Post-game press roundup

We’re not sure where to begin our discussion of last night’s match. There were so many firsts — first game in Buck Shaw, first game in Earthquakes history with a decent sound system, first time you could actually watch a replay in the Quakes’ home stadium, and so forth — that it’s going to take a while to sink in.

We know one thing for sure, though: you had to be there if you wanted the full Earthquakes experience. Watching at home on TV just isn’t the same, and it actually would have been a bit weird last night. We sat down to watch our Tivo-ed copy of the match this morning and, where we expected to find John Shrader and Troy Dayak telling us about the starting lineups, we instead discovered the Phillies batting in the bottom of the 10th against the Giants. That would have been disappointing on its own, but the man batting for Philadelphia was named Carlos Ruiz! What a way to mess with a Quakes fan’s mind. If the next Phillies batter had been named Diego Serna, we think a lot of people would have just turned off the TV and slowly backed out of their living rooms. (Home viewers weren’t completely shut out — the baseball game finished promptly and the broadcast joined the Quakes match just after kickoff.)

• • •Match reports:
- Center Line Soccer, Embele Awipe
 
- MLSnet.com, Jeff Carlisle
Carlisle also surveys the post-game opinions of the team in this piece for MLSnet.com.
 
- San Jose Mercury News, Elliott Almond

- Dallas Morning News, Isaiah Guzman

- Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mark Emmons

Finally, Goal.com has a general interview with Quakes striker Kei Kamara.