by Ethan Johnson
May 9, 2007

This game was played on May 6, and I saw it in stunning HD on HDNet. As Marlena noted recently, HD makes anything eminently watchable. (She said this about baseball.) FC Dallas had a rough time with RBNY this season, in fact they managed to go scoreless in both games. The buzz surrounding this game was that nobody had scored on RBNY all season to date. And considering how generally hapless RSL is, I was expecting a completely lopsided game. Au contraire! Let's go live to the DVR:

OK: The early going of this match was a stellar example of why, considering complaints that soccer doesn't have enough scoring, there's indeed a such thing as too much scoring. RBNY had their way with RSL to the tune of 2-0. And these weren't exactly hard-won goals. I mean they practically walked the ball into the net. It was looking like a long night for anyone who wanted to see a competitive match.

RSL managed to finally do the unthinkable: They actually scored on RBNY. Regardless of the outcome, for sure that was going to be the talk of the weekend. And not just scored - they got the ball past RBNYs otherwise spotless goalkeeper. Remember, they kept everyone scoreless for the entire season up to that moment. I figure the dam had to break sometime, but would have preferred that FC Dallas was the team to do it.

This match was an excellent teaching/learning tool for the soccer-deficient. I whipped up some cheesy visual aids to explain what the general strategy seems to be offensively in soccer. Seasoned veterans can argue the nuances (and they will), but for our purposes this will suffice:

For clarity, I stripped the field down to just the striker (offensive player with the ball) and the goalkeeper. In the first diagram, I'm showing a direct shot on goal one-on-one. If the goalkeeper is remotely worth his salt, this attempt will fail miserably and will either be batted away, or flat-out caught by the goalkeeper. If the striker is lucky, he might "bend" the ball around the goalkeeper or the GK might bat the ball up and over the back line, resulting in a corner kick for the offense, and another scoring chance. Or the striker may squeak the ball into the net at an odd angle (kinda like a batter striking out looking because he was expecting the pitch to be called a "ball").

This is not to be confused with direct penalty kicks, where the GK has to commit before he actually sees where and how the ball was aimed, and was either dead right or dead wrong. Direct penalty kicks might be best compared to free throws in basketball, where the likelihood that the direct kick will go in seems to approach something close to 100%. Except in basketball nobody is allowed to slap the ball away from the net during a free throw. Thus there is room for error.

Reviewing the game footage, Richards on RBNY scored inside of the first 11 minutes, essentially one-on-one with the GK. The RBNY coach had a coronary because there was absolutely nobody for the next 6 counties on the opposite side of the field. If that shot missed, there was no cross-pattern recourse to save the goal attempt. Lucky Chucky.

Clint Mathis on RBNY scored the 2nd goal inside of the 29th minute. Again, he walked it right past the GK into the net. This time there was opposite-side coverage if he needed to make a crossing pass.

Flip on any given soccer match worldwide, and chances are you're going to see this kind of "cross" play. Striker 1 "crosses" the ball to Striker 2, who punches the ball in past the goalkeeper. The GK is expecting the shot to come from the first side, and if the players are quick enough, it comes from the opposite side and the GK can't react fast enough. Corner kicks operate on this principle as well. Whoever kicks the ball "floats" it to a teammate in scoring position who tries to get the ball in either by using his head, or kicking it in.

Anyway, the good to great teams set up cross patterns beautifully, whereas the bad ones do not. RBNY delivered in the 83rd minute with a beautiful cross to Clint Mathis' forehead, who headed the ball in to make it 3-1. RBNY seemed to gave the match in the bag, despite being scored on.

OK: The above diagram shows what plagued RSL all match. Someone would get the ball, break away from the pack, meet up with resistance from the RBNY defenders, kick the ball across expecting striker #2 to be there, and... nothing. Out of bounds, toss-in for RBNY. One of the RSL players actually threw his hands up in frustration when a near sure-thing goal was completely blown in this way.

As for the match itself, RSL looked much better than I was expecting, but I'm still feeling fairly confident that FC Dallas will serve up their lunch on May 20. RSL benefited from a phantom penalty that brought the game to 3-2 (RBNY), and then RSL managed to outright tie the game and force a draw. Some people think that draws are a huge letdown but in this case it was pretty thrilling, considering I didn't have a dog in the hunt, so to speak. Morally, RBNY won the game, but officially it was a draw. Bully for RSL.

Anyway, next time you're inspired to watch a soccer game on TV, pay close attention to each team and how they try to set up crossing plays to set favorable scoring positions. No guarantee that any of the shots will land in the net, but some teams have this technique down much better than others. Watch out for high flying balls when the crossing player doesn't finesse the pass.

Not so boring now, is it? <EM>

(Much, much more virtual ink has been spilled by me about Major League Soccer. The fledgling but growing MLS article archive may be found here.)