I went into the Sounders game on Saturday knowing that we were probably going to lose. I mean, it had all the makings of a letdown: Undefeated August; 10 days without a game (including 5 real days off); an underappreciated RSL squad; beautiful weather and a home crowd. Oh, and we stopped their streak at home with a late Lamar Neagle goal so they owed us one. To me, everything was pointing towards starting off sluggishly and not being able to come back.
At the end of the day, we did indeed lose and as expected, I don't feel terrible about it. I know that some people will say that there was nothing positive to take out of it - that under pressure we were unable to beat one of the best teams in the league at home. I say hogwash. I mean, look at their two goals. First one - a terrible gaff by Keller. He seems to make one a season (2000 - at home vs KC, 2010 - at home vs LA) so hopefully it is out of his system. He said after the game that he was caught in between two decisions and it showed. From the minute it happened I knew Saborio's run effed him up. It was unfortunate. Then the second goal came off of some bad clearing. Saborio's original shot pin balled off of Wahl and came right back to him. The finish was clinical, but the fact is he should have never gotten the second chance. Wahl didn't necessarily do anything wrong, he just got unlucky. Again, some might say this is typical, but I can't agree.
On offense, Mauro Rosales missed a PK after the keeper guessed the wrong way and a Tyson Wahl shot hit off of Nick Rimandos' face. I never like to play the IF game for events that are in the past, but seriously, if Keller makes the routine save AND Mauro makes the routine PK it easily could have gone the other way. We got a little unlucky and got hurt by some mental errors.
Of course, a lot of people will come away blasting the ref. I am not one to normally say anything, but I was particularly fired up on Saturday. I told The Wife that in honor of 9/11 and my plea for peace I was going to go the whole game without doing the You Suck @sshole chant, but instead I gave the ref the middle finger and booed him off the pitch. I wasn't so angry with the Hurtado red card (I was sitting right there - Hurtado hit him in the face....it was inadvertent, but there was contact), but just with the overall consistency. He missed a PK later in the first half, almost didn't realize that Tony Beltran was sitting on a yellow already and to show that I'm not too much a homer, missed what I thought could have been a red card against Carrasco. The guy is wreckless and clearly hit one of the RSL guys in the head with an elbow on a header...somehow the ref missed it and only gave him a yellow.
Soccer is a funny sport - one game you get a lucky goal and then ride the wave of excitement for 5 more. Another game you get unlucky with a goal against, miss a PK and have a shot go off the keepers face. After the game, Alan Hinton and Jimmy Gabriel were saying the team would need to put in some extra shooting practice over the next few training sessions - something that would have seemed crazy a week ago. I for one will not panic.
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So now we're off to Costa Rica to take on the last place team in the group, Herediano. If we can get a tie on the road and then come home to beat them at Qwest 6days later, we will beat 10 points and pretty much assured of moving on to the knowkcout phase. This would really be awesome for the Sounders (not just the achievement on moving on since they went 1-5-0 last year) because it would mean that they could probably sit Kasey Keller in the final two games. In case you hadn't heard, Terry Boss is out for the season with his second concussion and the team is having to decide what to do with the inexperienced Josh Ford the only other keeper on the roster. If we decide not to bring an experienced goalie in to back-up Keller, I think we will need to pray that Kasey doesn't get hurt, because I for sure don't want a rookie starting in goal for us in the US Open Cup Final, for the final 7 games of the season or for the playoffs.
One other thing that many people haven't talked about Kasey retiring at the end of 2011. He has said that he won't be coming back in 2012, even if the team makes the knockout phase of CCL. That means barring no signings we would either have Josh Ford or a recently concussed Terry Boss as our only options. Marcus Hahnemann, where are you??
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