It wasn’t artistic, but a point is a point

It was hardly a 90-minute advertisement for the joys of the Beautiful Game, but there was still a lot to like in the Earthquakes’ 0-0 draw last night at Real Salt Lake. Ronnie O’Brien, whose right knee is finally healthy enough to brave the nasty artificial turf at Rice-Eccles Stadium, led the attack and heroically buckled down on defense. Kelly Gray, forced into central defense because of injuries to Nick Garcia and Ryan Cochrane, once again played with the champions’ spirit of the 2005 Quakes with his commitment and leadership. Cochrane, who had little choice but to enter the game after Jason Hernandez’ red card, put his body on the line to preserve the draw. Joe Cannon came up big when he had to. Even the referee, who did so much to destroy the flow of the game by whistling even the slightest contact between players, got his most important call right by disallowing an offside RSL goal.

So no, it wasn’t pretty and we didn’t get the win we predicted yesterday, but we’ll take it anyway.

On to today’s press reports:
- You’ll find game stories in the Mercury News, the Deseret News, and MLSnet.com. Video highlights are here. The Salt Lake Tribune’s match report is written by Sunnie Redhouse, who we think has the perfect name to be a great blues musician. (”There’s a Redhouse over yonder…”)

- Further commentary on the match is provided by secondary articles in the Deseret News and MLSnet.com.

- Adam Smarte’s emergence in the team is covered in the Register Pajaronian, a Watsonville paper.

Finally, we leave you with a link to a short video on the BBC web site that indicates that Holland midfield maestro Rafael van der Vaart seems to be keeping to the traditional Dutch herring diet.