Monday morning news wrap: Sinclair brace leads WPS all-stars
Riding a two-goal second-half performance from FC Gold Pride’s Christine Sinclair, the WPS All-Stars defeated Umea IK of Sweden 4-2 yesterday in St. Louis. Sinclair scored the game winner in the 47th minute off a cross from the L.A. Sol’s Marta, then followed up with an unassisted tally just a minute later. She missed a chance at a hat-trick when her 69th minute shot rocked the crossbar.
You can find match reports in Soccer America, Southern Illinois newspaper The Telegraph, and SI.com, while BigAppleSoccer.com also highlights Sinclair specifically.
Meanwhile, on the Earthquakes front, Goal.com‘s Kyle McCarthy takes a look at the travails of San Jose’s back line this season in his weekend recap piece. Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe focuses on Wells Thompson, who curled a left-footed shot past San Jose’s Joe Cannon and into the side netting to win the game for New England on Saturday.
That’s it for today, short and sweet. The Earthquakes don’t take the field in MLS action again until Friday, September 18, nearly three weeks from now, although they will play two exhibition matches between now and then: This Friday, they’ll play a Bay Area all-star team, El Sueño de tu Vida (the Dream of Your Life) at PAL Stadium in San Jose and on Tuesday, September 8, El Salvador’s CD Aguila comes to Buck Shaw Stadium.
(These exhibitions are useful for building the fan base, of course, but who puts the MLS schedule together? Three weeks between league matches? You’ve got to be kidding. And this from the league that says the calendar is too crowded to observe FIFA’s international calendar?)
“These exhibitions are useful for building the fan base”
I can’t agree with you on this one.
A few reasons:
- Attendance is low at exhibition games.
- Often people attend to see the other team, not the Earthquakes (last year’s game vs. the Honduran National Team for example)
- One big complaint about the MLS is that it is not at the same level as other leagues (EPL, La Primera, La Liga, etc). I doubt that playing local all-star teams is going to help in changing that opinion
Exhibition games are better than nothing at all but I don’t think that it will grow the fan base at all
I also think that exhibition games like this are useless.
Personally, I think you’re right on when asking who creates the MLS schedule…
Keep up the great work, guys! And Go Quakes!!