There's a great scene in The Mighty Ducks -- well there are a lot of great scenes, it's an awesome movie, but specifically there's a scene where Coach Bombay is talking to Charlie about how close he came to winning a championship when he was a kid.
should could have been called for a penalty kick. Montreal's only goal came off an almost impossible chip over a 6'6'' Michael Gspurning. If you replay those half dozen shots a hundred times, we probably come out ahead more than we come out behind. But on the flip slide, all of those post and cross bar shots were equally close to missing entirely. And Montreal narrowly missed a couple more goals of their own. If we were a quarter of an inch from winning 2-1, we were also a quarter of an inch from losing 0-3.
Most soccer games come down to a couple crucial plays. It's not enough to almost score, you have to finish the few genuinely good opportunities that come. It's so cliche, but that's the difference between winning and losing. It's almost always just a quarter of an inch here or there.
A 0-1 loss to start the season against an expansion team in their second year, made up of mostly old washed up Italians, is nothing to panic about. But it's something to worry about. At least a little bit. We didn't lose just because Alonso was out and we weren't able to control the midfield. Or because our back line was missing at least two -- potentially three -- from our "ideal eleven". We lost because, as a whole, we played sloppy. Careless and sloppy. Outside of a few impressive moments, we looked uninspired and shockingly mediocre.
I know it's only the first game of the season, but it's not like these guys have been sitting around getting caught up on Downton Abbey all offseason. Eddie and Evans have been playing with the US Men's National Team for weeks, Martinez has been wiping the floor with the US Men's National Team, and all those second-stringers have been winning preseason tournaments. Of course we'd be a little rusty, but not that rusty. Maybe Estrada set our expectations unreasonably high last year after scoring a hat trick on opening day against some other so-so Canadian team. Suffice it to say, I expected more. I think 38,998 of us expected more.
Next week we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves. If we play like this down in Mexico, it'll be an excruciatingly long 90 minutes. But if we play to our potential, or at least somewhere in that range, there's a lot to be optimistic about. If Joe Flacco can win a Super Bowl, anything's possible -- that should be Nike's next ad campaign. Just do it, Flacco did.
Coach Bombay: I go in, I triple deke. I fake the goalie right out of his pads.It's a scene that expresses exactly how I feel about the Sounders game last night. We had our chances, plenty of shots off the crossbar and one or two off the post. Eddie Johnson got taken down in the box on what
The puck's headed in, and then, Clang! Hits the post.
We lost in overtime.
A quarter of an inch this way and it would have gone in.
A quarter of an inch, Charlie.
Charlie: Yeah, but a quarter inch the other way and you'd have missed completely.
Most soccer games come down to a couple crucial plays. It's not enough to almost score, you have to finish the few genuinely good opportunities that come. It's so cliche, but that's the difference between winning and losing. It's almost always just a quarter of an inch here or there.
A 0-1 loss to start the season against an expansion team in their second year, made up of mostly old washed up Italians, is nothing to panic about. But it's something to worry about. At least a little bit. We didn't lose just because Alonso was out and we weren't able to control the midfield. Or because our back line was missing at least two -- potentially three -- from our "ideal eleven". We lost because, as a whole, we played sloppy. Careless and sloppy. Outside of a few impressive moments, we looked uninspired and shockingly mediocre.
I know it's only the first game of the season, but it's not like these guys have been sitting around getting caught up on Downton Abbey all offseason. Eddie and Evans have been playing with the US Men's National Team for weeks, Martinez has been wiping the floor with the US Men's National Team, and all those second-stringers have been winning preseason tournaments. Of course we'd be a little rusty, but not that rusty. Maybe Estrada set our expectations unreasonably high last year after scoring a hat trick on opening day against some other so-so Canadian team. Suffice it to say, I expected more. I think 38,998 of us expected more.
Next week we have an opportunity to redeem ourselves. If we play like this down in Mexico, it'll be an excruciatingly long 90 minutes. But if we play to our potential, or at least somewhere in that range, there's a lot to be optimistic about. If Joe Flacco can win a Super Bowl, anything's possible -- that should be Nike's next ad campaign. Just do it, Flacco did.
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