This weekend saw the start of the European preseason friendlies as well as the first knockout stage of the Gold Cup. It really seems that the offseason only just began a little while ago, which it really did, the final game of the season, The FA Cup Final was on May 30th. That’s just a month and a half ago, and now look we’re already gearing up for next season.
For most American sports fans we’re used to about a 4-5 month layoff at least until we get to see our teams again, but there’s little time to rest between seasons which is nice, you get a little break that allows you to decompress and relax and then before you know it, you’re back and ready to go for another season. Next year will truly be a whirlwind, with the World Cup we’re not going to realize that the Summer break even happened. Enough of that though, what happened this weekend?
Surprisingly, the quality of preseason friendly we’re able to see in the states is quite high this year. With the World Football Challenge giving 6 cities the chance to see world class teams battle it out, but even better is the fact that every game is going to be on ESPN, so there really isn’t any way you’re going to miss them.
One has to wonder how the general public (and ESPN) would accept soccer in the US right now if the USMNT had not gotten a gift from the football gods and made it to the knockout stage of the Confederations Cup. Even looking at this site that weekend we went from bleak hopes for the team to shock and excitement in a matter of a few days. Now we’re getting more mainstream soccer coverage than we know what to do with, and that’s a whole other topic that I could get into, so for now lets just look at what happened this weekend.
United States 2-1 Panama
The US came back from 1-0 down at halftime after a bad clearance on a corner kick to retake the lead over Panama thanks to a nice ball from Kyle Beckerman from about 25 yards out and a Kenny Cooper penalty in the first period of extra time. The US played pretty well through most of the match and Panama only really threatened a couple of times.
The US did have a scare when Jimmy Conrad took a hard knock to the head and had to leave the game with a concussion, but every report has said that he’ll be ok, so hopefully that holds true.
While the team has played very well in this tournament I think it would be a minor setback in the eyes of the general public if they didn’t come out on top in this tournament. While we, the soccer obsessed, know that the US has brought out whats essentially their 3rd team, the general public doesn’t know that. All they see is the USMNT and just assume its a pretty much full strength squad, just as my friend who I talked to during the match did when he wondered why they could beat Spain but not Panama.
It is a tough situation though, the first team needs the break so they can get rested and ready for the European season ahead, because they’re not getting a break really till the end of the World Cup next summer, and the guys who don’t play in Europe are needed at their clubs who are currently in season right now. But this team is good enough that they should be able to win it all and that should be a non issue.
Seattle Sounders 0-2 Chelsea
Seattle was host to 65,000 people for this one, think about that one for a second, thats 20,000 more people than Stamford Bridge can hold. While we can certaily question how many loyal soccer fans were there compared to the people who were just there for the spectacle of it all, the bottom line is that its great for the game here to get that kind of exposure. Even if only a handful of the people who went for the heck of it got turned on and excited about the sport, it’s good for the growth of the sport over here.
Preseason friendlies are always hard to judge, teams are playing lesser opponents and the primary goal is to get players some playing time and make sure the starters are match fit for the upcoming season. While it didn’t look like Chelsea was playing as hard as they might in a full on match, they still played hard and Seattle was able to hang with them for the most part.
Two guys that really impressed me for Chelsea were Daniel Sturridge and Franco Di Santo. City didn’t want to pay Sturridge what Chelsea were willing to pay him, which makes no sense because they’ve splashed over £60 million on 3 strikers alone this season, but regardless he scored the first goal and contributied on the second one, but expectations should be tempered as it is just preseason and I’m sure we all remember that Darren Bent played really well last preseason.
Manchester United 3-2 Malaysia
The big story in this one was that Michael Owen scored his first goal for United. While I’m sure Owen will do well, I don’t think he’ll be able to replace Carlos Tevez or Ronaldo. While United will surely do well this season I think they’ve taken a big step backwards and I doubt we’ll see the success of the last couple of seasons duplicated. Sir Alex being who he is though, I’m certain we’ll see the team stay playing at a very high level.
Arsenal 2-2 Barnet
New signing Tomas Rosicky made his Arsenal debut….er I mean Thomas Vermaelen made his debut. However for Arsenal having Rosicky back from his year and a half layoff certainly does help the team immensely in the midfield and is practiaclly like having a new signing back with the squad. Andrei Arshavin and teenager Nacer Barazite scored Arsenal’s two goals.
Liverpool 0-1 Rapid Vienna
From what I can tell Liverpool fielded a largely untested squad, with no Spanish players (they have more than 11 non Spanish players?!?) While this was Liverpool’s second preseason match, Rapid is starting their season rather soon, so their match fitness had to be much greater. Again preseason friendlies don’t really matter, so this shouldn’t concern Liverpool fans at all.
Newcastle United 7-2 Darlington
Newcastle decided they wanted to only look bad and not play bad when they took the pitch with their horrible yellow away shirts. Newcastle will probably be the most talked about Championship team next season. They’ll either just get destroyed and we’ll talk about their meltdown, or they’ll dominate and we’ll talk about them from that respect. They haven’t lost anyone major except for Owen and the only player with much transfer talk surrounding him is Joey Barton, and that’s one transfer that would surely be addition by subtraction for Newcastle.
Hull City 3-0 Winterton Rangers
I’m only mentioning this because Hull decided to come out after the half in their away kit while they had been wearing their home kit to start the match. It was confusing and stupid, even if it was just a friendly, plus the away kit is BRIGHT electric blue, no thanks.
Inter Milan 1-1 Club America (4-5 PEN)
This one wasn’t very notable except for the fact that nobody told anyone what was going on exactly. At the end of the match they were supposed to go to penalty kicks for some reason. Well the players didn’t know, and neither did the Club America bench (Jose Mourinho knew, but he’s sneaky like that). So after much controversy they finally went to penalties, this was apparently so the winner of the penalty kicks could get 2 points. Apparently they’re actually keeping track of these ones but didn’t bother to tell anyone this information. If you go to the World Football Challenge website, it’s the same static site it’s been for the last few months with no mention of any sort of trophy. Now I’m totally ok with the whole thing being worth something, it might make the guys play a little harder, but that fact needs to be stated more clearly.
The other big issue I had, which may or may not be valid, was the fact that there was some confusion over red cards resulting in a suspension. There was a red card for each team, and particularly Inter’s Obi got a particularly harsh red for a challenge late in the game. Now surely nobody bought tickets to these games to see Obi specifically, but what if it was a bigger name that got the card? I doubt fans that were hoping to see even a short appearance from their favorite player would be very pleased that he’s on the bench.
The whole point is really that this should be a fun and entertaining set of matches, if theres a trophy cool, but event organizers should have made it crystal clear to everyone what the rules were because ultimatley mistakes like this could cause these teams or future teams to not want to come to the US and participate in future events.
LA Galaxy 2-2 AC Milan
I’m not sure how exactly it went down, because it’s not on TV till tonight, but some people watched it.
Well that barely touches the surface of what went on this weekend, but we’d love to hear what you saw this weekend in the comments.
