Some Soccer News for Apr 4, 2016

It's Day 95 of 2016.


Carolina RailHawks 2-1 Minnesota United - CRH goals by Tiyi Shipalane and Austin Da Luz. MU goal by Christian Ramirez.

MY NOTES:

• A baffling dud from Minnesota United to start the new season. A 2-1 loss at Carolina RailHawks. Outside of an awesome goal by Christian Ramirez in the 3rd minute Minnesota never threatened the Carolina goal. And after the 15th min there were no goals scored in the game. Minn controlled the ball the entire 2nd half, but were not overly dangerous at any point.

• Minnesota hasn't won in Carolina since 2011.

• The midfield pair of Jordan and Brovsky did not do a good enough job of breaking up or slowing down the Carolina attack. They were over-run.

• For some reason Lance Laing started the game on the bench. He came on in the 60th.

• Bernardo Anor smashed heads with Kareem Moses and both players appeared to be knocked out cold. (It was a nasty clash of head, sickening to me. I really hope they are both ok.)

• Lang made an immediate difference for MU but it still wasn't enough.

• Simon Mensing who came on in the 60th for Carolina got a straight Red in the 88th for a horrible tackle on Stefano Pinho. Pinho was lucky not to have had his legged snapped on that one. And Mensing argued like crazy that it wasn't a bad foul. Holy smokes was he wrong.

• Pinho made his debut with 20 minutes to go and added one attempt at goal that he wished he could get a 2nd crack at. Other then that he seemed to spend his time in an offside position.

• The real issue in the game though was the Minn defense. Its what everyone feared. The team did not improve the D in the offseason at all. Hell they barely acknowledged or addressed that it was an issue. The defense was unorganized, slow, disjointed, mistake prone. Both fullbacks, Davis and Venegas, made huge errors which were to blame for both Carolina goals.

Match report from Cary, NC. By Neil Morris of WRAL sports.

Full match highlights. [VIDEO] From Minnesota United.

Watch Superman's spectacular goal over and over:

.@Chris_Ramirez17's first touch of the season... ?????? #CR21https://t.co/yeemYn7CA6

— Minnesota United FC (@MNUnitedFC) April 3, 2016

dN

NASL Week 1:
-Sat Apr 2
Fort Lauderdale Strikers 1-1 Miami
Tampa Bay Rowdies 0-0 Indy Eleven
Rayo OKC 0-0 Edmonton
-Sun Apr 3
New York Cosmos 3-0 Ottawa Fury
-8 goals in 5 games = 1.6 gpg

MY NOTES:

• The two teams who met in last years final, New York 3-0 Ottawa, met again on opening weekend, and the score was exactly what we expected. The Fury saw ALL of their good players and head coach bail, and they are back to ground zero. While the Cosmos reloaded and are again the pride of the league.

• Rayo OKC drew a packed house sellout of 6,416 for their first game, which was a 0-0 tie v Edmonton. Great job by them filling the stadium.

• The other 4 stadiums that hosted home games were well under capacity. The saddest was just 2,331 for the Ft Lauderdale v Miami game. I have a feeling Miami FC is going to go the same way as the other Miami teams of the past, no attendance to speak of.

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NASL Week 2:
-Sat Apr 9
Indy v Ottawa
OKC v Carolina
Miami v Tampa
-Sun Apr 10
Edmonton v Minnesota
New York v Jacksonville
-Bye: Ft Lauderdale

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Matt Miazga of Chelsea made his Premier League debut on Saturday, starting and playing the full 90 in a 0-4 win at Aston Villa. Fantastic!

• He was 1 of four Under 21 players who got the start for Chelsea, and the club website had a nice write up on his performance. Team manager Guus Hiddink had more comments on Miazga too.

On a related note Brad Guzan and Aston Villa proved that they are the worst team in the Premier League this season, fully deserving of relegation, losing at home 0-4 to a Chelsea team that started four U21 reserves.

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Timmy Chandler appears full recovered from injury now and made this 2nd start in three weeks for Eintracht Frankfurt.

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Disaster was avoided last week for the USMNT, so whats next? Has anything actually been fixed? By Brian Straus of Sports Illustrated.

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Abby Wambach arrested for DUI - apologizes on Facebook.

• Really disappointing to see both Alejandro Bedoya and Jozy Altidore take cheapshots at Wambach after her arrest.

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Inconceivably Leicester City is one step closer to the miracle title as they won and 2nd place Tottenham tied to push the league lead to 7 points with 6 games to play!

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English Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action. From the Guardian.

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Chelsea has hired Italy manager Antonio Conte as their new leader. He will take over once the European Championship has ended.

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The UEFA Champions League Quarterfinals begin on Tuesday with Bayern v Benfica and Barca v Atleti. Then on Wed its Wolfsburg v Real and PSG v Man City.

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The Panama Papers: Leaked files from a Panamanian law firm are a massive bomb being dropped on world football (and governments, drug cartels and the mafia.) A group of journalists calling themselves the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has discovered links to many secret companies and bank accounts tied to big time soccer executives and players, for the purpose of hiding money for tax shelters and bribery.

• Juan Pedro Damiani, a current member the FIFA Ethics Committee has his hands all over these off shore accounts!

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MLS Week 5
-Fri Apr 1
New England Revolution 1-0 New York Red Bulls
-Sat Apr 2
Chicago Fire 1-0 Philadelphia Union
Colorado Rapids 1-0 Toronto
Sporting Kansas City 1-2 Real Salt Lake
Dallas 1-1 Columbus Crew
Vancouver Whitecaps 0-0 LA Galaxy
Seattle Sounders 1-0 Montreal Impact
San Jose Earthquakes 1-1 DC United
-Sun Apr 3
Orlando City 4-1 Portland Timbers
-16 goals in 9 games = 1.8 gpg

MY NOTES:

• Salt Lake and Orlando are the only two teams left without a loss. Both have 2 wins and 2 ties.

• Cup favorites Red Bulls joined fellow faves Seattle as the 2 teams with 3 losses already.

• Another favorite Columbus is still winless, gaining another tie.

• DC is the only other team that is yet to win a game.

• KC lost for the first time this season, and at home too, in front of their 73rd consecutive sold out crowd!

• Salt Lake has a guy named Burritto.

• Clint Dempsey did what he gets paid the big bucks to do and the winless Sounders defeated the lossless Impact.

• Ariel Lassiter, son of Roy, made his MLS debut, getting the start and going 67 minutes for the LA Galaxy on Saturday.

• Galaxy had a man advantage for 60 minutes and could not manage to score a goal against Vancouver. Oof.

• In Orlando two very high powered offenses took to the field but it turns out only 1 of them showed up, the other was Halloween costumes. OC have 4 unanswered goals and PT only got theirs in the dying minutes of the game after it was long over.

• It was no surprise that with Rikki Kaka making his season debut and having a great game that Orlando rolled.

• You can take the 2 main Goonies (Gordon + Lenhart) out of the Earthquakes, but you can't take the Goonie spirit away, as the Quakes did with the Quakes have always done - get a late goal (Adam Jahn) to steal points.

• I will say this simply: Red Bulls have been awful this season.

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16 Red Cards already in MLS. The referees are going all-in with this effort to stop poor tackles. Some think its overboard. I disagree. Slide tackle with studs up, missing the ball and connecting with the opponents foot/ankle/ leg can end up pretty gruesome.

• 4 handed Reds out this week.

• But...... last year at this same stage there were 14 Reds and in 2011 there were 19. So maybe this is just hyperbole. Stats from MLS.

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The best MLS weekly match recap. By Matt Doyle of MLS.

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DC United finally snapped up free agent goalkeeper Tally Hall, who has sat around so long waiting for the phone to right that some were beginning to think he had traces of plutonium on him. (I was probably the only one thinking that.)

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Patrick Viera is lining his NYC team up on the field in a way that few, if any, in the world are trying these days - narrow. By Kristan Heneage of Yahoo.

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MLS Week 6:
-Fri Apr 8
Philadelphia Union v Orlando City
-Sat Apr 9
Montreal Impact v Columbus Crew
New England v Toronto
DC United v Vancouver Whitecaps
New York Red Bulls v Sporting Kansas City
Dallas v San Jose Earthquakes
Real Salt Lake v Colorado Rapids
-Sun Apr 10
Houston Dynamo v Seattle Sounders
New York City v Chicago Fire
LA Galaxy v Portland Timbers

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Real Madrid returned the favor by beating Barcelona at home 1-2 on Saturday, but Barca still has a 6 point lead at the top with 7 games left in the season. Christiano Ronaldo with the late winner saves a little face.

• This was the first Barcelona loss in 40 games! Wow.

The Bird Is The Word