Way too much going on for my wrung-out brain to process and adequately comment on right now.
Haiti: a tragedy. Jozy Altidore, whose family hails from there, pleads for help.
Conan (the one with the brass balls) v. Leno (with the big chin and small brains) -- I vote for Triumph The Insult Comic Dog.
Fred gone and Perkins back -- two thumbs up! A solid keeper can singlehandedly change a game and raise the team's overall level of play. Look at how the opposite happened with Zack "Bambi" Wells between the pipes. Fred, on the other hand, although he charmed us with his smile, couldn't play defense without fouling, help the team keep possession, or shoot. So this deal is a two-thumber . . . or will be, once we see how the other pieces fall into place (the lineup has holes, but there's some cap space to play with now).
New unis -- er, whatever
So much excitement over red piping and a weird collar. I mean, who cares except the people in suits trying to fleece more money from the fans?
MLS Draft possibly a total non-event for United.
Both discuss the notion that United may have given up too much to get Perkins, and that Fred deserved a chance to prove himself under a different head coach. As for the first point, I think we should wait and see how the rest of the roster changes shake out and what the final version of the 2010 team is going to look like. Draft picks can be a crapshoot; having a keeper of Perkins' caliber is not.
However, I disagree with the second. Fred's jaw droppingly consistent ability to pass the ball to the other team, killing promising attacks, was mostly about Fred. Sure, Soehn's stupid tactics in which players stand around and don't attempt to get open to relieve pressure on the man with the ball played a part, but Quaranta, Pontius, and Gomez all managed to do a lot better under this regime then Fred.
And you could see exactly how it happened: Fred would dribble with his head down . . . head down . . . head down, and then look up, make a snap judgment and attempt a pass to . . . wherever. Fred in the #10 position would have offered all of this plus poor defense in the center of the pitch.
Instead of wondering about how Fred would have done under Onalfo, I'm much more excited about seeing how Danny Szetela will do under Onalfo. Here was a player on some sort of epic Soehnian shitlist, but who showed some solid soccer skills on the rare occasions that he had a chance to play, when, I might add, he was often surrounded by a pretty lackadasical looking team.
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