January 31, 2006
Tags: Soccer | Posted by Orion at @ 5:18 pm
Welcome to a new SportsGeekz feature! I’m Orion, and I’ll be filling in the gaping hole in Allen’s knowledge of all things related to that ‘other’ football game, better known in this part of the world as soccer. We’ll focus primarily on the US National Team’s march to World Cup 2006 in Germany later this summer, with a few hits from other world teams as well as the preparation for MLS’s 11th season. Of course there’ll be plenty of New England Revolution news, too, just to preserve the local color. [Editor’s note: Yes, Orion and I are both in New England. And no, we’re not apologizing for our New England bias, either — please note the picture of Tom Brady in our masthead.]
Let’s kick off this month’s column with a look at the US’s performance in their recent international friendlies, where Bruce Arena is trying desperately to pick half of his 23-man World Cup squad from a record crop of MLS players.
USA 0:0 CAN (1/22/06)
A lackluster and uninspired performance from a bunch of players who should know better. If you’re competing for a roster spot for Germany, every single performance from now until May is crucial to you. The US played down to Canada’s level, although to be fair I should say that Canada (with former MLS man Frank Yallop behind the bench) is no longer quite the perennial CONCACAF doormat that they once were. With little else to talk about, we’re left to ponder the implications of media darling and US Soccer “savior” du jour Freddy Adu’s first cap, coming on for the last 15 minutes of the game and having no impact whatsoever.
On the home front, local boy Matt Reis (NE Revolution ‘keeper) also got his first cap as well as his first shutout. Long in the shadow of Kevin Hartman (his teammate first in college and then at the Galaxy before the Revs picked him up), Reis is finally getting a well-deserved chance to shine on the national team. Don’t go booking him a ticket for Germany, but keep an eye on him for 2010.
USA 5:0 NOR (1/29/06)
Ahhhh… that’s better. I think this match was best summed up by Jaime Trecker, writing for Fox Soccer Channel: “Five years ago, this afternoon’s matchup was the type of game that the Americans would struggle to dominate. Today the Americans put Norway down like a sick animal – quickly and efficiently, and it is to their complement that they did it without the aid of their far more experienced European-based members.”
It was a good day for the local boys once again, as Arena chose a Revolution-flaovered attacking squad: Twellman up front (3 goals?!) with Pat Noonan and Clint Dempsey on the wings providing service. I don’t know that Noonan is best choice on the left wing but I really like Clint’s workrate on the right, and right midfield is a huge hole for us going into Germany. It remains to be seen whether Clint can fill that role on the international level, and on a consistent basis.
Quick Takes
» Freddy Adu became the youngest ever capped American, at 16 years and 234 days of age. He’s still eligible for the U-17 and U-20 teams, not to mention the U-23 Olympic squad… and frankly, I think he should stay there. Wait until he’s getting first-team time at United (be it DC or Manchester, your choice) before you give him a real shot on the full senior side.
» Speaking of United, FC Barcelona is rumored to be interested in buying the operating rights to the DC franchise. I think foreign investment would be a good thing for the league, but I’m not holding my breath on this deal. Rumors have been floating around about this stuff since MLS Cup ‘05 and I wouldn’t be suprised if this was all just hot air.
» The Houston franchise (formerly of San Jose) announced their name and colors this past week. We’ve already taken pages from England (DC United, FC Dallas), Spain (Real Salt Lake), and South America (CD Chivas USA)… now we’re going for Germany. “Houston 1836? is an interesting choice. My major problem with it is that German teams like 1860 Munich are referring to the year in which their team was founded, not their city. Nice try, Houston.
» Allen Hopkins of Fox Soccer Channel gives the Revs a B on their MLS SuperDraft picks. I’ll admit to being mostly ignorant of this year’s incoming class, but it sounds like Steve Nicol is pretty happy with the squad that he already has – and who wouldn’t be after last season’s performance? Investing in youth and taking a couple of gambles is likely to pay off in the future, with very little downside.
» That’s it for now. Next time I’ll have my predictions for the World Cup Finals and analysis of the upcoming friendlies against Japan and Guatemala. In the meanwhile, if there’s something you’ve been dying to know
about soccer, send it along and I’ll answer it in an upcoming column.
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January 23, 2006
Tags: NFL, NBA | Posted by Allen at @ 11:31 pm
Man, busy couple of days…
» Congratulations to the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers for earning the right to play in Super Bowl XL (as predicted here Friday). I know that Seahawks-Steelers isn’t exactly a marquee matchup for the NFL (though, c’mon, you’ve gotta admit–at the very least, it’s got to have more national interest than the St. Louis-Tennessee Super Bowl did), but I truly think this game has the potential to be one of our more exciting Super Bowls (like the aforementioned Rams-Titans game). These two teams are pretty evenly matched — both have balanced offenses, hard-hitting defenses, solid coaching, excellent young quarterbacks, ravenous fan bases. I’m going to need all two weeks between now and the game to make my pick.
» I was glad to note that the officiating in general wasn’t a problem in the conference championship games. The refs in the Pittsburgh-Denver game seemed mostly to back off and let the guys play; the refs in the Seattle-Carolina game seemed to take their time and perhaps be a little too careful with their calls. Neither game had perfect officiating, but I don’t expect perfection, just competence, which is what we got — and that fact puts those two games a step up on last weekend’s.
» Welcome back, Jake Plummer. We missed you. Picking on Kyle Orton and Mike McMahon just wasn’t as much fun.
» Remind me never ever never to get tackled by Lofa Tatupu. (Hey, it could happen — he’s from Plainville, Massachusetts, which is only two towns over from me. Y’never know when I could, like, run into him at the Borders on Route 1 or something, and maybe I’d meet his eye and he’d think I’d looked at him wrong, like I wasn’t giving him any respect ’cause nobody gives the Seahawks any damn respect (really I wasn’t disrespecting the guy — I’d just seen a picture of a half-naked Nicole Richie in Maxim and it made me feel kinda sick), and he could decide he needed to take my ass down right fucking there in Borders, over by the magazines in front of the coffee shop. And then Tedy Bruschi would show up, ’cause he lives in North Attleboro, so of course he’s hanging at Borders when all of this goes down, and Bruschi can’t let Tatupu just plaster a civilian like that, it’s just not right, so Tedy flies into him like Lofa’s got a big number 18 on his chest, and then somebody throws a yellow flag for a late hit, and Bruschi’s got to move his family back fifteen yards. Could happen.)
» The annual NFL coaching shuffle’s just about wrapped up, with only Oakland yet to find anyone willing to submit to being Al Davis’ lap dog. The Texans finally get to nab Gary Kubiak, which might just be a good fit — if Kubiak could turn Plummer into a Pro Bowl quarterback, he should be able to do wonders for David Carr. Getting an offensive-minded coach was an imperative knowing that they’re going to take Reggie Bush with the first pick, and hiring Kubiak was a better choice than hiring someone like Mike Martz — at least Kubiak’s suckage is still purely theoretical.
NFL Coaching Carousel
The Team The Gone The New
Buffalo Mike Mularkey Dick Jauron
Detroit Steve Mariucci/
Dick Jauron Rod Marinelli (*)
Green Bay Mike Sherman Mike McCarthy (*)
Houston Dom Capers Gary Kubiak (*)
Kansas City Dick Vermeil Herm Edwards
Minnesota Mike Tice Brad Childress (*)
New Orleans Jim Haslett Sean Payton (*)
New York Jets Herm Edwards Eric Mangini (*)
Oakland Norv Turner TBD
St. Louis Mike Martz Scott Linehan (*)
* N00bie
» Buffalo picks former Bears coach Dick Jauron out of the recycling bin, dusts him off and puts him in charge of a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in six years. We think Jauron should do fine in Buffalo since their defense is so close to playoff caliber already — a good defensive coach is exactly what the Bills needed. (OK, well, a good defensive coach and a real quarterback. That’d help, too.)
Jauron’s hiring brings us to a point we’ve been meaning to make for a week or so — why aren’t more guys with NFL head-coaching experience getting second chances? Of the nine teams which have hired new coaches this offseason, seven of them hired guys who have never been an NFL head coach (many of them have never been head coaches at any level). We realize that we just poked fun at Mike Martz above for having already proven he sucks, which can’t be said of all the new guys… yet. But not all of the veteran head coaches out there were as wretched as Martz.
I’m not at all against giving coordinators their shots to be head coaches. But it seems that the guys with experience aren’t even getting that many interviews, which we find bizarre. We think part of it might be that franchises are afraid of alienating their fans by hiring coaches who have already been “failures” with other teams. It’s easier for the Lions, for instance, to promote “promising” new coach Rod Marinelli than it might have been to promote, say, Jim Haslett.
But remember, all of you teams rushing to pick up the new guys: Bill Belichick was 36-44 with only one playoff appearance when he was coach of the Cleveland Browns. Coaches have to learn somewhere, and many times the lessons they learn in those first “failed” stints make them far better coaches the second time around. Just sayin’.
» So after unbeatens Duke and Pitt both lost early in the day on Saturday… do you think unbeaten Florida just wanted to be trendy or what? C’mon, Gators — if all of the other unbeaten teams had jumped off a bridge, would you have jumped, too? Would you have gotten your nose pierced just ’cause Duke did?
» Eighty-one points, huh? Yeah, well… you’re still an asshole.
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January 20, 2006
Tags: NFL | Posted by Allen at @ 9:41 pm
Home team in caps.
Pittsburgh over DENVER. Something in my gut tells me that one of the two road teams will be pulling off the upset and going to Detroit; I think the Steelers will be the one. I think a lot of what it comes down to is that, even after a 13-3 regular season and a playoff win over the two-time defending champions, I’m still not sold on the Broncos. I’ve watched them play several times this year and they just don’t look that good — they are a good team, don’t get me wrong, but they’ve never seemed to have that swagger or that ability to beat the snot out of their opponent that I expect from teams that make it to the Super Bowl.
Once again, weather’s not going to be a factor — it’s a shame for Denver to get two home playoff games and not have the weather help them out for either one. Though, of course, the referees helped them out plenty last weekend. (Ba DUM bum.)
Pittsburgh will be able to run on Denver, but Denver won’t be able to say the same. The Steelers will successfully enact the game plan the Patriots wanted to accomplish last week: jump on the Broncos early and make Jake Plummer throw the ball. Two Troy Polamalu interceptions (one returned for a touchdown) later, and the Steelers are in Super Bowl XL. And it won’t even be close. Pittsburgh 27, Denver 10.
SEATTLE over Carolina. Trying to pick a winner has been making shreddy twisty bits of my brain all week. I can’t get a handle on it. Carolina’s been playing really well the last few weeks, but every time this season they’ve had a stretch of a few great games, they’ve suffered a humiliating loss. And Seattle, 14-2 or not, just has the feel of a team waiting to fold. I don’t know.
I eventually decided to go with Seattle, though not without a healthy degree of doubt. The Seahawks have home field advantage. The Panthers are down to Nick Goings at running back, and while Goings is a perfectly good backup (he filled in great for Stephen Davis and DeShaun Foster in ‘04), he hasn’t gotten much work this year. Since Goings will be the ground attack, the ‘Hawks will probably quintuple-cover Steve Smith and dare Carolina to run. I don’t think they’ll be able to. Two short Shaun Alexander touchdowns and one by Joe The Fucking Man Jurevicius do it for Seattle; Smith ends up with 130 yards and a TD, but he can’t do all of it by himself (…or can he? This point’s where some of my doubt comes in).
All bets are off, by the way, if the Seahawks start trash-talking Smith before the game. You don’t jab sharp sticks into the lion’s cage, guys… it’s only gonna make him mad. Seattle 21, Carolina 17.
Last week: 1-3 (ouch). Playoffs: 3-5.
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January 17, 2006
Tags: NFL | Posted by Allen at @ 8:27 pm
» Just so you don’t forget (and don’t let our 1-3 weekend picking the NFL playoffs fool you), we do occassionally know what we’re talking about around here. We called it here fifteen days ago:
The Saints’ coaching job will be a pretty tough sell for owner Tom Benson and GM Mickey Loomis; I’d expect that position to go to someone with no NFL head-coaching experience.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the desperate-for-a-head-coaching-job Sean Peyton, former quarterbacks coach of the Dallas Cowboys and new head coach of the New Orleans Saints.
Petyon has been a candidate for head coaching jobs for the last several years, dating to his days with the New York Giants; he was almost named coach of the Oakland Raiders a couple of years ago before backing out of the gig to stay with the Cowboys. And really, given what we’ve seen from Oakland the last two years, can you really blame the guy? Had he taken the Raiders job, he’d likely still have been available now for the Saints job, but with a failed first go-round as coach on his resume.
Peyton’s hiring just solidifies the assumption that the Saints will be selecting a quarterback with the second overall selection in the draft — the only question, of course, is whether they’ll take Matt Leinart or Vince Young. (And secretly, we don’t think it’s even that much of a question, but the media has to have something to write about for the next three months.)
» A Steelers fan had a heart attack after Jerome Bettis’ fumble on the Indianapolis one-yard line. We’re only surprised there weren’t more heart attacks in Pittsburgh because of that game — especially given the atrocious state of the officiating in that game. (Yeah, we know we harped on this topic yesterday, but we’re not done. Referee Pete Morelli should’ve been hauled out to midfield, stipped naked, hogtied and forced to let Troy Polamalu have his way with him. And we still think Polamalu would’ve gotten the worse screwing.)
Steelers coach Bill Cowher has come out in support of the refs, trying to temper comments made by increasingly vocal linebacker Joey Porter — all in all a good move for Cowher, we think, since we can’t imagine the referees in next Sunday’s AFC Championship game giving his team the benefit of the doubt on close calls if he’d ripped the officials. Do we really think the refs do that kind of thing on purpose, allow personal feelings to influence penalty calls? No, not usually, but they are human (most of them, anyway…we think), so why take chances?
And if the NFL fines coaches and players for castigating refs in public fora, shouldn’t they give small bonuses to coaches and players for praising officials in the same contexts? Just askin’.
» Norv Turner’s already found a new job, and he doesn’t even have to move: he’s the new offensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. We think this is a great move by the Niners, since Turner’s repeatedly proven himself to be a much better coordinator than head coach, and San Francisco clearly needed to do something to improve that offense. We mean, c’mon…their offense was so terrible last year — worst in the NFL — that their old coordinator wound up parlaying that gig into a head coaching job.
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January 16, 2006
Tags: NFL, MLB, Rumor Mill | Posted by Allen at @ 11:09 pm
» Against our advice, the New York Jets have hired Patriots defensive coordinator Eric Mangini as their new head guy Even though we disagreed with this decision, we’ll defer to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King here: better to get the guy you want before he’s ready than not to be able to get him when he is. As long as the Jets are willing to give him a chance to succeed, to invest a minimum of three or four years in Mangini, this move might work out. But Jets fans need to be willing to accept a couple of serious rebuilding years with a newbie head coach and probably a newbie quarterback and running back, and likely an entirely new defense since Mangini’s a defensively-minded guy. Long-term, hiring Mangini might prove to be a fantastic move; we’re just afraid that he’ll never get to that long term, especially in the glare of the New York media. Best of luck, Eric Mangini — you’re gonna need it.
» Mangini’s departure to the swamps of New Jersey, or course, leaves yet another hole in the New England coaching staff, once a rock of consistency. We hope that Bill Belichick’s hunt for new coordinators goes more quickly and more smoothly than last year’s miserable debacle. The Pats still don’t even have an offensive coordinator after Charlie Weis ditched them for Notre Dame last year.
» The NFL admitted that referee Pete Morelli was clearly watching something other than videotape of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu’s interception of Indianapolis’ Peyton Manning when Morelli’s head was in the replay hood — may we hope it was an episode of “Arrested Development”? While the play was clearly an interception, fumble and recovery — all by Polamalu — Morelli decided to embellish the NFL rulebook with his own creative interpretation of the phrase “act common to the game.” While we at Sportsgeekz don’t like even to think of such things, we ask if maybe it’s worthwhile to see if Mr. Morelli has any ties to any known gambling cartels…
» Obviously using a slightly different definition of the word “classic,” 43-year-old Roger Clemens and 41-year-old Barry Bonds are both part of the initial roster for the U.S. team for the World Baseball Classic.
» The Not-Yet-Las-Vegas Marlins signed super-duper starting pitcher Dontrelle Willis to a one-year, $4.35 million contract, essentially giving themselves more time to sign him to the ginormous contract sure to come his way soon. We realize that the Marlins have been shedding payroll the way the Patriots shed coordinators (ba dum bump), but they have got to hold onto Willis, no matter what the cost. He’s the face of their franchise and can be for the next 10-to-12 years, and they’ll need that kind of marketable personality to help sell season tickets when they move to Vegas.