Earthquakes (& a tornado!) 1 – Toronto FC 0

By: Melissa | March 16th, 2008

Last night in Oakland, before heading out to a mostly forgettable house party, a friend and I stopped at a convenience store so she could pick up a Sparks (bleach!). The dude working at the counter was watching Pumas v Atlante on a little tv and for a few minutes, I seriously pondered asking the guy if I could just stay in the store and watch the game too. With hindsight, I think I would have had a more enjoyable evening if I did.

Last night in Charleston, Jay Hernandez sank our lone goal early in the first half to give us the win against Toronto. In general, we played worlds better than what I saw at Kezar. I think Nick Garcia is going to become the best trade decision of the year since he immediately plugged into the line-up and made a difference. O’Brien unfortunately looked a bit rusty/hesitant/unfamiliar with the guys but its hard to point out anything concrete from his first match as a Quake. Also, I can’t shake the feeling that perhaps our inflated expectations for O’Brien to perform are causing us to ignore some amazing efforts by Ned Gabavoy? But our offense is still kind of meh and rather unoriginal. As we stand right now, it will be very easy for most MLS teams to shut us down and force us into defensive games. And on a personal note, I hate those kinds of games.

James “Repo Man” Riley was by far the star of the match and to borrow a brilliant idea from Robert over at the FC Dallas The Offisde blog, Riley deserves a picture of Scarlett Johansson for his efforts. I swear he was all over the pitch defending and offending and probably running over to the coaches area and refilling their coffees in between plays.

So if there’s anything to take from of yesterday’s game, its the fact that we need more creative play makers asap. I don’t know if we are going to mold young impressionable minds or if we are going to go find “that guy” somewhere but it needs to happen pretty quick. Like maybe before this coming Wednesday at 3pm when we play Charleston Battery.

As usual, The Bay Soccer has an excellent match report of yesterday’s game here.

(Picture taken by bigsoccer user evade6317. Again, I used the bestest image editing software, The Gimp, to crop it.)