Possession is the name of the game for 12-14 year olds

(Center Line Soccer’s Tim Hanley, a former assistant coach with the Earthquakes, Dynamo, and Galaxy, is preparing a series of columns on coaching youth teams. Today’s story, the third in a series, offers tips on coaching players aged 12 to 14. We’ve also published Tim’s tips on coaching four- to six-year-olds as well as players aged eight to 10. — Editor)

If you’ve done your work in the early stages of player development, this is an exciting age group — 12 to 14 — to work with.  One gets to stretch out a bit and work on aspects of the game that to this point were seemingly so far off in the distance that reaching across the gap was somewhat absurd. Now we have challenging but attainable targets. Read more…

Los anhelos de Los Earthquakes para la Liguilla final tomaron un golpe rudo tras la perdida de 3-2 sobre el Real Salt Lake

El defensa del RSL Nat Borchers (izquierda) derriba a Arturo Álvarez por detrás durante la victoria de RSL sobre San Jose. Borchers pudo haber sido afortunado de recibir una tarjeta amarilla en el incidente. Foto por John Todd, isiphotos.com/centerlinesoccer.com

Santa Clara - Como trepadores de montaña, los Earthquakes estuvieron en el fondo de la tabla hace un mes, antes de acercase a la contienda de la liguilla final un punto a la vez. La escala emocionante terminó por la cortesía de un equipo que no esta listo para descender de la montaña.

A pesar de un par de goles de Darren Huckerby, Real Salt Lake venció a San José por 3-2 delante de 10.059 aficionados en el estadio Buck Shaw. Yura Movsisyan anotó dos goles y Javier Morales agregó el gol de la victoria para los Real Salt Lake (9-10-7) empatados con Colorado en el tercer puesto de la Conferencia del Oeste con 34 puntos y cuatro juegos por jugarse en la temporada regular. (Los Earthquakes les quedan cinco juegos en su calendario.) Read more…

Worst weekend ever?

If you haven’t checked yesterday’s results, we’ll confirm your worst fears now: Dallas 3, DC 0. That means Colorado, Chivas USA, Dallas, and Salt Lake all won this past weekend while the Quakes crashed, and the folks over at Sports Club Stats say that means San Jose’s chances of making the playoffs fell by more than half and now stands at just 16 percent.

There’s still hope, however. According to the same site, if San Jose goes 5-0 to end the season, they’re in.  Four wins and either a tie or a loss gets them in over 90 percent of the time. Three wins and two draws results in a playoff berth over 80 percent of the time. There’s not much margin for error, though — even if they win three, if they lose the other two there’s only a 13 percent chance they’ll be playing in November.

That mean’s Thursday night’s match against the Burn — er, FC Dallas — is pretty much a must win, which is surely something that Frank Yallop and the boys know all too well.

Here’s today’s news wrap:

- The Dallas Morning News, mindful of the short week, starts their pre-game coverage today with a look at the playoff race.

- English tabloid The Sun runs a brief item on Darren Huckerby’s success in San Jose.

- Finally, we noticed a story from the CBC (Canada’s version of the BBC, if you will) about Dwayne De Rosario’s steadfast refusal to comment on whether he would be interested in playing for Toronto FC someday, now that there’s a team near his hometown of Scarborough, Ontario. Funny — if the reporters had just looked at his new web site (which has some great video highlights from his time as a Quake, by the way), they would have found the following:

Question:
Would you want to return to Toronto at some point and play for TFC?

Answer:
Most definitely. It would be a great opportunity to feel like I’m giving back to my community, and I think the MLS is realizing there’s a huge market in Toronto. When I was growing up we didn’t have a pro team to look forward to. Hopefully we can keep a lot of the local talent local and they won’t feel they have to go overseas like a lot of us had to.

Sounds like a “yes” to us.

Real Salt Lake les Quitó el Invicto a los Earthquakes en Casa 3-2
Los Quakes Real-mente Peligran a la Liguilla Final

Darren Huckerby (6) discute con él arbitro Paul Ward sobre una de las malas decisiones, durante la victoria de 3-2 del Real Salt Lake en el estadio Buck Shaw de Santa Clara. Foto por John Todd — centerlinesoccer.com, isiphotos.com  

Santa Clara, Calif. - Los Quakes (7.10.8) se apoderaron una vez más del sótano con 29 puntos en la Conferencia del Oeste, mientras que Real Salt Lake (RSL-9.10.7) consiguió tres importantes puntos que lo colocaron en cuarto lugar (temporalmente) después de haberles quitado el invicto a los Quakes en su propio terreno con un marcador final de 3-2. Con este resultado los Quakes se alejan de la liguilla final, a pesar que matemáticamente tienen posibilidades de clasificar. Su próximo partido de visita será contra el FC Dallas (7.9.9) y luego de anfitriones contra las Chivas USA (10.10.6) en el estadio Buck Shaw de Santa Clara. Read more…

Playoff chances on the ropes

Ouch.

There’s not much else to say about last night’s match — it hurt the Earthquakes’ playoff chances in a big way. Not only did they lose a home match to a Western Conference rival, but the other teams vying for those playoff positions each managed to gather three points from Saturday’s efforts. The recently traded Sasha Victorine exacted some revenge on his old club by scoring the game winner in Chivas USA’s tilt against Kansas City, and Colorado’s Conor Casey scored a hat trick — including a 90th minute game winner — in the Rapids’ 5-4 victory over Los Toros Rojos. Here’s hoping Dallas drops some points at home against DC United today or this could become a bad weekend of epic proportions.

While we will give the Salt Lake Royals a tip of the hat for a game well played, we have to level some serious criticism at referee Paul Ward. Much concern has been voiced in the soccer press about the league’s aggressive expansion plans as they relate to the available talent pool. Whether there enough talented players available to increase the size of the league without suffering a drop in the level of play is still an open question. But relatively little has been written about another hazard of expansion — a lack of quality referees — and after last night’s performance by Paul Ward, we really have to wonder.

We’ve seen Ward before. He was the man in the middle when the Earthquakes played Toronto at BMO Field in July, a game that’s notable because it marked the Earthquakes debuts of Darren Huckerby, Francisco Lima, and Scott Sealy, and for what we called “one of the worst decisions we’ve seen by a referee all year.” In that match Ward awarded a penalty kick on a play that simply didn’t call for it, no matter which team you were rooting for. Here’s how we described it then:

Toronto’s (Carl) Robinson floated a ball from midfield into the San Jose penalty area. The ball was cleared easily by Eric Denton, who headed it harmlessly away, while behind him (Ryan) Johnson and Toronto’s (Marvell) Wynne raced towards the net in case Denton missed it. As the sprinting duo arrived, Johnson was sandwiched between Wynne and (Abdus) Ibrahim and Ibrahim went down, a fall that Ward rewarded with a penalty kick despite the fact that Ibrahim hadn’t challenged for the ball and Denton had won the header easily.

It was a bad call — appallingly bad, shockingly bad. Joe Cannon saved the PK, so no lasting harm was done, but we had hoped that someone at MLS might have been paying attention so that future games would be spared Ward’s dubious talents. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and we saw the results last night.

Nat Borchers, who scissored down Arturo Alvarez from behind, saw a yellow card and not red. After that tackle, Ward called San Jose trainer Bruce Morgan onto the pitch immediately, yet when Ryan Cochrane suffered a head injury in the second half, Ward let play continue until a Salt Lake player finally kicked the ball out of bounds. Ward lost control of the match in the first half in a way that we haven’t seen in years, and the match suffered as a result. Ward, of course, is a rookie ref — an expansion ref, if you will.

We hope this doesn’t turn into a big problem for MLS, but we’re concerned. Both San Jose and Salt Lake are capable of playing attractive football, but the referee let the game descend into something that was very difficult to watch. The fans deserve better and the sport deserves better.

• • •

Here’s today’s press wrap:

- MLSnet.com has a match report and post-game story from our own Jeff Carlisle as well as video highlights.

- From the newspapers, we have match reports from the Mercury News, the Deseret News, and the Salt Lake Tribune.  Online, there’s also a report from Goal.com.

On the bright side, at least the Galaxy’s winning streak ended at one. Over on BigSoccer, Dan Loney has turned in perhaps the single greatest piece of commentary on Tim Leiweke’s favorite profit center, and he’s done it in a Suessian poem (that’s “Seussian” as in Dr. Seuss). Highly recommended.

Earthquakes/RSL post-game interviews
Saturday, Sept. 27

Earthquakes coach Frank Yallop and players Joe Cannon and Nick Garcia spoke with the press after the match, along with RSL’s Kyle Beckerman and Javier Morales. Click on the headline or “Read More” for the audio. Read more…

Quakes vs Real Salt Lake

San Jose Earthquakes end their nine game unbeaten streak with a loss to Real Salt Lake 3-2 on Saturday, September 27, 2008 in Santa Clara, CA.

Darren Huckerby post-game

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Joe Cannon post-game

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Earthquakes’ playoff hopes take a blow in 3-2 loss to Real Salt Lake

RSL defender Nat Borchers, left, tackles Arturo Alavarez from behind during his side’s win over San Jose. Borchers may have been fortunate to receive just a yellow card in the incident. Photo by John Todd, isiphotos.com/centerlinesoccer.com

Complete coverage includes:
- Post-game video with San Jose’s Darren Huckerby and Joe Cannon
- The CLS Photo Gallery
- Audio interviews with San Jose coach Frank Yallop and players from both sides
- Para este articulo en español, haz clic aquí.

Santa Clara - Like mountain climbers, the Earthquakes were at the bottom of the table a month ago before inching into playoff contention one point at a time. The thrilling climb ended courtesy of a team not ready to be knocked off the mountain.

Despite a pair of goals from Darren Huckerby, Real Salt Lake outgunned San Jose to win 3-2 in front of 10,059 at Buck Shaw Stadium. Yura Movsisyan scored two goals and Javier Morales added the game winner as Real Salt Lake (9-10-7) pulled into a tie with Colorado in the West’s valuable third place slot with 34 points and four games left in the regular season. (The Earthquakes have five games remaining on their schedule.) Read more…

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