DC United wins!! Jamil Walker knocked in a couple of second-half goals to break a 1-1 tie against the Red Bulls at RFK, in the U.S. Open Cup. United's previous win came three weeks ago, also in a U.S. Open Cup match. D.C. wil hit the road for the tournament semi-finals on Sept. 6, against the winner of tonight's Fire-Revolution tilt. The refereeing at RFK tonight was a little uneven, as the Red Bulls called for a penalty on Stokes as he pushed through the New York team's defense before Walker took the pass and beat keeper Tony Meola. Still, despite the help from the referee, United was clearly the best side, as they played their best soccer in some time. In addition to Walker's efforts, second-half sub Ben Olsen created some good chances. Jaime Moreno, also a late substitute, had a chance or two himself, and probably should have been awarded a penalty kick in the game's final minutes.
The Open Cup, though it's a poor relation to the more prestigious MLS league games, has the excitement of single-elimination contests. Even though stars like Moreno may not start every Cup match, the crowd gets charged, and so do the players. Look for this tournament to gain in popularity over the next few years, especially if the USSF can get television coverage for the games.
One side-light for FischFry regular, The BardGuy -- Today's New York Times has an interesting feature on RSL's Jeff Cunningham, and his bad-boy reputation. Check it out, if you haven't yet. As ever, go to http://www.nytimes.com/ -- then, you can copy and paste the rest of the link: 2006/08/23/sports/soccer/23soccer.html
4 comments:
Congrats on the win. Now I guess that you'll be going into the semis against the Fire, right? Should be a good victory for DC as well. Why do you suppose that the USOC doesn't get more attention? As far as I can recall, it's got a TON of history and would be fun if it gone some play on ESPN.
The article and JC was pretty good. He's a really cool guy, we actually went and met him at the airport when he first came to Utah. As far as being "the most hated person in the league..." I don't know about that. We all love the guy. He's either scored or assisted in around 25 of our 35 goals (give or take), so how can we not like him? People say that he's selfish, but I think that he's second or third in the league in assists, which isn't too bad.
Good read as usual...
Hmmm...my comment didn't show up from yesterday. I guess this is a test to see if they're going through
Comments are reenbaled. For some reason, blogger wasn't notifying me that comments had been left. So, I've disabled the comments moderation function. Anyone can post -- just, please, no commercial links to bogus universities or sex sites.
Fisch has no idea why the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup gets no airplay. I guess ESPN doesn't think it's high profile enough -- or maybe that it would be confusing to fans who know only the MLS. I doubt ESPN's deal with MLS would ever have precluded FSC's televising it. Seems like it would be perfect fare for the Fox Soccer Channel, instead of showing the same EPL games over and over again. At the very least, the semis should get televised. I seem to recall that FSC did show the title game last year, perhaps it was on a tape-delay? Here's to hoping that FSC gives it more attention in the future, though ESPN would be better still, since it reaches many more homes.
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