Boca Mañana; Conrad on Beckham

By: Michael | March 13th, 2007

Defense and Justice out of the Way, KC Now Moves on to playing Mouth

Playing against Argentinian “B” league side Defensa y Justicia in a split-squad exhibition, the Wizards’ first team played to a 1-1 draw and the reserves pulled out a 1-0 win. The Reserves’ goal was from Ryan Raybould’s second-half PK, while college trial keeper Chris Konopka, dubbed by Big Apple Soccer as “Mr. Zero“. While what I’ve heard out of camp about Konopka has been very good, it seems as though Kronberg is still the heir apparent to KC’s backup job.

The Reserves XI: Pore, Guadarrama, Elcock, John (Nuñez 46), Raybould (Watson 46), Kraus (John 46), Watson (Tsiskaridze 46), Thomas, Hohlbein, Godbolt, Konopka

How did Raybould score his PK in the 63rd minute without being part of the second half lineup? Good question.

Kronberg played with the KC first team as Kevin Hartman is nursing an elbow and writing a blog. Anyone desiring a recap of the blog needs to know only three things: Kevin likes his steak rare and begrudges those who don’t, players taking off their shirts is big news for KC, and during time off, the Wizards participate in such interesting things as playing video games and surfing the internet. Kevin, if you’re reading this, the blog is a great change of pace for kcwizards.com, but would you be willing to try to slip some information past the MLSNet censors? Maybe some game news of relevance? A video clip of the Boca match? Anything? (PS - Welcome to KC. I haven’t gotten a chance to say that yet. I hope your psyched to play behind the best fullback crew in MLS.)

Back to the game… the first team gave up a goal off of a header and then tied it up on a Jack Jewsbury freekick which was finished by Jimmy Conrad. ¡Gol!

The XI: Johnson, Sealy, Harrington, Morsink, Zavagnin, Arnaud (Raybould 46), Burciaga Jr., Garcia, Conrad, Jewsbury, Kronberg

Two notes: Aparently they rewarded Raybould for his PK with a second half appearance playing with the big boys; There were two KC goals ruled offsides, one by Elcock in the first game and the other by Sealy in the second.

And tomorrow we play Boca… I’d love to be in Argentina right now to see the game, but alas, I am relegated to waiting a few eons before the official stats come out. I’ll be interested to see who our starting XI will be.

Notes:

1) We lost the Robbie Rogers lottery… the Columbus Crew won the drawn instead. C’est la vie. I’m trying to think of a witty PowerBall reference here, but nothing is coming to me.

2) Jimmy Conrad made an appearance on MLS radio recently alongside Pablo Masteroni. Here are some highlights:

- On the new training facility, new owners: “No offense to the Hunt group… [but] It’s nice to be number one for someone again.”

- On not making the playoffs: “The uncertainty of where we’re going to be, whether we’ll be sold has an effect on the locker room… now it’s just a matter of getting the guys all on the same page… Curt Onalfo has done a great job.”

- On Beckham: “I don’t know if I’ll even be around him… I’ll probably see his faux-hawk flowing around somewhere… I’ll be marking Landon [on Beckham crosses]… I’m sure he’ll be a target for some guy.” This is now my favorite Beckham comment by an MLS player - “I’ll probably see his faux-hawk flowing around somewhere.” Excellent.

- On Playing for the US: “I’ll probably see a chunk of time away from the club.” “I’ve heard Bob is going to take all MLS guys to Copa America.”