Soccer Update

Message

andrewjackson · #1 Post by **andrewjackson** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:47 am

The Houston Dynamo finally broke through against Pachuca and won last night 2-0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's the middle of the MLS season but we've been playing in a tournament called SuperLiga between MLS and Mexican league teams. Last night was the semifinal and we beat Pachuca to advance to the final next Tuesday.

Pachuca is a very good team from Mexico. They've won the Mexican league championship a couple of times in the last few years and they've done very well in international tournaments. Last year they knocked us out in the semifinal of the CONCACAF Champions' Cup and the semifinal of SuperLiga. So last night was especially sweet since we finally knocked them out in a semifinal. The Dynamo scored two goals in the last 15 minutes to get the win after a Pachuca apparent goal was disallowed for offside. The crowd here in Houston was slightly in favor of Houston but the Mexican teams always get good support. Fans of both teams were singing last night and it was a great atmosphere.

We will face the winner of the New England Revolution-Atlante (Cancun) game tonight. If New England wins the final will be at Foxborough. If Cancun wins it will be here in Houston so we'll be rooting for the Mexican team tonight.

I'm so tired right now. Two hours of singing and jumping up and down from 9 to 11 during the game. Then taking down all our flags and banners until almost midnight. Then celebrating at our bar and watching the replay of the game until 2 am. Makes for a short night.

But hopefully we'll be doing it all over again next Tuesday.

andrewjackson · #2 Post by **andrewjackson** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:24 am

Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

Evil Squirrel · #3 Post by **Evil Squirrel** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:26 am

andrewjackson wrote:Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

Whew! For a minute there, I was afraid I had become public enemy #1 among a gang of rabid soccer fans.....

andrewjackson · #4 Post by **andrewjackson** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:54 am

There are a couple of Squirrel soccer teams.

Omiya Ardija, a club in Japan, is known as the Squirrels:

and the Benin national team is the Squirrels.

There might be others.

(No actual gophers were harmed in the making of this banner)

#5 Post by **littlebeast13** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:00 am

andrewjackson wrote:There are a couple of Squirrel soccer teams.

Omiya Ardija, a club in Japan, is known as the Squirrels:

Thanks to the wonderful world of bilingual Wally World products, I would've actually guessed that Ardija meant squirrel (The Spanish word on the bags of feed is ardilla)....

lb13

ulysses5019 · #6 Post by **ulysses5019** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:05 am

Evil Squirrel wrote:
andrewjackson wrote:Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

Whew! For a minute there, I was afraid I had become public enemy #1 among a gang of rabid soccer fans.....

Can the I petition the NSAS for help?

#7 Post by **littlebeast13** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:07 am

ulysses5019 wrote:
Evil Squirrel wrote:
andrewjackson wrote:Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

Whew! For a minute there, I was afraid I had become public enemy #1 among a gang of rabid soccer fans.....
Can the I petition the NSAS for help?

Hawks, schmawks. I'd be more worried about Bill Murray if I were you....

lb13

ulysses5019 · #8 Post by **ulysses5019** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:13 am

littlebeast13 wrote:
ulysses5019 wrote:
Evil Squirrel wrote: Whew! For a minute there, I was afraid I had become public enemy #1 among a gang of rabid soccer fans.....
Can the I petition the NSAS for help?
Hawks, schmawks. I'd be more worried about Bill Murray if I were you....

lb13

I thought his problem was a groundhog.....

andrewjackson · #9 Post by **andrewjackson** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:37 am

littlebeast13 wrote:
andrewjackson wrote:There are a couple of Squirrel soccer teams.

Omiya Ardija, a club in Japan, is known as the Squirrels:

Thanks to the wonderful world of bilingual Wally World products, I would've actually guessed that Ardija meant squirrel (The Spanish word on the bags of feed is ardilla)....

lb13

That's exactly right. I didn't make that connection. The club is named for the Spanish word for squirrel but I guess they didn't want those "l"s in there.

Japanese teams take names from all over the place or they just make up weird ones.

Current J-League first division:

Kashima Antlers (city name means "deer island" in Japanese)
Urawa Red Diamonds (name from Mitsubishi logo)
Gamba Osaka (Gamba is from the Italian word for leg)
Shimizu S-Pulse (S for Shimizu and Shizuoka, the prefecture, and Pulse from English for heartbeat)
Kawasaki Frontale (Front in Italian)
Albirex Niigata (Albirex is a combined word from "Albi" for the star Albireo in the Constellation Cygnus and "rex" latin for king)
Yokohama F. Marinos (Spanish for sailors)
Kashiwa Reysol (Spanish for king and sun)
Júbilo Iwata (exultation in Portuguese)
Vissel Kobe (combined Victory and Vessel from English)
Nagoya Grampus (type of dolphin)
F.C. Tokyo
JEF United Chiba
Oita Trinita (Italian for Trinity)
Omiya Ardija (Spanish for squirrels)
Consadole Sapporo (they reversed the Japanese word Dosanko, the word for the local people, and then added Ole from Spanish)
Tokyo Verdy (from latin for Green)
Kyoto Sanga (Sanskrit word meaning group or club)

Appa23 · #10 Post by **Appa23** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:07 am

andrewjackson wrote:Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

O.K. So I get the Pachuca part of the banner.

Why does Frankenstein represent Houston?

andrewjackson · #11 Post by **andrewjackson** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:04 am

Appa23 wrote:
andrewjackson wrote:Here is the big banner we made for the game. It is 16' by 16'. Pachuca's nickname is Tuzos which is Spanish for gophers. Pachuca is a big mining town in Mexico which is why they are the gophers.

O.K. So I get the Pachuca part of the banner.

Why does Frankenstein represent Houston?

Frankenstein? That's Craig Waibel.

Seriously, we copied that cartoon from a Mexican newspaper and changed the guy from an Uruguayan uniform to an orange one. The official Dynamo mascot is a fox but, frankly, we are not big fans of Dynamo Diesel.

andrewjackson · #12 Post by **andrewjackson** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 7:21 am

New England beat Atlante last night, 1-0, so the SuperLiga final will be New England v. Houston in Foxborough next Tuesday night.

I'm sure the U.S. Spanish language and Mexican TV networks carrying this game are really happy about this.

The game last night turned into a rough one with yellow and red cards flying around by the end. A typical game might have two or three cautions and occasionally an ejection. A different story last night.

NE -- Amaechi Igwe (caution; Reckless Foul) 27
NE -- Sainey Nyassi (caution; Pushing, Holding) 52
ATN -- Giancarlo Maldonado (caution; Dissent) 53
ATN -- Gerardo Espinoza (caution; Pushing, Holding) 56
ATN -- Fernando Navarro (caution; Pushing, Holding) 71
ATN -- Alan Zamora (caution; Reckless Foul) 84
ATN -- Luis Gabriel Rey (ejection; Violent Conduct) 85
NE -- Chris Albright (caution; Dissent) 85
ATN -- Federico Vilar (caution; Dissent) 86
ATN -- Federico Vilar (ejection; Second Caution) 91+
ATN -- Alan Zamora (ejection; Second Caution) 94+
ATN -- Javier Munoz Mustafa (ejection; Second Caution) 95+
NE -- Jay Heaps (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+
ATN -- Luis Venegas (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+

Jay Heaps will miss the Final next Tuesday since he was ejected from the game last night.

Appa23 · #13 Post by **Appa23** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:48 am

andrewjackson wrote:New England beat Atlante last night, 1-0, so the SuperLiga final will be New England v. Houston in Foxborough next Tuesday night.

I'm sure the U.S. Spanish language and Mexican TV networks carrying this game are really happy about this.

The game last night turned into a rough one with yellow and red cards flying around by the end. A typical game might have two or three cautions and occasionally an ejection. A different story last night.

NE -- Amaechi Igwe (caution; Reckless Foul) 27
NE -- Sainey Nyassi (caution; Pushing, Holding) 52
ATN -- Giancarlo Maldonado (caution; Dissent) 53
ATN -- Gerardo Espinoza (caution; Pushing, Holding) 56
ATN -- Fernando Navarro (caution; Pushing, Holding) 71
ATN -- Alan Zamora (caution; Reckless Foul) 84
ATN -- Luis Gabriel Rey (ejection; Violent Conduct) 85
NE -- Chris Albright (caution; Dissent) 85
ATN -- Federico Vilar (caution; Dissent) 86
ATN -- Federico Vilar (ejection; Second Caution) 91+
ATN -- Alan Zamora (ejection; Second Caution) 94+
ATN -- Javier Munoz Mustafa (ejection; Second Caution) 95+
NE -- Jay Heaps (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+
ATN -- Luis Venegas (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+

Jay Heaps will miss the Final next Tuesday since he was ejected from the game last night.

I will have to look online for an acocunt of this game.

Were the ejections right at the game's end?

[Ok. I checked the Boston Herald story. 3 ejections prior to the end of the game, and the last three ejections (including Heaps) after the game ended. Bad luck for the Revs. Terrible job by the ref not seeing where things were headed and doing a "short" 5 minutes of extra time, and not dragging it out to well over 6 minutes. )

andrewjackson · #14 Post by **andrewjackson** » Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:12 pm

Appa23 wrote:
andrewjackson wrote:New England beat Atlante last night, 1-0, so the SuperLiga final will be New England v. Houston in Foxborough next Tuesday night.

I'm sure the U.S. Spanish language and Mexican TV networks carrying this game are really happy about this.

The game last night turned into a rough one with yellow and red cards flying around by the end. A typical game might have two or three cautions and occasionally an ejection. A different story last night.

NE -- Amaechi Igwe (caution; Reckless Foul) 27
NE -- Sainey Nyassi (caution; Pushing, Holding) 52
ATN -- Giancarlo Maldonado (caution; Dissent) 53
ATN -- Gerardo Espinoza (caution; Pushing, Holding) 56
ATN -- Fernando Navarro (caution; Pushing, Holding) 71
ATN -- Alan Zamora (caution; Reckless Foul) 84
ATN -- Luis Gabriel Rey (ejection; Violent Conduct) 85
NE -- Chris Albright (caution; Dissent) 85
ATN -- Federico Vilar (caution; Dissent) 86
ATN -- Federico Vilar (ejection; Second Caution) 91+
ATN -- Alan Zamora (ejection; Second Caution) 94+
ATN -- Javier Munoz Mustafa (ejection; Second Caution) 95+
NE -- Jay Heaps (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+
ATN -- Luis Venegas (ejection; Violent Conduct) 95+

Jay Heaps will miss the Final next Tuesday since he was ejected from the game last night.
I will have to look online for an acocunt of this game.

Were the ejections right at the game's end?

[Ok. I checked the Boston Herald story. 3 ejections prior to the end of the game, and the last three ejections (including Heaps) after the game ended. Bad luck for the Revs. Terrible job by the ref not seeing where things were headed and doing a "short" 5 minutes of extra time, and not dragging it out to well over 6 minutes. )

I don't think that shortening the added time would have made any difference. They were going to clash after the game no matter when it ended.

Snaxx · #15 Post by **Snaxx** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 9:12 pm

I saw the final, the Dynamo are no strangers to marathon contests. Unfortunately for AJ & company the Dynamo came up short in N.E. after a 120-minute 2-2 draw and a penalty kick shootout that went eight rounds. Interesting to see New England use their goalkeeper (Matt Reis) in the second round; that is like a NL baseball team batting their pitcher second instead of ninth. Reis is a good PK taker but did not show it this time, kicking it over the bar for what would be a NFL field goal.

I noticed a small band of Houston fans in orange shirts in one corner of the stadium holding a "Texian Army" sign.

The other news was that the players agreed before the game to split the bonus money 50-50, so there was nothing financial at stake for the players. This is part of a long dispute with Major League Soccer as to how the $$ was to be split up.

_______
The last season at Yankee Stadium

Where is the stache?

andrewjackson · #16 Post by **andrewjackson** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 10:29 pm

Yeah, that pretty well sucked. We didn't even get to see the PKs. The satellite lost the feed of the game here in Houston right at the end of OT. We had about 100 people in a bar nervously standing around getting updates on the PKs via people's cellphones.

Two straight years we get knocked out on PKs. Last year in the semifinal to Pachuca and this year in the final to the Revs.

Ah,well, it was good game and give New England credit. They came back twice to tie the game. Houston missed too many good chances in the first half when we could have put the game away.

Back to the regular season for the Dynamo. Still 12 games to play in that before the playoffs. New England wins the SuperLiga and they are still alive in the U.S. Open Cup. They play the semifinal next week against DC. And then they have Champions' League preliminaries at the end of the month. In addition to a bunch of regular season games. They are going to be tired Revs by September.

Oh, and Olympic soccer starts on Thursday for the men. The Dynamo have two players on the U.S. team and New England has one.

The U.S. women start Olympic play on Wednesday morning.