Superliga. Take 2

By: Herschel | June 24th, 2009

KC travels to New England to play the walking wounded Revolution. A win for NE and they are in to the next round, while a KC win will get them close and leave everything in the group up in the air until next Sunday when they play Santos at the CAB.

After the exhausting game Sunday vs. Atlas in 95+ degree weather where KC lost Hercules Gomez to a heat injury and Roger Espinoza to a Red Card, I am totally in the dark regarding who they are going to play. Even though it’s well known that the Superliga is a tournament with a nice $1 million purse, I hope that Coach Onalfo is giving the upcoming the US Cup the same amount of attention since the winner of that will move to the CONCACAF Champions tournament (DC United won it and is in the tournament even after a poor year). Because of all this I believe he’ll be looking into using a mixed lineup giving some of the players (especially the older ones) a break while bringing in some players that have already been MLS starters.

Unless I’m mistaken KC traveled to NE with 18 players, with Michael Kraus taking Roger Espinoza’s slot. In view of this I would expect, the likes of Jimmy Conrad, Claudio Lopez, Josh Wolff and maybe even Santiago Hirsig to be on the bench, opening the field to Raushawn McKenzie, Michael Harrington, Abe Thompson and Kurt Morsink to take their spots with a little shuffling of the positions. Also, since Davy Arnaud will be going to the Gold Cup, I would expect him to play if he’s available since his schedule will be less demanding than the 5 games in 2 weeks that the Wizards are coming up against.

This is my educated (and probably wrong) guess about today’s lineup:

Hartman
Watson—Hohlbein—McKenzie—Harrington
Harrington—Morsink—Jewsbury—Gomez
Thompson—Arnaud

It’s tough to predict a result but to come back with a tie would be nice for KC since they can assure themselves a spot in the next round with a win vs. Santos on Sunday. NE, like I said before, is depleated with injuries but that sometimes is opens the window to either a team underestimating their oponent, or some of the oponent’s younger players wanting to show what they have. This is a trap game for KC with the Santos game coming up; it will be tough and physical.

KC-2 (Arnaud,Jewsbury)
NE-1 (Nyassi)