This Weekend's Good, Bad and Ugly

THE GOOD
The Houston Dynamo are playing like champions. Their 1-0 victory over DC United has turned their streak to eight unbeaten games. The Dynamo looked like they really have no weaknesses. DC coach Tom Soehn said, "Defensively, I thought we were pretty solid. We didn't give them a ton of chances, nor did they give us. It's the type of game you expect it to be between two good teams. Like I said, unfortunately we didn't hit that first opportunity." United play well and I believe are still the team to beat in the East.


THE BAD
Red Bull New York ended their losing skid at five games, downing the Rapids 1-0. That victory put New York in sole possesion of first place in the East with twenty four points, with DC United and the New England Revolution tied for second with twenty three points each. The Revolution and United have each played one less game than Red Bull NY.


THE UGLY
I am still amazed at the heartache and anxiety half(made up statistic) of American soccer fans felt over the team we sent to Copa America. The hand wringing about not sending our best to the great CONMEBOL tournament still confuses me. The USA needed to win the Gold Cup to qualify us for the Confederation Cup in 2009, playing in 2010 World Cup venues. The thing is in 2009 we send our 'A' team to Copa and our 'C' team to the Gold Cup. It's all about what's best for the World Cup. Anyway the argument about the difference in the confederations is what I find funny. Everybody always argues that CONCACAF is a two horse race, well the truth is so is CONMEBOL (okay so it's Secratariat and Seattle Slew) with Uruguay always in the mix. Just look at the second round results.
Argentina 4 - 0 Peru
Mexico 6 - 0 Paraguay
Venezuela 1 - 4 Uruguay
Chile 1 - 6 Brazil
Yeah that's 22-2 aggregate score in what is supposed to be an incredibly tough tournament, now that's ugly.