by Ethan Johnson
June 21, 2008

Another road game, which means no investigative bullet points. This also marks the arrival of new FCD head coach Schellas Hyndman, late of Southern Methodist University. Ferruzzi out, Hyndman in, let's rock:

New York (4-4-4 going into this game) is forever without Jozy Altidore, as he was signed by Spanish club Villareal for some unholy sum. Juan Pablo Angel was also out (injury I think? - I have yet to see him play this year), which meant that NYRB was left with essentially "everyone else". FCD (4-5-4 going into this) was lacking Adrian Serioux (Team Canada duty) and Drew Moor/Brek Shea (Team USA duty), not to mention Dax McCarty not being available as a starter due to earlier sports hernia surgery. FYI, the surgery essentially means that he still has the sports hernia, he just can't feel it. It reminds me of some drug my (ex-) quacky doctor tried to push on me for GERD that doesn't actually stop the problem, just prevents you from feeling your esophagus being damaged. Nice. Quacky pants. FIRED. Anyway, if Dax McCarty thinks he can get by with palliative surgery without ill effects, right on.

Both teams played a 4-4-2 formation. I would say that this was a change from the usual 3-5-2 for FCD, except I really never could figure out what formation they really used. Whatever it was meant that only 3 people could be playing the ball forward at any given time. For real. I was skeptical about this claim until I caught Juan Toja counting heads during a previous game and realizing that he was about to be the 4th attacking player and hanging back. Just in case anyone is wondering why FCD isn't above .500 as of this morning.

I didn't write much on my notepad during the first 15 minutes of the game other than "Cooper/Oduro up front" and "BORING (underlined for emphasis), long hard slog." Next, I wrote, quote, "FCD in grave danger of giving up a goal..." No lie.

16th minute: Goal NY. Corner kick sails to the far post, Goldthwaite bopped it in, 0-1 NY. Goldthwaite was subbed off shortly thereafter (!!!) due to injury problems.

Note from my Prophetic Notepad of Death: "Wide play doesn't mean 'along the ad walls'!"

Next notepad sentence: "Excuse: Artificial turf at Giants Stadium." Meh, NY has to play on it too, and they were winning.

Another notepad classic: "35': FCD wayyyy too many out of bounds balls." Seriously, did Marco Ferruzzi retain the rights to in-bounds play as part of his severance package?

36th minute: I really can't stand Max Bretos, but Christopher Sullivan is part of the package deal, and when he starts wondering why the ref isn't carding anyone ever for anything, that's noteworthy.

Start of second half: Schellas Hyndman told someone off-air that "we're lucky to only be down [by one]." Whee!

As Steve Rosenbloom might say, what was your favorite memory of the Marco Ferruzzi era?

As I mentioned on the FCD fan forum recently, Dario Sala is the defense. Especially in slog-fests like this one. Come on, with a 4-man backline Sala has to do all of the loss prevention?

62nd minute: NOW the ref finds his cards and book. And gives the yellow to Aaron Pitchkolan. Since nobody affiliated with MLS can do this without sanctions, can I speak on their behalf and say WORST. OFFICIATING. EVER. Well, can I? And I'm not saying this as a snot-nosed FCD homer. People think that awful officiating means going card-crazy or calling fouls for every slight real or imagined and not "letting 'em play." No, the worst kind, as demonstrated tonight, is when the ref ONLY "lets 'em play." NY fans had non-calls to bitch about too, and as a friendly reminder to the stooge who won the contest to be head ref for a day, "parity" doesn't mean not calling fouls/giving cards to anybody. I would say "back to school" but that assumes that there was a first time.

Speaking of sanctions, the league generally seems to have gotten the memo about random streamering. It didn't dawn on me until the 70th minute or so that there weren't any obvious streamers laying about during the run of play. Just an observation. Still haven't seen a Toronto FC home game since the edict, which will be the ultimate test.

The Notepad strikes again: "73rd minute: FCD needs to sub... and does! Alvarez on for Rhine. FCD back to 3-5-2 (formation)."

Yep, BACK to that award-winning, diamond-level 3-5-2 formation that got FCD to where it is today. Arguably, not much else could be done with defensive players out injured our plain out. Which begs the question as to why FCD didn't "just" go 3-5-2 from the opening whistle and kept a defensive player up their sleeve as needed. I'm no soccer genius, but ca-mon.

Ballgame. I'm skipping the rest of the in-game recap because there's not much to tell. FCD played like the molasses flows in January in Nunavut, NY played like all-stars while lacking any, the ref blew chunks, the end.

Oh,before I forget, FCD had TWO shots on goal. For the entire game. NY had 7.

On a final note, of course it's too much to expect that Schellas Hyndman is going to roll in from SMU (actually from vacation at Euro 2008) and fix all of FCDs ills inside of 5 days. But my beef is this: I get that the manager/coach can only direct traffic so much from the sidelines, and often has to infuse special instructions by way of whatever he says to an oncoming substitute or during the halftime pep talk. The rest of the team is pretty much floating around in outer space for 45 minutes+ per half. 3-5-2, 4-4-2, 3-6-1, whatever... soccer is soccer, and having a sense of what you're going to do with the ball and what plans B, C, and D are is part of the skill set. Check out any of these Euro 2008 games. Check out rec league soccer. Same fundamentals: Have skills, have field vision, and know your exits. The coaching change, the change to a 4-4-2, the artificial turf, the road game, the loss of key players all can be blamed (and probably will be) for the loss. But FCD was plain lost in space tonight. They could have been at home at full strength and I'm still not feeling particularly optimistic that the result would be any different.

Once again, this is a team that is in grave danger of not making it into the playoffs, period. Whoever deserves and gets the blame for this should be gone. I'm already heaving a big sigh and bearing down for the remainder of the season, figuring it gets me out of the house (for what tickets I do have) and gives me an opportunity to check out the visiting talent or that mighty fine natural turf. Mmmmm, natural turf.

Next up: FCD faces Houston on the road. If Hyndman wants to shock the world and unleash havoc on the Dynamo, I'm very ready to eat as much crow as he's serving up. <EM>

(The full MLS article archive may be found here.)