Sounders Matchday 2, 0-1 loss to RBNY.

I don't really want to talk about it.

We're all pretty pissed off.  I've even defended the validity of the astonishing 12 Sounders corner kicks as "helping tell the story of the match."  

BTW, RBNY had 4 corners, and managed to scored on one of them...

Going back through the last 10 Sounders' matches at Qwest, including friendlies (Chelsae and Barca last year, Portsc*m this preseason) and the playoff match, the Sounders have scored a total of 4 goals in from of the Faithful, those coming in the course of just two matches, leaving a stunning 8 home shutouts in 10.  Throwing out matches that don't count, its still 5 of 7, which is pretty lousy...

We all already know that, and we're all pretty irritated about it.  

So I don't really want to talk about it.

In searching for meaning, I picked up "Inverting the Pyramid" and started reading the final chapter, titled "The Turning World".  There, just a few paragraphs in, I found the Answer, in the form of a quote from Marcelo Bielsa, Argentina's National Team coach from '98-'04:

"Totally mechanized teams are useless, because they get lost when they lose their script.  But I don't like either ones that live only on the inspiration of their soloists, because when God doesn't turn them on, they are left totally at the mercy of their opponents."

The context of this quote comes in the context of a discussion of a rise of the "new style" of playmakers, best exemplified by the French team that won Euro 2000.  France lined up three attacking midfielders-- among them the brilliant-beyond-words Zinedine Zidane -- behind a very unconventional "center forward" lone striker in Thierry Henry.  This is the 4-2-3-1, the formation which in many cases the 4-4-2 has evolved into and which better explains the Sounders lineup better than most others.

They are what they Italians call trequartistas, in Argentina they are the enganche.  They are the players who operate between the midfield and the attack, and they are nothing new to football.  Both Pele and Maradona operated as "free forwards" who would roam back when necessary.  Going all the way back to the 2-3-5 and W-M formations these were the "inside forwards,"  whose job it was to play deeper than the other forwards and be the "smart ones."

As football became more and more systematized and "mechanized," it is these modern-day playmakers who shoulder much of the burden of creating scoring chances.  Lionel Messi is one who operates on the wing -- his off-foot wing, as so many now do -- and play an "outside-in" style, in which the classic booming cross is largely a "last-resort" maneuver mainly left to overlapping fullbacks.  

The Sounders have at least 2, sometimes 3, and often even 4, as we have seen lately with Jacqua out of the lineup.  Ljungberg enjoyed many successful years at Arsenal playing just such a role, Zakuani has been converted into one on the nominal left, and Montero, while more a true striker than the other two, is by nature the type of forward who will roam back, somewhat counter-intuitively he will actually "press forward" by dropping back, looking for the ball.

Levesque has been given a run-out as the nominal right-sided playmaker, and experiment I sense will have ended as of the 55th-minute last night.  His role seems tied to being the "off the bench closer-striker" and occasional spot starter.  Roger contributed very little last night (something I really don't like saying given his iconic status in the Supporter culture) and his replacement, new signing Pat Noonan, provided an immediate improvement.

The 12 corners DO tell a story.  The Sounders controlled possession, created more chances, almost continuously hounded the Red Bull penalty area, and nonetheless came up empty.  I fact, Red Bulls really ought to have won 2-0, as a brilliant counterattack resulted in the most sunning miss of the night late in the match.

We can all sit around and blame whatever/whoever we want.  Riley was far from effective in his return, in general there were far too many miscues on passes and set pieces for most Sounders fans to tolerate, and yet the majority of the match was spent with the Sounders in possession, on the attack, so Something went right... right?!

We have seen far to often over the last 7 League matches at Qwest where the Playmakers have simply been left to the mercy of the opponents... and I'm not sure what the answer is.  Wait for Jacqua to return -- whenever that may be -- even though he didn't necessarily prove to be the true "target man" last season to begin with?  Wait until July when Blaise comes to town?

I don't know, and I don't really want to talk about it...