. . . . . . The Daily Soccer . . . . . .

In the runup to the World Cup, our players were routinely thrown together in conversations about transfers to some of Europe's biggest clubs. Gooch to ManU. Adu to Chelsea. Dempsey to anywhere in the EPL. EJ (by his own admission) to anyone who would take him. Gooch to Middlesborough, at the very least. Well, since the World Cup, there has been relative silence on the transfer front for any of the U.S. based national team players. Sure we were disappointing in our play. But doesn't anyone want our players? No one even wants the hard-tackling Pablo Mastroeni??

I guess not.

Perhaps the transfer market will heat up in the winter as the MLS guys will have received a well-deserved break after a long winter, spring and summer of soccer. But it is a small dose of reality that our current crop of youth is not garnering much attention overseas. Yet.

FIRE AWAY

I took in the Fire-DC United game this past Saturday night and was underwhelmed. I say this as my expectations for the match were fairly high. Very high, in fact. DC has been playing out of their minds all season and the Fire are the hometown team with a lot prove in the brand new stadium. Even the league sent their best ref, Mr. Kevin Stott.

Well Mr. Stott was in for a long night. The Fire came out very aggressively (perhaps a tad bit dirty I have to admit) and the game got very punchy very early. But then again whenever Ben Olsen is on the field, I have a tough time garnering much sympathy for him as he's an easy target to dislike with his physical, and sometimes, whiny play.

But the most interesting aspect of the night was that the Fire owned the play in the first half. And even after they went down a man in the second half, they still played well enough to win. The Fire do have talent...especially at forward. Chris Rolfe returned from injury, Andy Herron has been on fire (so of course he pulls up lame), Nate Jaqua has scored enough to get on the all-star team, rookie Calen Carr has looked dangerous when he sees the field and Chad Barrett started a slew of early games. Add Tiago's runs forward, and there's no shortage of guys looking at the goal.

As the game just barely got going, Mr. Stott started flashing yellow as if it was the recent World Cup. But most of his decisions were just. Perhaps if he had shown Logan Pause a straight red in the first half, the game wouldn't have been so rough. But Pause still earned his ejection soon enough after the break on the silliest display of basketball I've ever seen on a soccer field.

In the end, I turned off the set disappointed in DC's play. The great Jaime Moreno looked like he ate a steak right before kickoff and wasn't to be found. Perhaps he didn't like the in-your-face defense of CJ Brown but that's what CJ always brings to the table. And Freddy Adu is all but a wasted talent on the left side of the field. Granted, he could have tracked back a bit more to win back possession and he didn't seem especially sharp, but DC essentially leaves him out on the wing and gives it to him when nothing else is available. That being said, he really didn't beat anyone 1v1 in the first half and his first touch looked Beasleyesque at times.

Then Freddy moved into the center of the park for the latter stages of the game and looked like an all-star. His natural position is definitely attacking midfielder but DC possess one of the best in MLS in Christian Gomez. Too bad Mr. Gomez has a good bit of disdain for Freddy imho and tends to look for Jaime and Alecko Eskandarian as his first choices. Of course, those aren't bad options but the whole thing adds up to bad chemistry for Freddy. I used to think having Freddy on the leading team in MLS was the best for his development, and while it isn't retarding him too badly, he'd be much better served being the maestro for any of the other 11 teams. Imagine Freddy in Los Angeles, where the Galaxy have no one to run the offense (sorry, LD). Freddy would easily find a way to blend in with LD and he'd be a offensive star. Oh well, he'll be off to Europe as soon as he's old enough.

On Monday, I checked out the box score of the Fire/DC reserve league game from Sunday. I had no idea the kind of talent that the reserve league gets. Alecko played 45 minutes, Jim Curtin (former all-star) played 90 and Santino Quaranta (former Nat team midfielder) played major minutes as well. That's a game I'd actually watch to see who's coming off injuries and who's trying to earn their way out of the doghouse. Now I don't think you could pay me to watch an RSL/Crew reserve league game! I may be one of the few who would watch a first team RSL/Crew tilt, but I do have my limits.(Bostrom)