Soccer Saturday was in full effect yesterday

By: Melissa | May 18th, 2008

In the course of a few hours I wound up following three different soccer games in three different cities: the Quakes/Revs game in Foxborough, the SF Seals game in San Francisco, and the Chivas/DC game in Los Angeles. (The Chivas game was brought to me via the magical gods of SMS and my friend who was flipping back and forth between the game and a Lifetime movie starring Paul Rudd)

And after watching them lose to the Revs, there really isn’t anything new to say about the Quakes. I think the team is still plagued by the same ol’ same ol’ that plagues them every week. The players just haven’t had the time to get comfortable enough with each other yet. And here we saw again, our midfield almost completely disappear and our backline fall apart. Luckily our defense pulled it together during the second half which brings up another observation of note. It seems to take our guys over 45 minutes to get into some sort of sync with each other. We often get it together within the second half but usually our improved performance ends up too little too late. Now, whether there is a correlation between Yallop’s tendency to change the formation in the second half and the team’s late in the game improvements is up for debate. Anyways, here are some more observations…

We can try the long-ball approach or we can try to pass it up the pitch but if our midfield disappears, we are not getting sh*t done. Our little group spent the entire game looking for the Quakes’ midfield. Most of the time, we couldn’t find it.

It’s going to be a bad game if we forget Ronnie O’Brien started. About midway through the first half we wondered aloud if he was playing. The camera eventually panned to him. Boy were we shocked.

We broke another record last night. We now have the fewest goals this MLS season. Did I not say we are going to make the most of our time in the cellar? My friend’s immediate response to this bit of news: If we were playing golf, we’d be winning.

James Riley forgot which team he plays for. In fact, during the game, my friend checked the MLS scores on his phone and it listed Riley as a member of the Revs. We tried to take a picture of that but it came out too blurry to read the words.

Shea Salinas was the Man of the Match. It was a brief glimmer of a chance… except he attempted the shot just a few seconds too late. I say, he still has THE FEAR.

The Food of the Match was the fish & chips I ate at the Pig & Whistle. Very fried. Very greasy. Very good.

If I ever buy a Quakes jersey, I now know what I’ll get printed on the back of it. The words “That Guy” and a random number like 0.08 or pi.

The Personal Moment of the night was the San Francisco fog rolling onto the pitch during the Seals game. Sure, we could no longer see the other end of the field but it certainly made the game picturesque.

We found midfield during the PDL game. The Quakes appear to be a bit busy introducing their new scent: Hint O’ Midfield for Men. The SF Seals, on the other hand, were a straight up shot of midfield. A brown bag full of whiskey and midfield. A huge heaping dose of midfield. In fact, number 21, midfielder Jesse Henderson, scored their only goal and celebrated with a backflip.

If the Quakes win zero cups this season, our little group will just decorate a cup with glue and glitter and drive it down to the Quakes offices to give to them. We hope we can present our cup to the entire team personally. Anyone think they’ll go for it?