Wednesday night, 7 p.m. on Planet LA, and your old pal Tino plops down to enjoy the MLS/Reading All-Stars against Guatemala. Here we go, flip on The Deuce and ...
You have got to be kidding me. Braves-Mets is in extras, top of the 10th.
How could I forget the 11th Commandment: any event on ESPN before a soccer game shall always runneth over.
Yup, 7:00 on the dot and no mention of any footie. Ever the eternal optimist, I flip over to ESPN Classic to see if the U.S.-Mexico game gave them the bug. Nope. And not only is there no soccer, but they are showing highlights of my hometown Minnesota Vikings losing an old Super Bowl to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Irony. Cute.
7:01 - A Braves pitcher gets hurt. As we all know, an injury replacement gets to warm up as long as he wants. Great.
7:04 - First mention that a soccer game is being pre-empted. I'm getting testy.
7:07 - DirecTV has a few channels dedicated to ESPN alternate programming. Two of them have the same blowout baseball game and the third is dark. Great use of resources. My joy continues.
7:09 - Swearing the entire way, I trudge into the other room to plop down in front of Matchtracker on ussoccer.com, leaving the TV up loud enough to hear.
7:11 - Top of the 10th inning ends, Mets lead 3-2, and I'd bet my life the Braves score once (and only once) in the bottom of the inning to extend our misery.
7:12 - Base hit for the Braves. Here we go.
7:14 - Hit batter. Shocker.
7:17 - Queen of the Palace stems my rage momentarily by plunking down dinner in front of me. For those who thought there is nothing more excruciating than missing the start to a soccer match, I give you Exhibit A: my wife's cooking.
7:18 - Great! Another pitching change! Take your time walking to the mound, god forbid you do anything athletic to earn that $10 million this season.
7:21 - You know, Matchtracker is like hemorrhoid cream: you love that it exists, you just never want to have to use it.
7:27 - This stinks. This is like watching an FC Dallas game these days.
7:28 - Since The Bruce is resting his first team, I wonder if ESPN will also call in some random backups. Instead of J.P. and Celo, think they will trot out Al Trautwig and Roy Wegerle?
7:29 - Finally. There be footie here. The game clock is running.
26th minute - Oh good, looks like Chad Marshall found his passport.
27' - If you are afraid of heights, you may want to go back to Matchtracker ... this game is apparently being shot from the Guatemalan Goodyear blimp.
30' - Good stuff from Marcus Hahnemann, who has as much on the line this game as Guatemala.
34' - Taylor Twellman with a great block of teammate Jeff Cunningham's shot. See, Taylor knows that he and Jeff may be competing for one spot, so letting Cunningham score simply can't happen.
38' - Verbatim from Queen of the Palace: "Hey, is that Pando? He's terrible. Is he at least any better for Guatemala?" Classic. Does lead to a good question: Does Pando win this year's Jerry Tamashiro award for the biggest foreign bust?
40' - The Guatemalan goalkeeper, Miguel Klee, has decided to punch everything one-handed. This could be fun.
45' - I know Little Fishy is suspended, but you get the feeling the U.S. varsity squad would be spanking these guys pretty good. Man, CONCACAF is soft this time around.
Halftime - The highlight package from U.S.-Mexico is serviceable, but I would rather just see all the battles between Gooch and Borgetti. To his credit, Borgetti turned in one of the blatantly dirtiest performances I have seen in a while. If you have the game on tape and two hours to kill, go through it again and count how many times Borgetti smacks Gooch in the ribs. Then count how many times Gooch backs down. That would be zero. You gotta love this kid.
By the way, did you see what Ricardo LaVolpe – for now the manager of Mexico – said after the match? He said that the female members of his family could play for the Yanks because there is so little pressure on players in this country. While he is right that there is virtually no pressure on the U.S. players or coaches, I'm not sure that ripping them when they just keep putting up 2-0's on you is the best course of action for your job security.
48' - Back to the "action." This game is so choppy it makes the awful first half of USA-Mexico last weekend actually look like decent soccer.
49' - Since Marcus Hahnemann's days in MLS, he has had a tendency to out-kick his field players way too often ... and tonight is no different. No one is more aware of it than his former club manager and current U.S. assistant coach Glenn Myernick.
52' - Jimmy Conrad takes a nasty knock, and speaking of being down, are you kidding me with Eng-er-land losing to Northern Ireland? Is there a Swedish version of Hotjobs.com?
55' - Nice dead ball by Bobby Convey hits the bar. Speaking of hitting the bar, can some one out there please tell me why my Vikings dumped Randy Moss because of his off-field persona and then signed Koren Robinson?
57' - Note to U.S. players: when the opposing goalkeeper tried (poorly) to punch everything away one-handed early in the match, the best strategy is not to stop crossing balls into the box. Bruce, you watching this?
61' - OK, now we know how high the broadcast booth is. A plane just went overhead and it was so loud in the broadcasters' mikes they might have had to duck.
64' - Landon comes on. Guess he won't be playing against Mile High Club this weekend at the HDC.
65' - Twellman misses an open net off a cross from Chris Albright. Yes, it was a tough one to handle, but international strikers finish those. Period.
70' - There's a guy with a gorilla mask in the crowd. I don't know what that means.
71' - Chris Albright just kicked the ground, missed the ball, fell down and got a call. Wonderful refereeing.
72' - Hahnemann preserves his clean sheet with a truly world class save. Shot stopping has never been his problem.
76' - Convey with another pathetic cross on a dead ball. I still can't believe how few crosses the USA has managed in this match, especially with a target like Eddie Johnson now on the pitch.
77' - Finally a decent cross and a Chad Marshall header draws a great save from Klee. Amazing what happens ...
79' - JP just plugged the CBS reality show Survivor. That'll earn him a little note from the folks at Disney, who own both ESPN and ABC.
80' - A Guatemalan mishap gifts the Yanks a three-on-two, which ends with Eddie Johnson heading wide of an open net from point-blank range. Yup, he's ready to rejoin the Formerly Almighty Hoops.
81' - The medics who come on the field have mining helmets on - little flashlights and all. Seriously.
82' - Davila dumps Albright for no apparent reason, and apparently gets a card, but while JP tells us it happened, we never see a shot of the ref carding him, nor an on-screen graphic confirming the booking. That might be a little picky, but it's a 0-0 game – what do you want from me?
84' - JP just plugged the NHL starting up again soon. ESPN no longer carries the NHL, which now will be on something called OLN. JP may have just earned his second note from Disney. Lucky they're not like yellow cards, or Celo would be doing the rest of this match solo.
89' - Dumb foul from Vanney. He's apparently also ready to resume duty for FC Dallas.
93' - Full time. A professional effort by the Yanks, but wow was Guatemala underwhelming. I just can't help thinking how little the soft CONCACAF region deserves a fourth spot in Germany. As for the lads on the bubble: Good night for Marcus Hahnemann, not so good for Taylor Twellman or Jeff Cunningham.
GRAB A COLD BUD (OR AQUAFINA) AND PUT YER FEET UP:
WHAT I'LL BE WATCHING:
Saturday - D.C. UNITED at FC DALLAS (8:30 p.m. ET on Fox Soccer Channel): What the heck is wrong with my Hoops? Did anyone stop to check and see if Pizza Hut Park was being built on a sacred cemetery or something?
Saturday - CHIVAS USA AT QUAKES (10 p.m. ET on Direct Kick): There I go building up Chivas and how do they reward me? They get stomped by Columbus. Columbus! Nice defense, guys. Oh, and good job benching Brad Guzan. That paid off.
Tuesday - REAL BETIS VS. LIVERPOOL (2:30 p.m. ET on The Deuce)
Wednesday - VILLARREAL VS. MAN UNITED (2:30 p.m. ET on The Deuce):
Hmm, wonder what they will plug in before these games that will inevitably go too long. Yup, guess I'm still bitter about Wednesday night.
The Clean Sheet runs each Thursday on MLSnet. Views and opinions expressed in this column views and opinions are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com. Send any questions and comments to tcsresponses@yahoo.com
