Hey there, so remind me to tell you one day about how my kid caught croup at the beginning of the week and maybe bought a house at the end of it. Good story!
Recaps of D.C. United’s 2-1 loss to the New England Revolution by us, WaPo, and MLS. Blazing Musket with the other end of things.
Recaps of the Washington Spirit’s 1-0 win over OL Reign by us and WaPo. Sounder at Heart with the other end of things.
Reviewing Loudoun United FC’s 3-0 loss to FC Tulsa (us): Wasn’t great but could be OK?
Spirit owner Michele Kang ‘optimistic’ about finding space for new training facility (Athletic, $): Going to be extremely curious to see where and how this plays out.
What’s it like to be a Muslim soccer player during Ramadan? (USL): Nice look into the life of former D.C. United player Mohammed Abu, who scored the game-winner for San Antonio FC Saturday night.
Meanwhile, Kevin Paredes did this at USYNT duty:
Finally, here’s Argentina’s entrance in their first game back in their homeland as World Cup champions, playing Panama this week. Particularly watch the player reactions, simply phenomenal:
(Leading up to the end of the clip of Parades I hadn’t seen): I always knew he had it in…
(After seeing the finish): He has THAt in him?!?! Great Scot!
Great finish. He’s rounding into a better player than I expected. Looking at the USYNT twitter, Paredes also assisted Owen Wolff on the tying goal. And, a few hours Kristian Fletcher got a goal for U17s against Racing Club.
*U19s for Fletcher. But good to see him playing and scoring nonetheless! I’d love to see him get more minutes for DC. He’s already got a goal and an assist in just 67 career minutes.
I’m a bit surprised he hasn’t after the opening win.
Also, the Spirit win wasn’t just down to Rodman in the sense that the team and GK came up with a lot of important defensive play- but it was damn close! Rodman had some eye catching moments throughout, they desperately needed that solo cut inside and a eyebrow elevating finish with her “weaker” foot
Congrats to your son on his new house and hope he feels better.
“My son, Bart. He owns a factory downtown.”
Benteke’s Buzzard Point not enough to lift DCU over Revs 1-2. The tally to date:
Buzzard Points (home goals): Benteke (2); Durkin, Klich, Ku-xDiPetro
Talones (home assists): Canouse, Ku-DiPietro, Jeahze, Ruan, Santos
Perfect afternoon for Spirit opener. Rodman goal was All-Universe but Kingsbury was Woman of the Match.
With 11,281 attendance, West Stand and Chico Stand were packed, South End good, but club seats were sparse. And, of course, East Stand above suites and SE corner were sealed off.
Pity was that halftime drum corps performed at midfield in front of almost nobody in club seats while packed crowd watched from West Stands.
Good stuff. Congrats to the Spirit. Kudos to Paredes. I think if he’d stayed at DCU for another year or two (so was getting minutes) he’d have gone to Qatar as the backup to Jedi Robinson.
Don’t know if it’s that simple, he’d have been very young and untested to make the plane, and (insert joke about how he wouldn’t have had time to convince Berhalter his system is so, so great)
Off to Argentina for a month. They’re still celebrating their World Cup, as you can see in the wonderful video above.
A tragic nation not in the sense of Ukraine (read Bloodlands to get a full understanding of the repeated horrors Ukraine has been through) but Argentina is a self-inflicted tragedy of bungled opportunities.
By the late 1920s Argentina had the eighth largest GDP in the world and a GDP per capita ahead of Italy, Japan and Germany and a 75+ year history of constitutional, reasonably democratic government
That was ended by a small scale military coup in 1930. (As a hypothetical analogy, at the onset of our Great Depression and the height of President Herbert Hoover’s unpopularity, imagine if General Douglas MacArthur and Lieutenant George Patton with his tanks had not marched on the Bonus Army in Anacostia but against the White House.)
Ever since the 1930 military coup Argentina has not been able to put together a sustainable social and political compact. It has been corrosive for any kind of sustained economic growth.
Ah well, at least Argentina has three World Cups.
Argentine soccer players are second only to Argentine women as the country’s most successful export.
Dale Campeón!
Can someone tell me where Paredes comes from? I can’t find him anywhere leading up to the goal.