A day after getting their clocks cleaned by Real Salt Lake in a game which may or may not have told us a lot about RSL but which exposed holes in the Josers defense that you could drive a truck through, the Doyle & Yallop Traveling Circus leaped into action and signed:
Jon Busch.
Until the new and improved Major League Soccer Soccer website provdes us with something like the old "Quickkicks" clips or sends something to YouTube other than Greg Lalas saying "I need more cowbell" (Hey Greg: the turn of the century called and they want their line back) all I can do is say that the last person to blame for those three goals the Stormin Mormons tallied was Joe Cannon.
I'm sure the management (and I use the term loosely) at San Jose will call Cannon in this morning and assure him that signing Buschie was somehow "strategic" and not a reflection on him and I'm also sure that Joe will know better. You don't bring in a relatively expensive veteran goalkeeper 24 hours after a 3 – 0 pasting unless you're looking to upgrade.
And Busch didn't weigh all his options and decide that spending 2010 sitting on the bench for a terrible team was just the career builder he needs.
At this rate, how much longer can Frank Yallop hang on to that job? Maybe a better question would be whether John Doyle will be canned at the same time.
Then there's Curt Onalfo.
When Peter Vermes showed him the door in KC, Onalfo made some not-so-thinly-veiled comments implying that the problem with the Wizards was that the organization wasn't up to his high standards.
So when the Peter Vermes-coached Wizards dropped a 4-0 ass kicking on Onalfo's DC side, there was no place for the DC coach to hide.
Both teams underwent major rebuilding over the winter, so nobody had the "we're still learning each others names" excuse, although surprisingly one of the bright spots for The District was a kid who actually might still need an introduction or two, 17 year old Academy signing Andy Najar, who joined the team after dropping out of High School less than a week ago.
Still, road openers can be rocky, and Community America can make it feel like you're playing on a bowling alley, so it's certainly way too early to start sounding any alarms.
But Onalfo had better find some answers, and quickly. DC is not a place where suckitude is tolerated.
If anybody still needed to be convinced about this whole "soccer specific stadium" thing, the Red Bulls – Fire match surely served as an object lesson.
In 15 years of existence, has anyone ever written the sentence "New Yorks' loud, raucous home crowd packed the stands and the atmosphere was electric" or any variation thereof? If they did, they were likely either fired or committed.
And when did a New York MLS head coach ever say that the home crowd could be worth "six or seven points" over the season?
Nobody wants to get carried away here, but this isn't just a team moving into fancy new digs. It's a whole other thing.
As for the game itself, it featured the two MLS teams who, when they found themselves in need of new head coaches last winter, spit in the face of history and brought in foreign guys with not a smidgen of MLS experience anywhere in their resumes.
Score one for the grandfatherly looking Swedish guy.
Just one question though: who ever heard of an Estonian named "Joel"? Are there Latvians named "Ralph"? Lithuanians named "Bruce"? Aren't guys from the Baltic states supposed to be named, like, Tiit or Siim or Juhan?
No matter. Estonian Joel Lindpere, whose name we're going to hear again this season, scored on a stunner of a volley off of a header from Angel for the games' only goal but more importantly he's a box-to-box player with real class and toughness.
And it's not surprising that Bouna Condoul was the best keeper on the pitch, considering that the guy in the other net was making his first MLS start, but he was nothing short of brilliant, turning back a number of shots that surely would have beaten…well, Dykstra, most likely.
Chicago had a number of chances, including a Brian McBride bike which clanked off the left upright, but this was the Red Bulls coming out party and it's hard not to be happy about it.
Elsewhere, Dallas and Houston played to a 1-1 draw, Dallas' Kyle Davies suffered a broken arm, Jeff Cunningham had several opportunities but the only one that found the net was ruled offside, Houstons' Eddie Robinson, out for most of 2009 with a knee, had to leave before the half with a hammie and won't be on the pitch again anytime soon.
In Columbus they have this little Argentine guy who seems to be working on a bit of a middle age spare tire, but it doesn't seem to have affected his play much. An Andy Iro header off of a Schelotto DFK and a Schelotto goal off of a pathetic Nick Garcia clearance attempt was all the Crew needed to lay a 2-0 defeat on a game but outclassed and occasionally disorganized Toronto FC.
A defender that Preki shipped out to Colorado just before the weekend, Marvel Wynne, did not have a single practice session with his new team, and then Rapids coach Gary Smith decided to start him at center back, a position he had never played in his life. So of course he drew rave reviews for his performance in helping hand Chivas a 1-0 loss in their home opener on the strength of an Omar Cummings goal, marking among other things just the third opening day win in Rapids history and their first ever on the road.
The Galaxy made a sixth minute Edson Buddle goal stand up against a New England team which is busy proving that no, Steve Nicol can't win games just by being Steve Nicol; he really needs a player or two. The latest casualty for the defection-and-injury decimated Revs was Shalrie Joseph, who didn't even make the trip. Still, somehow or other, the Revolution, who looked frighteningly inept offensively in the early going, gradually got into a rhythm and put serious pressure on Arenas' back line, but were never quite able to break though with the equalizer.