US Soccer Snob's US Soccer Update - 5/28/08

MLS Game of the Week
Chicago FIRE 5 - NYRB 1
The Bulls game into match riding a nice unbeaten streak, while the FIRE were still smarting from dropping just their second match of the year. What a difference 90 minutes makes! Again on the edge of a benching the maddening Chad Barrett completes the brace while DP Blanco, showed DP Reyna what it’s like to actually earn your paycheck with a goal and two assists. You think there’s any correlation between Arenas firing and the Reyna transaction? Nah! Pure speculation. Barrett even said what the rest of the team wouldn’t (again), that they were out to show Juan Carlos O$orio that he made a mistake going to the side where coaches go to die.
MOTM – Gonzalo Segares – Sega was a monster shutting down the dangerous Dane Richards and putting one in the back of the net to boot.

MLS Notes
Goal of the Week – Although Beck’s 73 yard bomb was the picture of accuracy, Tom McManus’ 40 yard sizzler to beat an actual keeper got my vote.

The Quakes stepped up on national TV to take down their former selves at the first opportunity. Ann Killion at the Mercury news declared it the day the Earthquakes were officially reborn.

Steve Nash – why wouldn’t you invest in a Montreal team?

State of the Nation
Learning from Arena’s pre-World Cup(cake) warm-ups in ‘06, Bob Bradley prepares the boys for Barbados with a brutal three game stretch against England, Spain and Argentina. While the matches are all friendlies, if the US can get four theoretical points from these matches, it would amount to a statement.
First, the Red, White and Blue step onto the revered Wembley pitch on Wednesday intent on handing England their latest loss. The Three Lions, clearly overlooking the US, were still focused on the results of the Champions League final and the EPL at recent press conferences. This was taken to an extreme as Fabio Capello handed John Terry the captain’s armband in what amounts to a “Get Well Soon” card. Look for a motivated US to get at least a draw from a less than full strength England side.

On the Eurorail
Gooch looks for an escape route out of Belguim, but still must have Titus Bramble cooties on him. Think he’ll be motivated Wednesday.

The other half of the presumed US starting central defense, Carlos Bocanegra, was sent packing by Fulham and will also be looking to impress.

Freddy Adu received less than 200 minutes of first team action in his first season at Benfica. Freddy’s got a big summer coming up and always seems to step it up when wearing the national team jersey, however, it will be interesting to see if the Portuguese splinters (cork?) affect his play in upcoming string of games.

Kasey Keller is right where you never want to be as a keeper, stranded. While he is a year away from a near certain move to MLS’ Seattle franchise, his starting role at Fulham is likely gone due to the signing of Aussie Mark Schwartzer. All Keller did was stand on his head at times to give Fulham the opportunity to save their butts. Keller could point to the goal differential that saved the Cottagers as the reason he should be between the posts next season.

Eddie Johnson, please report to the nearest team trainer. We need to get a pulse check.

US Soccer Snob's US Soccer Update - 4.17.08 -

The Snob is Not Dead
Well, I'm sure many of you are upset that I haven't been helping you lose your money with my pics for the week, so I'll throw out this one.



Crew over United - Take the surprising Crew to ambush a confused United squad at RFK.



Full scale Snob blogs will return in the near term. Thanks for checking in.