Not the Start We Hoped For, Or: Why RBNY Must Have Been Frightened of Us.

By: Michael | February 14th, 2007

So despite what Martha may have you think, all things were not equal in RBNY’s 3-1 defeat of Kansas City yesterday. While Curt Onalfo fielded an extremely mixed roster for the Wizards, it seems as though RBNY felt the need to field a starting XI very close to their regular season’s starters. The mixed Wizards roster should not be disappointed, however, keeping pace with the RBNY 1-1 through 55 minutes. The day belonged to New York, however, as they converted more of the scoring chances from then on, pulling away for the win. Perhaps it was the extra practice they’ve had this year after pillaging the poor U-17 team earlier this week.

I know, I know, perhaps my justification for the defeat is weak. This is the pre-season, however, and all pre-season losers must first explain the outside factors for the loss and then explain why in fact the game was a positive because of all of the good things the team was able to do (despite the fact that scrimmages mean nothing). So the outside factors are clear: RBNY has already played a scrimmage this year, KC has not; RBNY played way more starters in the first half; KC matched RBNY as far as chances go but were rusty on the finish their first time out. As such, we’ll go on to the positives:

The Positives:
1) Many of our scoring chances occurred from unlikely sources. Jack Jewsbury scored on a PK and added some great plays, and even more surprisingly, some of our best chances were spawned by 3rd round SuperDraft pick Edson Elcock, rookie forward Willy Guadarrama, and an offseason acquisition, Russian midfielder Sergei Raad.

2) From all indications, the team put together scoring chances despite missing many of our best players, including Team USA players Eddie Johnson and Jimmy Conrad, injured starter Davy Arnaud, U-23 call-ups Michael Harrington (our top draft pick this season) and Will John, and Scott Sealy (leading goal scorer last year) and Shavar Thomas, both still arriving to camp from their native Caribbean nations.

3) The team is still looking forward to what I think the best period of pre-season training will be, a trip to Buenos Aries.

The bottom line remains, as Curt Onalfo will remind us, is that the pre-season is for ironing out the wrinkles, and yesterday was the first step in doing that: “We saw some good things today and we saw some things we need to work on, which is the purpose of playing exhibition games. We have a lot of tactical work to do, but all the guys are willing to put in the work.”