Ended a streak. Started a streak.

By: Herschel | September 10th, 2009

Back again. I missed out on commenting about our victory last Saturday against New England which brought some renewed enthusiasm to the KC faithful. This was mainly due to the fact that there was way too much soccer to watch with the WC qualifiers over the weekend. A good dose of soccer overload which was great

I did watch the game against NE but did not really get overly excited because KC really needed to get a streak going after the string of goaless games before one could cheer wholeheartedly and think about a turn around. Against DC we again forgot about scoring and got caught looking at the ball during our opponent’s goal, which led to another loss.

KC on Wednesday started moving the ball well against a sluggish and slow DC team that gave Claudio Lopez a lot of room to roam the left side of the field. His runs generated a lot of chances that KC attackers could not put in goal time and time again. DC then started to come out of its shell using Chris Pontius on the left side and giving the KC defense something to worry about. Still, KC had the brunt of the chances.

On the 39th minute a short corner found KC napping which resulted in a short cross to Bryan Namoff who beat a slow to react Hirsig, redirecting the ball to the back post, where Pontius dove in for the header that went off the post and right to Luciano Emilio who just blasted it in from in front of the goal. Kind of a pinball type goal, but well played while most of the KC players looked on.

KC tried to react but just could not do much. An interesting group of changes from Peter Vermes really didn’t help; he pulled a dangerous Herculez Gomez for Chance Myers who basically managed to do what he’s been doing since coming back into games: cross the ball into the box time and time again and then added to that getting ejected on a stupid play. Vermes also brought in Zoltan for a HUGELY ineffective Davy Arnaud who should earn a stint on the bench after missing 3 sitters and then a timid Graham Zusi in the last 10 minutes of the game. I like Zoltan, but playing a goal down and trying to salvage the playoffs would it kill him to play 3 forwards (I know Lopez was there but he was on the wing)? What is there to lose?

At the end KC fell short and the playoff train seems uncatchable. Peter Vermes still hopes to reverse the trend, but with this team he’s fielding I seriously doubt it. Unless our last 7 games are against a 10 player New England team that spots us an own goal it’s just not going to happen.

Player of the Game: Lopez

Goat of the Game: Arnaud

On the ref: I really don’t like Terry Vaughn as a ref. He makes the game choppy by not allowing players to play fluidly and letting them play on more; hopefully his style won’t get him killed when he goes somewhere in Central America to ref a game and he makes a mess of things. There’s a reason he’s called “Terriblon” (Terrible) everywhere he goes south of Mexico. That being said he did not affect the result; KC lost because of all the missed opportunities. Myers is a dunce who, with a yellow, playing away from home, decided to trip the DC mascot from behind; according to FIFA rules a trip from behind can be considered a yellow card offense; 8 out of 10 just call it and let it go, but you can’t take that chance with Terriblon.

Now on to NY.

Here are the highlights from Saturday. The High!!