The Crew defeated the New York Red Bulls 3-1 to win their first ever MLS Cup, in their first trip to the MLS Cup.
Congratulation Crew!
Now we look forward to the expansion draft and a long off season. Can’t wait until next year, it should be another good season!
Ben Olsen and Louis Crayton stop for some parking lot soccer en route to deliver the MLS Cup with Deb – the soccer mom.
It seems that Houston Dynamo fans will likely be cheering for the Columbus Crew to defeat New York Red Bulls on Sunday in the MLS Cup. The Red Bulls did knock Houston out of the playoffs, but that is not the reason for the Crew support in Houston.
The CONCACAF Champions League announced the teams qualifying for the tournament next year. DC United is in as US Open Cup champions. Columbus Crew is in as winners of the Supporters Shield. Then both MLS Cup winners and runners up are in. Since Columbus qualifies twice they give the 4th spot to the Houston Dynamo, probably due to them having the 2nd best regular season record.
This still hasn’t explained why Houston would be cheering for Columbus on Sunday. Well the MLS Cup winners and Supporters Shield winners both get byes through the first round of the tournament. If Columbus happens to hold both of those positions, one of the other teams will pick up that first round bye. It just happens to be that the Dynamo would be the team that would benefit there.
Here is a description from Forever Orange, but the коли под наемNew England Revolution Blog has a better description of the whole scenario.
Landon Donovan has been training with Bayern Munich the past week and a half and has impressed coach Jurgen Klinsmann enough to get him a loan. Klinsamann is going to bring Landon to Bayern on a loan contract that will run from the 1st of January through the middle of March. His goal will be to keep him longer – at least until the end of the German Bundesliga season, which runs through most of May.
Have we seen the end of Donovan’s days in Major League Soccer?
Deb is the soccer mom charged with taking the MLS Cup from NY to LA before the game on Sunday. In this episode she stops to pick up Chris Klein, Ben Olsen, and Sacha Kljestan. She reveals that 100% high fructose corn syrup is good for the kickin muscles. The really need a rest stop but Deb wants to make good time and keep going. Just check it out for yourself:
The voting for MLS goal of the year is down to 5 finalists. That list of the 5 finalists does not contain the clear winner in my mind which was Gallardo’s full volley from an impossible (well at least tough) angle. That is a different story though.
The KC Wizards official blog has asked readers to vote for anyone other than NYRB goalkeeper Danny Cepero’s goal.
The Red Bulls Reader responds and says they want to vote for Danny’s goal 200 times.
I have to agree with the Wizards on this one. The Cepero goal was an amazing goal but here is my thought. If the opposing goalkeeper had just stood on his line he could have just caught the ball. It was more of a mistake from the other keeper than a great goal.
Watch all the goals and try to imagine what they would be like if there was no defense or goalkeeper on the field. What would the goal look like if a video editor could take out all the defense? Who gets my vote then? Blanco.
Don’t forget to go vote yourself – even if you think Cepero should win.
So the New York Red Bulls made it to MLS Cup. I was wrong. Alexi Lalas was wrong. He has consequences to pay. People should expect me to be wrong. I was so sure RSL was gonna beat the Red Bulls, I’m glad I didn’t agree to do anything in case of a Red Bulls victory. Lalas now has to shotgun a can of Red Bull before MLS Cup.
The Red Bulls and the Columbus Crew have had a long journey to get to MLS Cup. They have had very different routes. The Crew were in 1st place in the league for a lot of the year and finished with the best record. They were the first team to qualify for the playoffs. The Red Bulls needed help from other teams to get in. They left the door open for both DC United and Colorado Rapids to take that playoff position if either team could get a win on the last week of the regular season.
One soccer mom is involved in a very different road to MLS Cup. Watch and see what I mean.
The Columbus Crew had to overcome a 1-0 halftime defecit to beat the Chicago Fire 2-1 in the Eastern Conference final. The Fire looked pretty good throughout most of the first half. At halftime Alexi Lalas didn’t understand what was going on with the Crew. He had predicted them to win the game.
The second half was like a totally different game. The Crew looked like a championship team. Thanks to goals by defender of the year Chad Marshall and Eddie Gavin the Crew still have a chance to become that championship team.
This will be the first trip to the MLS Cup for the Columbus Crew. Their opponents will also be newcomers to the MLS Cup. The New York Red Bulls have been this far before but never won that conference final game. Real Salt Lake made the playoffs for the first time in their history this year.
I am going to go ahead and fully agree with Alexi Lalas that Real Salt Lake will play the Crew for the Cup and the Crew do become MLS champions. Lalas is going to shotgun some Red Bull if the Red Bulls are able to beat Real Salt Lake – that would be mildly interesting to see at least.
