WVHooligan - Soccer Blog

Yes I will admit I stayed up in the late hours to watch a little preseason soccer on the internet telly. I watched enough of the Dynamo game to get a sense that Houston will still be fine even though they played a club that was on the way out of their season and that LA played bad enough that they still have a long way to go here.

I will start with Houston. All the ragging on who will score other than Brian Ching sometimes isn’t fair but then again this is only a preseason match and with as many games as the Dynamo have this season Ching won’t be able to carry the load like the Orange are hoping he will.

Still, it was a solid game last night from the little bit that I stayed awake to see. Though it was hard to judge Houston against a club that just rapped up their regular season and just won the A-League in Sydney FC.

LA on the other hand played sloppy and lost in the process. I know some of their key parts were missing like Carlos Ruiz but not even Golden Boots could save them in this game. The Gals had fewer chances than their Japanese counterpart and they didn’t take advantage of any mistakes that came their way, unlike the club from Japan that scored an early goal off a Galaxy mistake.

It was good to see Beckham play a full 90 and not look injuried in the process. His fitness really impressed me last night unlike most of his teammates. I am convinced that he will make this club better this season, unlike last year. His touch on the ball is far better than most, if not all of the league right now. And damn, he was all over the field last night.

Another thing that I noticed was how weak the Galaxy keepers are right now. Steve Cronin is decent at best right now and will take some time to get used to being the number one. His backup, who’s name I cannot remember right now, I thought was really shaky and looked uncomfortable out there with some of the main starters. I don’t know it was the field turf that was causing some bobbles of the ball or what…all I know is he looked bad out there.

In all it was nice to see a MLS club win but it would have been nice to see both win last night. Still I think this little competition has been neat. Its not too much or too little of a tournament. The only real mistake I think they made when scheduling it was putting the Dynamo game second last night. People in Houston may have stayed up to watch it but it would have been smarter to put it first so they wouldn’t have to wait until midnight or later to see the game start. I think people on the west coast could have been fine waiting for the Galaxy game to start later on at 10 pm their time. Other than that I think its been good so far. I don’t think it sold the tickets that the league thought it would but if they plan better next year it will.

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