Great start to the season! Here are our thoughts on Week 1 in Major League Soccer:
Philadelphia at Seattle: Too early to tell if there will be a sophomore slump for the Sounders. They embarrassed the expansion Union 2-0 in front of 36,000+ fans. Great market + great players + great expectations=Seattle Sounders FC. Philly fans are in for a long, long season. The Union had problems on both sides of the ball. Not sure where goals will come from and not sure who will stop the opposing team from scoring at will. Hopefully they don’t think Alejandro Moreno is an elite striker and their main threat. Michael Orozco is a nice pickup as their D.P., but he can’t do it alone. I heard a few fans were calling for the club to sign Jon Busch; several other outlets are reporting that he is headed to San Jose to challenge Joe Cannon.
New England at L.A.-Nice crowd of 21,376 at the Home Depot Center. Landon Donovan gets an assist in the 1-0 win over the Revs. The Galaxy’s Brazilian trio played well; it looks like they have a real future with the club. As expected Donovan is still the best American player and will likely move on to Europe after the World Cup.
Salt Lake at San Jose-The Quakes look utterly pathetic in their 3-0 loss to the defending champs. RSL looks to have a star in Javier Morales; he will make people forget Yura Movsisyan. I hope that Frank Yallop can straighten things out. Maybe Jon Busch in goal would be an upgrade from Joe Cannon, who seems to have lost a step or two. We could also see young defender (and Cleveland native) Justin Morrow on the pitch soon for San Jose.
D.C. at Kansas City-The Wizards completely dismantled United in a 4-0 win. Nielsen looked good in goal for Kansas City, while Arnaud and Kamara played well in the attack. We projected K.C. as a sleeper; we weren’t sure they would get this result. Troy Perkins was supposed to be the answer to D.C.’s problems; maybe there are more problems or it was just a fluke.
Houston at Dallas-The 1-1 draw was a bit of a surprise. Houston is regarded as the class of the West, but there have been a great deal of losses. Holden and Clark have moved overseas and Barrett retired to join the coaching staff. Many thought we would see Hartman in goal, but Sala got the start.
Colorado at Chivas-Cummings got the lone goal in the 1-0 victory for the Rapids. His game has come a long way in a short period of time. We saw him play well in the CONCACAF Gold Cup last summer. Colorado fans should expect a lot from him this season. He should improve on the 8 goals and 12 assists from last season, both career highs.
Check out our coverage of Toronto v. Columbus and Chicago v. New York.
