Might Thierry Henry end his career on artificial turf?
As the yellow cards were flourished with increasing regularity at Red Bull Arena, it was hard to keep track of anything beyond the immediate consequences, but one in particular may have fatally derailed New York’s playoff chances. Around the hour mark, Bradley Wright-Phillips picked up a silly yellow for interfering with Bobby Shuttleworth’s throw-out from the back, and as well as adding to the game’s growing list of booked players (New York coach Mike Petke sarcastically observed after the game that he would have liked a yellow as he was “feeling left out”), Wright-Phillips also ruled himself out of the second leg against New England.
And with Wright-Phillips out, a question that has haunted this series since it was set, took on a renewed urgency – will Thierry Henry finally play a game on the Revolution’s artificial turf? Henry has generally kept his dodgy achilles clear of turf in MLS, and has previously missed a crucial game in Seattle that went a long way to determining the Supporters Shield last year. Henry has never played at Gillette Stadium either, but with New York facing a win-or-go-home game next week, Wright-Phillips out, and Henry being perhaps 90 minutes from retirement (so the longevity-preservation rationale is off the table …), if ever there’s a time for the Frenchman, and indeed his similarly turf-averse team-mate Jamison Olave, to make his Foxboro debut, it’s now.
The Red Bulls will also be without Roy Miller for the second successive game, after his red card against DC United, and his replacement Ambroise Oyongo saw both New England goals scored down his flank. Oyongo did well other than that, including participating in the buildup to New York’s goal, but the Red Bulls were sent a clear message about the vulnerabilities that are apparent when they lose even one of their starting XI. To lose three more (Wright-Phillips, Henry, Olave) would surely be calamitous. GP
LA take full advantage of the luxury of squad depth
When the Seattle Sounders lost Ozzie Alonso to injury two weeks ago against FC Dallas, the MLS talking heads piled on over how this would completely change the team’s tenor. And indeed, in the first leg of the Conference final against LA, Seattle were a different side with the more reserved Micheal Azira in Alonso’s place. While Azira added to his team’s defensive solidity against Los Angeles, it arguably came at the cost of providing a key link between the midfield and the forwards Clint Dempsey and Obafemi Martins. More on that below.
When one scans the squad list for LA, it’s hard to find a similar lodestone. Though losing, say, Landon Donovan, would be a majorblow, it’s conceivable that Galaxy coach Bruce Arena would be able to shuffle the deck in a such a way to preserve his team’s attacking dynamism, perhaps moving Stefan Ishizaki over, or dropping back Keane and moving Alan Gordon up front.
That flexibility was on display against the Sounders, particularly when Marcelo Sarvas, the goalscorer, went off with a “left thigh contusion” in the 69th minute, according to the ESPN broadcasters. Baggio Husidic was as competent and like a replacement as one could imagine, and barely broke LA’s rhythm. The same went for Dan Gargan, a regular Galaxy starter, for AJ DeLaGarza as a precautionary measure, or the laudable performance of Tommy Meyer, who started in place for the injured Leonardo. Even boilerplate late-in-the-game sub Gordon came as close as anyone in nearly handing LA a crucial second goal.
Not that Seattle don’t have similar talent on the bench, but it’s broader and more specific set of tools. A loss, for example, at this stage of either Martins or Dempsey would be reason for Seattle to panic. We can make quips about the relative salaries here in the so-called competitively balanced MLS, but Arena has used his resources to full advantage. RW
Seattle will have to find a way to repair their broken link
It’s impossible to talk about the attacking ability of the 2014 Seattle Sounders without giving the Martins-Dempsey partnership a lot of airtime. In future years, it may go down as MLS’s answer to Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole, the Man United pairing in the late 1990s that scored in scary abundance. Yet while Oba-Clint showed some signs of life for the Sounders, it was missing a key midfield conduit in the injured Ozzie Alonso, replaced by the more withdrawn and defensive-minded Micheal Azira.
Though DeAndre Yedlin did his level best in the early going to help out, Oba and Clint were out on a dune for most of the proceedings, emboldened only briefly by the very late introduction of Andy Rose. Rose replaced Azira, and though it’s tempting to pin the “blame” on the latter, it’s not quite as simple as that.
For one, Seattle, despite at times resembling Sam Neill and Laura Dern surrounded by velociraptors at the end of Jurassic Park, defended admirably against the dynamic Galaxy, and no doubt Azira’s help in keeping the midfield compact played a big part. So while it was bad, it could have been far worse. Centre-back Zach Scott could have been sent off five times over, but his reprieve should embolden Kurt Schmid to maintain his defensive approach should Alonso fail to make an expected return next weekend.
The question will be – how then does a more defensive-minded Seattle feed the dynamic duo up front? Perhaps Marcelo Pappa might take a few more risks on the counter, or maybe Gonzalo Pineda could act as more of a fulcrum alongside Azira. You could give Yedlin more of a free licence on the channel, almost switching with Brad Evans. Seattle are going to have to figure it out. Even away from home LA will be too good with the ball and too eager to score a decisive away goal to let Seattle take full advantage of a packed CenturyLink Field. Expecting Dempsey and Martins to take care of it all on their own (they almost did at one point in the second half, admittedly) like they did on Sunday isn’t going to work. RW
Lee Nguyen just needs a moment
For almost 90 minutes, Lee Nguyen, MVP finalist, newly restored national team player and general man of the moment, was virtually invisible. New York’s deep-lying midfield duo of Dax McCarty and Eric Alexander had been breaking up play all over midfield, on the reasonable basis that Nguyen can only hurt a team when he has the ball. With his supply lines cut, Nguyen was a marginal figure, until finally with New York committing men forward at 1-1 late on, Nguyen found the space he needed.
New England broke in numbers, with Nguyen running straight up the middle, McCarty trailing him by a good 10 yards, desperately trying to track back. Nguyen could have kept running on goal, but elected to sweep the ball wide for Teal Bunbury, who was one of the principal beneficiaries on the day of the New York policy of containment on Nguyen. Bunbury pushed the ball past the advancing goalkeeper Luis Robles for Jermaine Jones to bundle home at the back post.
Bunbury had already made a memorable contribution to the game with his beauty of an opening goal, while Jones was at the heart of everything – from stepping across to support his full-backs, switching flanks in the second half to deal with Lloyd Sam after New York had looked in the ascendancy at the end of the first, and generally making sure everyone, including the referee, was doing their job. But Nguyen’s intervention was a reminder of what he can do and continues to do, even when teams think they’ve come up with a plan for him. GP
