Instant (Over)Reaction: Galaxy

Good morning to all - it has been a few days since I have had anything new to say, so let me start off by getting a few personal things out of the way. First, having a two-year old in the summer time is an amazingly fun thing. You have an excuse to sit outside all day, play on some jungle gyms, draw on the sidewalk and look for bugs. It's great. Second, thanks to the Seattle weather for giving us 2 beautiful days over the holiday weekend. Third, I can't say I enjoy the 4th of July anymore. Maybe it will mean something to me again in the future, but all I could do last night was cringe with anxiety every time a firework went offnear our house with The Incident sleeping in her room. Fourth, I'm going on vacation at the end of the week, so JS content will be down for a little bit. I hope to be able to get a few things in before then.

Ok, so let's get to the game last night. The Sounders went into LA with a 8-4-7 record, unbeaten in the last 6. If there was a game where we could break the Galxay demons this was surely going to be it. We are not only hot, but they were going to be without David Beckham (who reports were saying would miss the game because Posh had scheduled the birth of their 18th kid with a US city name on July 4th) and were down to their 3rd sting goalie. The planets were aligned.

After 90 minutes, the two teams were exactly where they started - tied 0-0 in a game that I actually found to be quite enjoyable considering the lack of scoring. Here are my thoughts:

• I really liked the idea of wearing the electricity kits. I know some still don't like them (they have grown on me, especially given the currently hideous version of our raves), but it was a nice change up and something that you often see in college football. At the end of the day, players have to make plays - what they are wearing doesn't matter a damn bit...but going with the unexpected can often give you a short term bump early in the game.
• A tie on the road against the best team in the league is a good result, but we all know it could have been better. Shame on the Sounders for not testing rookie goalie Brian Perk more. I know the LA defense should get some of the credit for keeping the shot count down, but once again, we seem to have no one besides Ozzie Alonso and Mike Fucito who are willing to shoot the damn ball.
• Terrible PK attempt by Fredy Montero. I fully expected him to miss so it wasn't a huge letdown. However, I thought it was a good call by the ref even if John Harkes didn't like it.
• Once again, the defense did a good job on Donovan. Kudos to both Riley and Wahl (although Wahl did get bailed out once when Donovan hit a header straight to Keller after forgetting he was behind him)
• I have really enjoyed how Levesque has played in the last few weeks. It's easy to say that when he scores goals, but even last night, when the team had nothing to show for it, I thought he was active and didn't turn the ball over much
• A bounce back game from Alonso - back to his ball winning ways.
• I really enjoy watching the Rosales-Friberg-El Flaco-Alonso midfield. For the first time in our brief history I thought we had guys out there who could connect 10 straight passes without turning it over or playing a long ball.
  
• Speaking of Rosales he is definitely my favorite player (not named Alonso) right now. His energy and technical skill makes him a threat every time he has the ball. I know he has only played like 15 games for the Sounders, but I would go as far as to say he is the 4th best/most important signing during our three year history. (For me, its Keller-Alonso-Montero in some order, with Zakuani not counting since he was giftedn to us for being an expansion team)
• Another nice seque, speaking of Zakuani, we really missed him last night. For how well the midfield played (even though final stats were 55-45 possession for LA), they were missing that one guy who could stretch the defense the way Stevie does. Everytime Mauro got a step on a guy you knew he was going to cross it whereas Zakuani beats the guy on the end line and causes total havoc.
  
• Chad Barrett will always suck.
• Juan Pablo Angel missed two shots by mere inches - there was a time around the 70th minute right after Beckham came in where I felt the momentum shift. I was scared that a small mental lapse was going to cost us, but we held on with a little luck. Angel from 2 years ago finished those opportunities

Up next are the hated Timbers next Sunday at JELD-Wen Field. I know Rob Stone and John Harkes have to promote it, but I take a little offense to the notion that it will be the best atmosphere has ever seen...it is indeed going to be special, but let's not forget how we get 36k in our stadium and how ECS punked the Timbers Army a month ago with their 9 banner display. What are they going to do? Allow some crazy guy into their stadium wielding a chainsaw? Come on now.

Tuesday Morning Five-Pack

A lot of stuff is going, but nothing significant enough for me to write a whole entry about...instead, here is a 5-pack of goodies to get your Tuesday morning off to the right start.

• David Wright will be out for at least the next 10 days with a lower back stress fracture. The injury supposedly occurred during an April 19 game against Houston. Thinking that it was just a muscular season, Wright says he has been on medication and anti-inflammatory meds since that date. I appreciate my boy trying to fight through injuries, I really do, but at some point, doesn't the organization have to step in? It's only 10 days, but had he kept playing, it could have been a lot longer. I know this team isn't great, but having Wright, even with his .226 average, out of the lineup is a big blow to any hope at .500. It's been a month - someone had to notice something.
• Bucknell lacrosse blew an amazing opportunity, losing 13-12 to 7th seed Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Bison were up 10-6 with a little under 3 minutes left in the game and couldn't close it out. They would have gone on to face 2nd seed Cornell in the Quarterfinals. It definitely is a disappointing result as this was the best Bison team ever, finishing 14-3 and going undefeated in the Patriot League. Making it to the Quarterfinals of a legitimate NCAA Division 1 sport would have been huge. (interestingly enough, a lacrosse player in The Wife's class actually knew of Bucknell because of the team...not bad for a little school in PA).
• I am not a Yankees fan. Everyone knows that. But I can't help but feel a little compassionate for what Jorge Posada is going through. As you may have heard, he was dropped to 9th in the lineup over the weekend and asked to be taken out of the game. He said he needed some time to clear his head, but it was obvious that he was rebelling against the embarrassment of hitting that low (not that it's a huge deal in the AL where the lineups are stacked). Here's the thing about athletes - they all get old. No one is mortal. How they, their managers, the organization and the fans handle getting old is always the tricky part. Posada is one of the last 3 Yankees from the dynasty years and will always be considered a legend, but he needs to come to grips that he is hitting .165. He needs to know that his time is almost up...he can pout about it or he can adjust. (and pouting is never a good choice in NYC)
  
• So Nate Robinson is in the center of a Seattle controversy for his recent tweets that the Oklahoma City fans "are the best on the planet." It's a no brainer - I mean, he is toeing the party line. He is saying what any other player would say in the same position. The problem obviously is that Nate is a homegrown Seattlite - hearing those comments pours salt into the still open wounds of what happened to the Sonics. To me, a non-native Seattlite, it should be a non-issue. I mean, the dude doves more for Seattle sports and talks more about Seattle sports that any other athlete. Sometimes your job requires you to say things you and others might not like (analysts speak ill of their former teams ALL the time, but it is part of being objective), but you do it. Get over it Seattle.
• In the world of MLS, the LA Galaxy continue to roll along as they trounced Sporting KC 4-1 on goals by Donovan, Beckham and Angel. The star power to this team is obviously there, but it is not entirely what makes me scared...I mean, we have seen numerous great teams falter come playoff time. No, what makes me scared is what I saw after Angel scored his first goal of the season. A lot of people were asking what was wrong with Angel after going his first 10 games without a goal. Was he done? He and the team insisted that wasn't the case, and after he scored you could see how happy everyone was for him. Donovan and Beckham had authentic smiles on their faces which makes me feel like this is a team that actually likes each other. Add in that Beckham actually seems interested in going out a winner and I think this is a team to look out for. They have had the talent for a few years - now they might have the chemistry as well. Watch out.

OK, so that's the end of the 5 pack, but I do have two minor things: 1). shame on the critics for doubting Kevin Durant after his terrible Game 6 - dude is allowed to have a bad game and 2). my Jersey boy Vin Mazzaro accomplished something no other pitcher has ever done-he gave up 14 ER in 2 1/3 relief innings last night -never had anyone given up that many without going 3 innings. Ouch.

Instant (Over)Reaction: Galaxy

Apparently I am having a hard time getting going this morning as evidence by having erased my opening paragraph four times (and it's not even 8am yet). Basically the story is this: Sounders were back in action last night. Before the game the team released Blaise N'kufo. During the game a lot of rain fell. After the game we left disappointed with the loss, but very surprised with the ride home. I want to offer my thoughts on the game as well as give you comments from both The Wife and Irish Mike. It's an attempt to give you, my JerseySounder readers more analysis on the team we all love (well, unless you're here solely to read The Crappy One's posts on the Devs (who won again last night)).

First, let's start with Irish Mike, who apparently made someone at Google mad having his comments rejected three times (sorry Mike!):

• Am a little worried about the Sounders, no striker = no championship for us I'm afraid. Hard to understand the Nfuko situation, I mean what the hell, could we have any worse timing than 90 minutes before our season opener? I blame Blaise, the front office and Sigi for this mess. Its what the f’ing pre-season is for, find out who we are and what we need. Roy Keane was a gifted player but a mindless yob most of the time for Ireland and Man U, but he had one nugget of wisdom “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. I think the management team have not prepared us right, to not see this situation coming is amateur at best and leaves us with little options. Anyway, too tired after that to rewrite a full synopsis of what I think our probs are, there were some positives tonight but we still have issues, and need to sort them out if we want to be serious about a title run.

Now on to The Wife who had these comments in the car this morning:

• I need O'Brien White to be stronger. I can't have him being weaker than Fredy. He needs to hit the gym because he was getting knocked off the ball very often. He's not rolling around like Fredy used to, but he is not holding on to the ball either way.
• I think Fredy might need to be pulled back a little into more of an attacking midfield role. White looks to be faster than Fredy, so let White roam around up front and let Fredy distribute to the wings more.
  
• Along with having Fredy move back a bit, we need more overlapping runs. I saw a few from Riley and Zakuani last night and each time they resulted in good crosses. There was a little too much kick and run last night and it's just not effective with the size of our players. Our distribution out of the back needs improvement.
• Our defense didnot look sharp. But then again, nothing about the game was particularly sharp. It was a bit ugly out there.
• White, Montero and Friberg were all in each others business. They had no chemistry out there.
• Having Fredy is a blessing and a curse. He is highly skilled and does a lot for this team, but it seems like players take a while to get use to playing with him. By giving him the DP designation you basically are telling any incoming players that he is going to be the focus. If you are going to bring in a veteran, he needs to be humble and secure with himself. Right now we have a really young team and no experience. It's built around Fredy so picking the right players is crucial to our success.
• We kept getting chances and Sigi is right - they will be worried once the chances stop coming.
  

And finally my comments:

• I want to start off by saying that we shouldn't rush to panic quite yet. There were some good and bad things from last night, but we need to remember that we played one of the best teams in the league in our opening match. They are going to make teams look bad, even if they didn't play at a high level. Sometimes you look bad because your opponents make you look bad. LA is simply making us look bad recently - I credit a lot of it to the fact that they are a veteran team that has seen it all. they are not going to be afraid of Steve Zakuani because most of them have faced tons of players like him overseas. And I'm not sure next game will be a fair assessment of where we are either as we have to travel to Red Bull Arena and take on NY on Saturday. Sure a statement win would have been nice, but I don't want to panic yet.
• With that being said, let's talk about this whole N'kufo mess. Look, I was one of N'kufo's biggest supporters last year. Many perceived him as a failure because he didn't score for like 10 games, but I thought it was the little things he did that made us better. Then something happened this pre-season where I started to get down on him. The accounts varied...some say he was hurt; others said age finally caught up with him. Something just seemed fishy. Then over the course of 6 hours we found out that not only was he not going to start but that he was gone from the team altogether. According to Kiro710, Nkufo and Sigi apparently had an incident at practice in which Nkufo made it known how unhappy he was with the team's style. He asked for a trade and while it seems crazy that his release happened 90 minutes before gametime, in reality it was a blessing as it would have cost them had it lingered and flared up later in the season. NOw we can move on and hopefully sign Mauro Rosales with some of the leftover money.
• That brings me to my point: I agree with Mike in that the Front Office and Sigi are to blame on this one. We have had two big name players in our existence and both left the team unhappy. The Ljungberg signing seemed like an epic fail the minute that I saw him on the field. The hoopla surrounding him was great -he did a ton to help grow the support of the team, but in the end, he never fit Sigi's style (not surprising since Sigi was not coach when Ljungberg was brought aboard.) I expected him to leave town early, but I really thought N'kufo was different. He seemed a lot more humble at first and I had not heard any rumblings about him ever being a problem. Yet at the end of the day, he never seemed to fit. So what's the story? Do we need to blame scouting? Are Hanauer and Sigi not on the same page in terms of vision? Did we simply get sucked in by the big name? Something needs to change. Someone has blood on their hands.
• Now in terms of the team, it wasn't like this was their first rodeo of the 2011season. They have been in preseason for a month. A month and yet they lacked chemistry. It wasn't like White had never played with Montero. To have them look so out of place, even with the news about Nkufo is a little concerning.

A few final notes:

• The crowd was a bit off for some reason
• The uniforms don't look horrible from our seats, but on tv, they look hideous.
• Friberg had a really solid night except for the one turnover that led to the Galaxy goal.
• Besides the faux-breakaway, Donovan did nothing last night. Kudos to James Riley for effectively shutting him down.
• Great having El President back out there.
• Zakuani certainly looked like he was just coming back from a week off.
• Finally, I can't believe how thin we are all of a sudden. In pre-season I thought we had an amazing chance to win at least one trophy because of our depth, but after injuries to Fucito, Evans, Jaqua and the release of Nkufo, we had Lamar Neagle and Miguel Montano as our 2nd and 3rd guys off the bench. Congrats to Neagle for making his debut -he is a great story, but not once did I think he would make the difference. As for Montano, the guy didn't even play in the pre-season game against Vancouver (and we played our entire second team!).

We need to shake this one off and be prepared for another tough game against the Red Bulls this weekend. In the past the team has shown the ability to bounce back on the road after a tough home defeat and we are going to need a little of that magic this weekend. Come On You Sounders!!!