that I don’t know much of anything about soccer; my interest has only been piqued this year. But any Seattle team in the playoffs is awesome! GO SOUNDERS!

I’ve been enjoying the fact that, as much as I’m getting into soccer, I really know very little about the sport. It’s made it easy to cheer for the Sounders without worrying as much as I would if I were watching the M’s or Seahawks in a playoff game.

No one really liked him much. He was good at sports but tried way too hard to be cool.

“Salazar, who disallowed an apparent Seattle goal by calling a foul up the field in the 77th minute, was asked after the game why he cautioned both players and explained that Onstad was given a yellow card for “game disrepute” and Montero for “faking injury.”"

Pat Onstad:
“On the incident with Fredy Montero: “To be honest I just gave him a super light bump and he went down like he normally does. He rolled around a few times. If it would have been Nate Jaqua, he would have brushed his shoulder like a fly was buzzing him. That is Fredy, and as soon as I bumped him I told myself that was the wrong guy to bump. I got what I deserved and the referee thought he embellished it a little bit.”"

Houston totally outplayed Seattle for stretches (including immediately after the 2nd half whistle), Seattle is better up front and perhaps in defense (Houston’s slow), but Ljungberg was outplayed by Holden/Clark.
This actually wasn’t Ljungberg’s worst game in Seattle, but it was his first outright shitty game in a long, long time.

I understand why they do that 4-1-3-1-1 thing, and I actually agree with Sigi that Jaqua isn’t a true target man. So, and I know I’m biased, I think they should do what Spurs did a while ago and run a 4-3-3 with Jaqua just behind the two forwards. Jaqua’s actually not bad as a distributor – not long passes, but using his strength to hold off a defender or redirect a ball to another player. He’s simply not fast enough to be a true forward, so use him the way Spurs used Robbie Keane a few years ago. Not only that, but Sounders have never gotten anything from the MF outside of Ljungberg, Alonso, Le Toux and Zakuani. Since Le Toux generally doesn’t start, that means (generally) Evans or Vagenas kind of hustling around to little effect (Evans winner v. Dallas notwithstanding).
The problem with this plan is that the Sounders don’t appear to have 2 forwards on their roster. Montero’s great, but who else would play up top? Zakuani? I’ve actually never seen a scorer with so little feel for goal, and on the wing he can run at slower defenders, which is what he’s good at. Nyassi? Eh, poor man’s Zakuani. Le Toux? They tried that earlier and it was a disaster. The only other answer is Levesque, which, I know he’s been our talisman recently, but…. really? I guess it’d be an interesting experiment, but the 2nd leg of the semis may not be the time for experiments.

This looks painful:

Clearance by El Presidente