Association Football

It was a rather unattractive chippy affair that was unfortunately interrupted by frequent injuries. In extra time both teams looked exhausted and stopped moving the ball around. All in all was not a great game to watch and seemed destined for a draw and those evil -yet dramatic- penalties. In the end the league was pulling for a Galaxy win, but ESPN got their dramatic choke highlight with the Donovan miss. Congrats to RSL for a great playoff run.

A few more thoughts:

At the end as the game got stretched Donovan should have been up top, instead of mired in the midfield. He is the only one with the pace and the skill for LA to get behind the backline and finish. Have to question Arena there.

As good as the Seattle crowd was, MLS cup finals should not be played on turf. The turf fields makes it harder to control the ball as it skips and bounces all over the place. At times it was clear that neither of these teams regularly play on the surface, as throw balls were badly weighted rolling comfortably beyond their targets.

RSL gave the absurdly slow LA backline fits, but Robbie Findley couldn’t really find the quality to make the backline play – except of course for his scrappy goal. RSL outplayed LA that last part of the game and looked more likely to score.

LA have two high quality attacking players in Donovan and Beckham, and Buddle showed some ability, but other than that the squad is pretty weak in attacking options. How is it that they haven’t scored on a Beckham corner? Ball after ball goes into the box but no one is there to get on the end.

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