ROB, POTW

Normally, there’s a bit of a lull in the early part of the week, but not so today. We’re chock full of news.

The biggest and best story is that Ronnie O’Brien has been awarded MLS Player of the Week honors for his stellar, two-goal performance against New England.  It’s well deserved. O’Brien has been one of the team’s bright spots all year, and now that San Jose is armed with a multi-pronged attack, he’s clearly enjoying the fact that defenses no longer make him the center of attention. You can see a video clip with O’Brien’s two goals on MLSnet.com.

San Jose’s lopsided win over New England is drawing attention from all over. The Quakes jumped up two places in ESPN’s MLS Power Rankings, taking them past the L.A. Galaxy. ESPN notes that “The Earthquakes have won two in a row and are unbeaten in their last five. A playoff berth is not out of the question.” Down at Sideline Views, Luis Bueno has San Jose ranked ninth in MLS, with the Galaxy dead last.

Speaking of the Galaxy, their hiring of Bruce Arena as GM and head coach was made official yesterday. Also joining the club is Dave Sarachan, who assisted Arena on the 2002 US team before becoming a head coach in Chicago. We’re skeptical that adding another big ego to the mix in L.A. will bring success in the long term, so we’ll see how long it takes Arena and AEG president Tim Leiweke to start butting heads. In the meantime, we’ll pass along what may be the strangest quote ever to come out of a press conference announcing the hiring of a new coach in MLS, a comment from Arena about Sarachan:

“I realized that if I was going to take on this challenge, I’d need a second in command (so) that when I get assassinated, they can take over right away.”

“When I get assassinated”!?! Did Arena just become dictator of some banana republic that depends on intimidation and dirty politics to retain power, bending the rules as they see fit to ensure their dominance? Hmm… actually, when we put it that way, maybe Arena has a better grasp on the scope of his new job than we thought. We may have to start calling him “Il Bruce.”

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We mentioned the other day that Darren Huckerby had given his shirt to some lucky fan, and now we know who it is. Turns out his name is Graham Yallop, and we’re pretty sure he’s no relation to Quakes coach Frank Yallop because he’s been a lifelong Norwich City Football Club fan and Frank played for their arch rivals, Ipswich. Frequent visitors to the solar-powered soccer blog will remember his video following the Galaxy match on August 3, and he has filed another report from Saturday’s match.

We’re not the only ones who have taken notice of his communique this time. The Norwich Evening News actually took the time to interview Graham, who supported City home and away from 1990 to 2002 but now lives and works in Napa Valley. “The reason for starting it was for no other reason than sending a video to my best mate to allow him to keep up with the man’s progress and new surroundings, nothing more,” he told the paper. “The reaction and feedback from both Norwich and Quakes fans has been amazing. The first video has 100 comments and growing with 28,000 hits.” The paper’s sister publication, the Pink ‘Un, has a similar story. Kudos to Graham for initiating his one-man cultural exchange program between the Bay Area and Norwich.

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There’s one last item from this weekend’s match that is just surfacing now. As we noted on Sunday, Revolution forward Khano Smith invoked the wrath of the assembled masses at Buck Shaw Stadium by shoving Ronnie O’Brien, then attempting to intimidate him by faking a head butt. O’Brien’s response was to score his second goal of the night a few minutes later, but the crowd responded by booing Smith heartily every time he touched the ball.

It turns out, reports Sports Illustrated’s Jonah Freedman, that the confrontation between Smith and San Jose fans continued after the match.  “After Saturday night’s tilt between the San Jose Earthquakes and the New England Revolution, I was probably the only journalist who saw the Revs’ big Bermudan striker angrily hurl a full bottle of Gatorade at two Quakes fans who were heckling him as he headed toward the locker rooms,” he reports.

The story continues:

Two fans kept taunting him from the other side of the partition that separates the stadium from the practice field, and Smith played right into their hands, first by inviting them to meet him in the parking lot, then by trying to go after them (a pair of his teammates actually had to restrain him). So instead, he hurled the bottle right at them from about 30 feet away.

Freedman doesn’t say whether the bottle hit anyone or not, but if Smith’s throw was anything like his notorious 2007 free kick against Kansas City, which the Washington Post’s Steven Goff called “perhaps the worst free kick you’ll ever see,” it probably went out for a throw-in.