What? Oh, of course you made the right choice, Peter. Why would you have wanted to go to South Africa? Assistant coach – where's the glory in that?
Besides, you didn't want to hitch your wagon to Bob Bradley and Landon Donovan, did you? Where was the job security in that? With a three and out, and Sunil likely to bend to pressure and finally hire a foreign coach, there's no way you would have been kept on. Assistants are only considered after successful World Cup runs.
Okay, there was no way for you to have known that the US group was going to be THAT winnable, but you knew more than anyone that the US didn't have a real goalscoring threat. What, was some guy in MLS suddenly going to turn into Pele or something?
Oh. Sorry.
Okay, but, you were offered a spot at history. A franchise can only have one first coach ever. What other coach can have the opportunity to form the direction of a club for the rest of its days? What's better – a job, or a legacy?
Plus, you weren't stuck with whatever the American national team program could scrape up. You could find your own players. A team you could build from the ground up, with players you wanted, playing the way you wanted. A team that told the world, "This is Peter Nowak soccer."
No, taking the Union job was absolutely the best move. As the poet and philosopher said, "This is the one. This is the one I'm going to be remembered for."
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Nery should go to a real league, like Greece. I nearly wrote "Like MLS," but I'm above such childish trolling.
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So Peter Vermes called Davy Arnaud's red card against the Dynamo "ridiculous." Fortunately, MLS has a state of the art website with video highlights, so we can see the play and judge for ourselves.
Okay, I eventually did find it. I was in a locked filing cabinet in a basement with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard" – wait, that was the bypass plans from "Hitch-hiker's Guide." The Arnaud red card was stuck in the highlights of the Houston-Kansas City game, about 1/3 of the way through, after Landin's incredibly impressive goal.
Um…well, I had the liberty of watching it a couple of times, and I don't think it was a bad call. The angle made it look a lot more 50-50 than it was. Onstad didn't have the ball totally wrapped, but he was a lot closer to it than Arnaud. Onstad was on the ground, too, which means he had zero means of protecting himself. If that's not the sort of play that gets red cards, then we will just see a spate of horrible goalkeeper injuries until the rule is changed so it is a red card.
Link to the video? How the hell am I supposed to figure out how to do that?
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This post brings up a very sensitive subject.
I'm led to understand that there will be a televised soccer tournament this summer. Even though this particular tournament is nothing but a big cash-grab, the promoters have really tried to make it seem like a big deal. Just more schedule congestion, if you ask me.
Anyhow, not all of these games will be played at times convenient to all of our readers, what with jobs and time zones and stuff. So many of us will resort to technology known as "DVR," which is Afrikaans for "watching the game later."
So we should probably get on the same page as to giving away results. Four years ago, I remember making heat shield posts before my actual, in order not so spoil any surprises. That was a little ponderous, looking back.
I think this time around, BigSoccer should be R-rated. The front page is going to be loaded with World Cup stuff, we'll be talking about it on every forum, and, well, it'll be the biggest story in the world for a couple of months.
And it's not 1990 anymore – the games are being shown live, not blacked out and tape delayed, which was really the point of the [R] policy back when the Internet was just a couple of e-mail lists.
So if you just LOVE the [R] policy, well, better make your case.