Great game last night - best I've been to in a long time. Absolutely terrible ref, Alexis Da Silva, but that certainly got the crowd into the game. Five yellow cards for us, none for Seattle. For baseball fans, Alexis Da Silva is the equivalent of Ángel Hernández, except his focus is making really bad calls against the Loons - it's happened in multiple games now.
For those of you who don't follow the Loons, now is a great time to start as we're in the playoffs, with a 1-0 lead on a best-of-three against Seattle. Seattle used to own us, always pulling off a late win with some freak goal, but this year we've beaten them three straight times - two in regulation and last night in the first game of the playoffs.
Our style of play is very different than every other MLS team. In basketball terms, we're a solid zone defense (except we play five along the back line, and four accross the midfield - what they call a "compact" defense. On offense, we're a quick counter team (when we win possesion of the ball we attack fast and if it fails, we go back on D), AND, we're really focused on set pieces. We're a rather low payroll team compared to the rest of the league (think of Twins compared to the Yankees), so we don't have individual players who can win games for us (think of Messi), but we absolutely play as a team with a focus. Our coach (the youngest in the league by quite a bit) has a clear game-plan, and we execute it very well. One aspect is the set pieces. In the graph below is a dot for all the teams in the league. You want to be in the upper-left corner of this chart. The Loons "dot" is the one that has that spot, with the rest far behind. It's actually a bit magical watching them execute the plan, with teams still trying to figure out how to stop us. Ramsey, our coach, always seems to be a step ahead in changing his strategy to take advantage of whatever the other team tries to do to counter.
