MLS Saturday: Unwatchable Football

The biggest game of the MLS sea­son to date takes place today at RFK Sta­dium in front of a national tele­vi­sion audi­ence on ABC. Last night’s action reflected the slop­pi­ness of many play­ers on each team return­ing from inter­na­tional duty in a week­end before July 4th and with antic­i­pa­tion for the upcom­ing Superliga. In other words the foot­ball in some places bor­dered on unbear­able, and offi­ci­at­ing was almost equally con­fused except for the excep­tion of Mauri­cio Navarro, the Cana­dian who is CONCACAF’s top offi­cial who smartly kept the yel­low in his pocket and allowed Juan Car­los Oso­rio to sub­sti­tute Seth Stam­ler out after a hard foul that could have drawn a sec­ond yel­low. Chivas fans won’t be happy, but that is good offi­ci­at­ing: an offi­cial know­ing the sit­u­a­tion and not want­ing to be the issue the next morning.

San Jose should have beaten Chicago. Ramiro Cor­rales and Shea Sali­nas both beat Jon Busch but hit the post while Chicago looked com­pletely inept going for­ward and unset­tled in the mid­field. Two points lost for Frank Yallop’s side even though the match was at Toy­ota Park.

Conor Casey as I said a year ago deserves another look on the national team. Crazy you say? Per­haps but our other for­wards aren’t exactly world beat­ers and Casey is so skilled in many ways that for­wards need to be and has the size to make an impact at the inter­na­tional level. Bruce Arena gave up on Casey fairly early despite his goal scor­ing prowess at Mainz and his return from injury for the Rapids has helped the team’s attack.

New Eng­land was solid but unspec­tac­u­lar against TFC. As I said in response to a reader ques­tion the other day, Steve Ral­ston ought to get called back in to the national team. Ral­ston could be a “poor man’s Eddie Lewis” on the right side which is a kind way of say­ing he’s be our sec­ond most effec­tive wide player. He can also play inside if needed against Guatemala. Ral­ston is a pro­fes­sional who’ll treat an away qual­i­fier with seri­ous­ness it deserves to be treated with.

Kansas City ver­sus Salt Lake was a dif­fi­cult game to watch and deserves lit­tle space in this col­umn. Chivas USA showed some flair in the sec­ond half, but Red Bull fully deserved the draw and sim­ply gave up a gift goal to Ante Razov. We trust DC United and the LA Galaxy, MLS’ two best teams his­tor­i­cally will redeem the league for the unbear­able play of Saturday.