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Shambolic night for MLS
The MLS all stars faced a touring Manchester United squad loaded with “B” teamers and got trashed 5-2 on Wednesday night.
What can we learn from this debacle in Houston?
Well, Sir Alex Ferguson has some promising youngsters. They didn’t just score goals, they scored pretty goals. Tom Cleverley and Darron Gibson had two of the prettiests you will see in the gashing of the all stars. Federico Macheda had a brace before the first beer was consumed. Javier Hernandez scored on his debut, chipping Nick Rimando.
Not only was it the worst loss for the MLS in all star matchups, the MLS looked bad. The team came out with no fire and promptly got burned. Seriously, giving up a goal in the first 23 seconds is a new step in futility. Even the U.S. Men avoid such disaster in the World Cup, and they liked to give up early goals.
It doesn’t help that the rout came in front of a record crowd of 70,728—the largest ever to see a soccer match at Reliant Stadium, and the fourth largest to watch an All-Star game in any major sport in the United States. Is this how you want to showcase your game?
You can blame the lack of time playing together, and the voting system that left the team short on defenders and long on midfielders. Still, none of that excuses a performance that was flatter than week-old Pepsi.
Nothing seemed to click on the field. Watching the game on a big screen with a legion of Rapids fans, there wasn’t much to cheer about. Brian Ching provided a great goal when no one marked him on a corner kick. Dwayne De Rosario got a late goal to salvage the scoreline and delight the Houston fans he jilted when he went home to Toronto FC. Beyond that, I haven’t got much.
Juan Pablo Angel was misfiring. Marco Pappa wasted the first half on ridiculous chances from distance — the sort of efforts that make “optimistic” seem like an insufficient word. Chad Marshall missed on a couple of headers off set pieces.
All of this came against a Man U squad that lost to the Kansas City Wizards 2-1 on Saturday.
Yes, the KC Wizards topped this team 2-1 over the weekend.
If this was an all-star game, none of them showed up for the MLS.
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