SEATTLE V’S NEW ENGLAND

I turned to Fox Sports to watch the opening match of the season, having just seen Orlando play New York City a few hours prior. Firstly, the Orlando match – with 63,000 supporters inside the Citrus Bowl – was a total joke with the two main “superstars” the Spanish World Cup and Champions League winner, David Villa and world record transfer Kaka (65million pounds to Real Madrid) take centre stage. I could not help thinking of the NASL in the 70s with Pele (the real deal), Bechenbauer (The Keizer) and Cruyff (the greatest I played against) “strutting their stuff” for the New York Cosmos, only they were in a totally different League – and I don’t mean NASL to MSL – from these two, trust me! Former Stoke City star Adian Heath was on the touchline for Orlando, who is the man leading another ‘Potter’ Phil Rawlings’ team into the MSL for the first time from the locker room. I will be visiting him in the coming weeks, as I followed Heath into the Stoke City team in 1974, after he moved on to become a legend in a great Everton team ran by Howard Kendall, a man who followed me at the Victoria Ground at the end of his career. Again, as Harry Enfield says once again, “It’s a funny old game” .
I was told just the other week that he wrote in his recent book that when he signed for Stoke City that after few weeks in the team, in which he was very impressive, he was told by a senior player that, “You are the second best player I’ve played with and seen in midfield here at Stoke”. Howard asked who he was runner-up to and John ‘Jackie’ Marsh told him, “Alan Hudson”.
Anyhow, back to Orlando before going to the Seattle match, where the match was like watching a very poor non-League match here in England, and after that I watched a few minutes of New York Red Bulls match which was no better. I then switched back to SKY and watched normal TV for an hour or so, thinking ‘Have I got to sit through another90 minutes of that rubbish, especially as I have just come out of hospital and not feeling 100%. At times like this I like to watch a good comedy something that takes my mind of my ailment, but this was far from funny. Disneyland came more to mind.
My son, Allen tuned into the CenturyLink Field 7 minutes into the match and within two minutes, and I am being totally honest, I came round as if I had been injected in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. The Sounders was inside the syringe and the main drug was Clint Dempsey and his strike partner Obafemi Martins, two players I know from the Premier League. I saw Dempsey in training when I was taken there by David Gillet the other week, a player who impressed me at Fulham (the club I once supported) but failed to live up to his big transfer fee at Spurs before returning to the MSL. However tonight, Clint was on fire and Martins was right there alongside him, as they had the New England defence all over the place. Dempsey showed his Premier League experience and class with a very nice piece of indiviualism as he took on three defenders and was dumped to the ground by the latter. Penalty!
Unlike in the Orlando where the referee seemed as if he was doing a advertisement for Specsavers, by booking two players for diving (simulation), and then doing the same instead of awarding him a penalty, this referee was spot on – if you’ll excuse the pun.
Dempsey sat on his backside looking into space before getting to his feet and coolly sending the NE keeper the wrong way. Enter Obafemi Martins as the Sounders were now in ascendency – amazing what a goal does for your confidence – and the former Newc astle United frontman, (as I remember him) leapt high above his marker, with terrific timing, and headed a fine cross into the far corner from around twelve yards.
I could not help thinking the lack of controlled headers of the ball we have here in the Premier League, with believe it or not 6’ 7” Peter Crouch, now at Stoke City, still possibly/probably the best around.
The last great headers of the ball were the great Alan Shearer and the brilliant Teddy Sherigham.
Ron Davies of the ‘79 Sounders was once the best header of the ball in the world, bar none!
You always know when a game is enjoyable, like a good movie, it flies by, and where the Orlando match was like watching ‘paint dry’ this match was quite the opposite, it flew by, and with the half-time whistle I limped to the kitchen to make a black coffee, as I am on antibiotics and booze is out of touch. Ouch!
As I sipped my coffee I thought that I would look at this performance and try to analyze how our record breaking team under Alan Hinton would have compared with the modern day Sounders. It was quite interesting, and I was very unbiased, as I saw a very good match all over the field, taking into consideration the fitness levels from our days in the NASL, of course, with the modern day footballer being more machine-like. Todays players are more muscle bound than in my day, but when judging a “real” player you just look at the best in my time, and players pound-for-pound, Steve Buttle was the outcome of my theory – and I know that to be true because I played with and against the great Alan Ball, once a World Cup winner and Vancouver Whitecap.
However, I think we edged it with Rioch being the difference at the heart of our defence, just edging the very impressive Chad Marshall (and he was impressive) out of the equation, whilst making life a lot tougher than the New England backline did for the Dempsey/Martins strikeforce. In midfield we had far more control of the ball or you might say, “superior in possession” with Steve Buttle and myself taking the sting out of an all-action match. The thing I cannot judge is just how much trouble our strikers would have bothered Sounders backline because they were never put under any pressure by New England. But make no mistake, they would have given them a lot of problems given the kind of service given from the likes of Buttle, Hudson and Tommy Hutchinson, one of the trickiest and most entertaining wide players, if not “the” most, in the history of the Sounders, if not Britain, after all he was a Scottish international, when Scotland had a football (Soccer) team.
It made the second half interesting for me as I now took my sleeping tablet along with other medication. But before they ‘kicked-in’ the goal of the match came as Sounders hit NE with the kind of football (soccer) that the visitors simply could not come to terms with. If it had been a European Champions League match you would not be taken away in a straight jacket, if thinking so. Seriously, it was sublime, as a couple a great one-twos were followed by Martins taking the ball up to the NE keeper and sliding a simple pass into the path of Dempsey, 3-0 . Game over!
I gave it a few moments to see if they were going to interview Sigi but no, they shot straight into a studio somewhere in LA, I think. But I had seen enough, and was better equipped to write to the Seattle Sounders Head Coach in the morning, well, it was already morning, but you know what I mean. I finish this piece right now at 11am., and it will be on my greatestcard,com blog by midday, hopefully. The Sounders, I must say, made my weekend, knowing that Sigi, who I liked, looks like he is going in the right direction with this club. When I asked him how he was doing, at the training ground, he told “I am loving life at the Sounders,thank you Alan”. I can see why!
The bottom line is that the evening started with me thinking that the MSL was no better than a Sunday morning kick-about here in England whilst watching Orlando, and ended thinking Seattle might, just might, be the team to beat this season, and I’ll finish by saying that although I don’t know the strength of the opposition, Sounders looked mighty impresssive. Finally, when my friend, Terry Bate and I reach Orlando in a few weeks time, I will be having a side-bet with Heath and Rawlings that Seattle will wipe the floor with their new franchise – if they come into contact.
Go Sounders!
It seems as if the days when the fans of our time were chanting “We want fish” are gone, for they now want goals…..