second half, there was zero guile going forward apart from the odd neat run by Edu, Robinson appeared to be mentally still back in Wales, the decision to drop Sutton paid immediate dividends in the form of a very soft goal, and the defending in general was criminal.

And that was against a weak team. If we'd played like that against the Revs, we'd have given up six or seven.

Oh, and way too much of our travelling support seems to be under the impression that showing up, and drinking is a sufficient show of support. The singing was crap and the behaviour of many was pretty poor. And I;m not just talking about the smoke bombs - these aren;t terrible in the stands, but heaving eight of them onto the field was an incredibly bad idea.

Pretty soon, we won't be welcome anywhere, and that would be very sad.

Nice picture. I'm glad you wrote that about the smoke bombs. I didn't watch all of the game, so I didn't know some actually made it onto the field. That's the kind of stuff that can give all of the fans a bad image.