Final score flatters New York

It’s a good thing Pelé already dubbed soccer “The Beautiful Game,” because he wouldn’t have been inspired to do so watching yesterday’s match between Los Toros Rojos and the Earthquakes. The home crowd may have gone home happy based on a very flattering 2-0 final score, but there wasn’t much to get excited about otherwise.

Ryan Cochrane’s late foul on Jozy Altidore was a game-changing play, but we’re pointing our finger at the artificial turf at the Meadowlands as the real gamekiller. It may not be obvious to a casual observer, but that turf changes everything. Balls bounce a little higher, run a little faster, and those elements are enough to turn the Beautiful Game into a parody of itself.

One of our favorite things about soccer is the way the geometry of the field twists and turns depending on where the ball and players are. A ball played into space down a wing with a speedy midfielder chasing it down seems to stretch the pitch, suddenly creating room where none previously existed. It’s a move that takes a lot of skill to execute, though, since the ball has to be struck hard enough to get past the defenders but not so hard that it runs out of bounds before a teammate can get to it. On the fast, fake surface of Giants Stadium, such plays are nearly impossible, so the ball has to be played directly to a player’s head or feet. Removing the possibility of stretching the field with a nice ball into space drains much of the imagination and creativity from the match, rendering the game something less than beautiful.

Of course, the Quakes are not blameless in our analysis of Sunday’s performance — they looked a bit flat from the onset, and we found ourselves thinking early in the second half that the best result we could hope for would be a scoreless draw. That’s not normally an idea we entertain when we’re watching Frank Yallop’s side play soccer. We’re going to pin some of that on the field, too — when the turf is different enough that you can’t effectively anticipate something as simple as the height of a bouncing ball and need to consider it carefully instead of just acting on instinct, that’s going to take some of the edge off your game.

Thank goodness that won’t be a problem this Saturday, when the team makes its Buck Shaw Stadium debut. The field has been re-graded, with new drainage installed and new sod laid, and was looking lush last week. Let’s hope a return to a beautiful field marks a return to the Beautiful Game for the Quakes.

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We’ve got match reports from many sources today, but we want to point out another article first. According to Australian 442, the Down Under edition of the English football magazine, the Quakes were visited recently by representatives of Sydney Olympic, a team in Australia’s New South Wales Premier League. (The NSW Premier League is just below Australia’s top division, the A-League.)

Sydney Olympic director of football Manny Spanoudakis, who visited the US in recent weeks with the FFA’s approval, says Australian football can learn much from US football and sees opportunities to develop links.

“Their game day experience is quite unbelievable. It’s just so much more professional in that regard,” he said.

“And some of the stadiums over there, they are like shopping malls.”

Spanoudakis toured San Jose’s training facility and the club’s two grounds - the Buck Shaw and McAfee stadiums - and was very impressed with what he saw.

He also hinted that he may meet San Jose officials later in the year to discuss way in which the two clubs could reach an alliance of sorts.

“I spoke with Frank Yallop the coach and we spoke about his time coaching Beckham and there seems to be a greater recognition of Aussie football over there after the Galaxy matches here and the Pan Pacific tournament.”

We’ll have more news on that as it develops.

Meanwhile, back to the match reports. Here’s Dylan Butler’s match report for the Mercury News and his piece for MLSnet.com. You can also find match reports from The Sports Network and the New Jersey Star-Ledger. MLSnet also has a post-game feature with quotes from coach Frank Yallop and defender Ryan Cochrane. George Vecsey of the New York Times chips in with a feature on New York, which he calls “the least distinctive sports franchise in town.”

Next up for the Quakes is an untelevised U.S. Open Cup match on Wednesday night in Salt Lake City, followed by the team’s Santa Clara debut on Saturday night.