Chicago - Postmatch
- Thread starter LionNYC
- Start date
Yeah but also problems away.
The game really had 3 roughly equally long parts: the first 35 which were among the worst soccer we've ever played, with Maxi lost on the wing, everybody slipping, a midfield populated by guys who are naturally 6s or 8s, CHI defending pretty high up on the field and looking a bit more incisive than us when attacking. Not that they wanted to play effective and rational soccer, but somebody had to do it. I thought we would lose. Around the 35 minute mark we started creating chances (including a very clear one Villa wasted) and playing faster, and that gained momentum at the start of the 2nd half, we scored twice and looked dangerous until 65-70 minutes, when we retrenched and became pointless again.
Only noticed this morning that on Villa's nifty backheel to set up Ring, he nutmegged Schweinsteiger.
Can
LionNYC or anyone else that sits pitch side provide some info on what Dome is doing/saying during the games. Maybe they just catch him in bad spots but I'd say 80% of the time the camera pans to him he's turned around talking to his assistant coaches and it often looks like he's just complaining about calls and other things. He rarely seems to be relaying information to players on the pitch. What's going on? Does he really spend the whole game talking to the other coaches or does the TV camera just catch him at weird times? Does he give instructions to the coaches and then does someone else off camera shout them out to the team?
LionNYC or anyone else that sits pitch side provide some info on what Dome is doing/saying during the games. Maybe they just catch him in bad spots but I'd say 80% of the time the camera pans to him he's turned around talking to his assistant coaches and it often looks like he's just complaining about calls and other things. He rarely seems to be relaying information to players on the pitch. What's going on? Does he really spend the whole game talking to the other coaches or does the TV camera just catch him at weird times? Does he give instructions to the coaches and then does someone else off camera shout them out to the team?
He is quieter than PV was, and does indeed spend much of the time talking to his coaches. But he does selectively call out instructions to his players during the run of play, and also often calls over a particular player during a stop in action to talk to them, usually with an arm draped around them in typical Dome fashion. Often it's Villa or one of the leaders, likely to relay some instructions to be passed along. He also gets fairly animated at bad calls, yelling at officials, and last night he was screaming and waiving his arms around violently about the pitch every time someone slipped. He was livid about it.Can
Totally agree with this one. I don't know if they're not just vibing, or if the players are still getting acclimated to the new staff, but I thought they would look ecstatic after winning and we looked like we lost.
I noticed on the broadcast at one particular moment late he had Chanot on the sideline talking with him about something while there was a pause in the action.
Also noticed him berating the 4th official after a terrible throw-in call. Which I'll use to wrap up a few more thoughts on the officiating from last night (that I thought generally was ok):
- Already noted the terrible non-yellows to Dax and Schweini. Those were as clear as day, and I would bet that some refs may even have awarded Dax a red for DOGSO on his foul on Berget. I'm not saying I'm arguing it should have been red, just that some MLS refs may have given one there.
- There were two absolutely atrocious throw-in decisions made, one in favor of each team. The one Dome got pissed about in the second half that a Chicago player played out of bounds, and then Tinny tried to save in to keep attacking. He wasn't able to save it and for some reason, I think that confused both the ref and the AR. The other was when Sweat had a tackle on Edwards and it very clearly careemed off of Sweat and out. That said, I always find it kind of funny about how livid players can get to throw-in decisions since IMO, they rarely result in a large favor to any team.
- On the broadcast, you could see the 4th official giving Sands a bunch of crap for coming off the field too slow that I thought was completely unnecessary.
Maybe he was upset Amagat was coming on.
Mataritta had a great defensive game yesterday. Ofori and Sands being able to cover the overlapping fullbacks was very nice.
Ring is looking like he is returning to form offensively as well. I thought he did very well vs. Montreal with his distribution. He's no 10, but with a fully healthy lineup Maxi slots in there anyway.
The 4th official was upset Amagat was coming on?
And on that note, Amagat didn't really do anything terrible yesterday. He didn't do anything great either, but I guess that's ok when you're coming on while we're up 2-0.
And yeah, Ring was getting way forward last night. There were some instances in which an attacking possession would end for us and Ring would be in an offsides position. For someone that has so often been just in front of the back four, or part of it, that's a pretty crazy contrast.
Even the BTS is tempered. I suspect that everyone is less than happy with the recent run, and the win brings some relief but not much excitement.
It was an interesting moment. Sands was jogging off and just as the camera cut to Amagat you could see Amagat make a hand motion to Sands to take his time and slow down. Sands immediately responded by switching to a walk, the ref caught the exchange and yelled at him. Still not sold on Amagat but it was a fun moment between and vet and a young player.
Ok, that makes a bit more sense on the ref's part then. I missed the hand motion from Amagat. I thought it was just Sands getting closer to the sideline, so he slowed down a bit.
Another funny moment when towards the end of the game a ball (other than the beer crushing ball) came to my buddy and a few folks around us (of course) yelled at him to hold onto it. Dome then looks over at him and both tells him and makes a hand gesture to hold onto it.
I would argue they've been heading this direction all season. They are getting shorter. There are fewer playful moments between the players and the unseen camera person. I think they skipped BTS videos on 1 or 2 occasions after a loss, which they never used to do. I still look forward to them, but something is missing. I think it started before Dome came on, and if I'm right it means it's probably not something he has ordered. It could be something as innocuous and meaningless as a new production crew or editor.
He more or less said this early in his tenure; something along the lines of "what matters is the playoffs" and I imagine the closest analog in his mind to the MLS Playoffs is a knockout tournament. So the optimistic part of me wants to believe that his general attitude has been "the league is basically over, let's try to focus on winning the tournament".
Which hopefully is the reason why there has been so much tinkering. We can risk tinkering now to a certain degree. We can't in the playoffs. (this is what I'm telling myself)
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