USMNT complete undefeated group stage, Spirit draw, and more: Monday Freedom Kicks
Happy Monday y’all. A busy weekend of soccer, so let’s get into it quickly!
USMNT closes Gold Cup group stage with 2-1 victory over Haiti (SSFC)
The USMNT went 3-0-0 in the group stage, closing out a max 9 points with a 2-1 victory over Haiti. They will face Costa Rica in the quarterfinals on Sunday evening.
The Spirit had the last match before the NWSL goes on summer break. They drew on the road to San Diego.
Takeaways from Loudoun’s stumble at Hartford (DP)
Loudoun United have their worst loss of the season up in Hartford.
John Textor agrees to sell Crystal Palace stake to New York Jets owner Woody Johnson (The Athletic)
The owner of Crystal Palace (along with Botafogo and Lyon) is selling a stake of Palace to the New York Jets owner.
Finally, Audi Field held another Club World Cup match over the weekend as Red Bull Salzburg and Al Hilal battled to a scoreless draw. And, it was yet another good showing in terms of attendance:
This was the game to be at if you loved soccer jerseys. It was a who’s who of soccer teams represented. Our friend Doug started the thread with a partial list of what a lot of us saw in the stands.
I can’t stress it enough…stay cool today.
Haiti was definitely a tough out last night. And can we please fix not being cute in our own defensive 3rd!!!!?????
Our son Gregory— a 40-year + career as soccer coach at youth club, high school, college and semi-pro levels— said the Haiti goal was on Tim Ream, not Matt Freese. Says Ream should never have passed ball to keeper in that situation, should have put ball out, even over end line.
I realized I hadn’t checked back in with you after my Albuquerque trip. I tried to check out some of the places that were named after you, but they were closed while I was there. However, I did make sure to take the free bus multiple times. A truly great legacy! I also enjoyed eating at Frontier Restaurant. I visited Duran Pharmacy, but didn’t get to eat anything there. We were supposed to have a sunrise balloon ride, but that didn’t happen due to windy conditions, and I was able to visit the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, which was quite nice.
Thanks for all the recommendations!
Happy you enjoyed the trip No Sandia Crest tramway?
Sadly no time to do that. We were thinking about doing that as a staff one night, but it was closed that day.
My 0 years of coaching experience (but lifetime of watching soccer) would agree with that assessment. If the pitch was perfect and Freese had the ball skills of Alisson, possibly worth the risk. He was put in a bad spot and made it worse, but Ream gave him a crummy pass. It could have turned into an own goal with how much power he put on it too.
Apparently Patrick Agyemang is nowhere close to a contract extension with Charlotte. They still have an option to keep him for 2026, but I was wondering if DC might try to make a run at him as their replacement for Christian Benteke whenever that time comes. Agyemang is obviously not quite in the class of Benteke, but he’s a big central forward, a rising talent, an American, and probably wouldn’t require a DP slot.
He’s having success with the USMNT, so that’s going to raise his profile and might make an acquisition harder. DC may want to move away from the “Big Man Up Top” way of playing once Benteke moves on anyway. But having someone that could offer a fairly decent approximation of what Benteke provides, and supporting him with three other DPs in the midfield or something seems like something that could be successful.
Just saw Tom Bogert’s MLS notebook where he talks about interest in Agyemang from abroad, and that Charlotte turned down a $4 million offer from Luton Town. So… maybe getting him would be a heavier lift than I implied in my previous post.
Steve Goff is reporting that Kristian Fletcher suffered an injury – a suspected ACL tear – in an unofficial training session. I feel really bad for Fletcher. He hasn’t done much to shine during his last two seasons for DC, and while he did well on his loan spells, those didn’t translate into anything. It seemed fairly likely that he might move in the summer window or at least at the end of the season. This is a huge setback for him, and obviously doesn’t do anything to help DC’s roster situation.
I thought he’s actually looked reasonably good in the limited minutes we’ve seen him this year. Though maybe that was inflated a bit by just having some energy from him off the bench. Either way, that’s a rough injury for him to have. Hopefully some of the other injuries on the team are close to coming back, because boy do they need all the help they can get at this point.
That truly sucks. He’s young and he’ll recover though. What’s his contract situation like with us?
Contract through 25 with and option for 26