Saturday, August 18, 2007

MLS Saturday Roundup

17 year old Jozy Altidore, perhaps the most hyped young American player not named Freddy Adu scored twice as did former Aston Villa and River Plate Attacker Juan Pablo Angel. David Beckham gave the Big Apple what American soccer and MLS badly need in the nation's largest media market: an entertaining show. In front of 66,000 plus fans at Giants Stadium, Beckham had a hand in three of LA's four goals, but still lost 5-4 to Red Bull New York. Beckham, seems to have already developed a connection with Honduran international Carlos Pavon, who won the Golden boot at this summer's CONCACAF Gold Cup. Beckham now jets off to London where he'll join Steve McClaren's 28 man squad for the match versus Germany at Wembley Wednesday.

Elsewhere in MLS, Cuauhtemoc Blanco had a goal and set up a second by Paulo Wanchope in Chicago's 2-0 win over Real Salt Lake. Chicago is now only 3 pts out of the final playoff spot, held by Columbus who were beat 2-0 at home by DC United behind goals from Fred and Luciano Emilio. Earlier in the day Chivas USA moved within six points of the league lead (with three games in hand) with a 2-0 win over Toronto FC. It seems LA's less glamorous team is doing the winning while the Galaxy is selling tickets for its opponents

2 comments:

City Lou said...

Quite a match for City, aye Kartik!

Dave Trotter said...

Jozy will be the future of American soccer. All the hype around Freddie, I think, messed him up. Now that he is in Portugal, and has less pressure on him, we can see what he can do.

I am just worried that Jozy will have more pressure put on him by the media and sponsors as soon as people see how good he is (and they have already put that pressure on, somewhat).

I hate to say this, but Jozy might want to start looking over at Europe as soon as he turns 18. Less pressure over there.

I hate to say that good, young American talent should leave the MLS, but, as we have seen with Adu, it doesn't always work to their advantage.

If any young American player wants to figure out a career path to take to advance their career, they should look at what Beasley has done.