Today, it’s pureed tomatoes with a touch of vinegar

Or, in other words, today we’re playing catch-up.

(Sorry about that. A few days off and we’re resorting to puns to kick off the blog. It’s a sad state of affairs.)

We’ll start by rewinding to Thursday, when the Quakes announced that the trade of Kei Kamara to Houston for a first-round pick in the 2009 SuperDraft and allocation money. From our perspective, this looks like a decent deal for both clubs. Kamara, despite some evidence to the contrary, is a player with some upside, and he’s going to fare a lot better in Houston, where he will not relied on for 90 minutes every week. To draw a comparison from baseball, when Tony La Russa managed the A’s, his rule for developing young players was to put  them in situations where they could succeed. It didn’t matter how small their role was — just give them a task they could accomplish so their confidence could grow. Out of necessity, the Quakes started Kamara at every opportunity, and he was clearly overwhelmed by the situation towards the end of his stay in San Jose. A fresh start will be good for him and, if it provides the Quakes with the means of acquiring another player, it will be good for San Jose, too. The draft is a crap shoot, allocation money can always come in handy.

On to Sunday against Los Toros Rojos. (Yes, we’re still avoiding use of the English version of their name because we’re not big fans of the whole “build your brand by naming your soccer team after your energy drink” thing.) Our match report is here, along with our photo gallery and Harvey Rañola’s video interview with Scott Sealy. We’ve also posted post-game audio from Frank Yallop and New York coach Juan Carlos Osorio and forward Juan Pablo Angel.

Our impressions of the match? Well, Darren Huckerby played like a Rockstar, Francisco Lima is starting to look like he could be a real Monster in the midfield,  and we loved how the Quakes came out Full Throttle after conceding the own goal, with a display of Relentless attacking. Sealy demonstrated some speed, too — he can go, and Go Fast. Aside from not bringing home all three points, we really got a Kick out of yesterday’s performance.

Here’s the rest of the press roundup for today:

- MLSnet has a match report and post-game piece from our own Pete Ratajczak, as well as video highlights.
- The Mercury News and San Mateo Daily Journal have match reports as well. Our compliments to the Daily Journal’s Michael Erler for working in a Martin Heidegger reference, thereby bridging the gap between soccer and 20th century existentialist thought. We await his essay analyzing Yallop’s  team building and player acquisition strategies vis-a-vis Hegel’s dialectics.