Big day for live sport yesterday. It started with the first real, all day long Alpine stage on the Tour De France. There is something just awe inspiring about cyclists doing 20KPH along steep alpine roads, and I mean inspiring in a “WTF, are you serious” kinda way.
The end of the live coverage of Le Tour dovetailed nicely into the start of the live coverage of the British GP. A very interesting race that Mark Weber led from lights to flag, the first corner saw the two Red Bull cars going at each and giving no quarter. Vettel came off the worst, but clearly not all is happy between the two Red Bull drivers (and both are under contract for next year at the same team).
Weber won, Ferrari had a disaster, Vettel drove from the back of the field to finish 7th and Rosberg beat Schumacher once again. Hamilton finished second and is still the championship leader, 12 points ahead of his McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, had a great drive to finish fourth after driving through the field after qualifying a disappointing 14th.
As the champagne spraying slowed down the pre-game for the World Cup Final was just starting up. A lot has been written elsewhere about this game, the best team won. Not sure if Holland’s coach, Bert van Marwijk, took inspiration from the way Inter Milan beat Barcelona in the Champions League final, but the Dutch went out to throw Spain off their game and get something. They came close, going forward the Holland looked good at times. Ultimately Spain was too good, the goal superbly taken, a tough chance made to look easy.
One story that’s got more press than it probably should have done was Paul the physic octopus. He continued his perfect record at picking the results of World Cup games involving Germany, and after Germany was eliminated, the final.
After Paul predicted an Argentine loss in the quarterfinals, Paul got death threats and recipes for braised octopus sent to him. German fans repeated this over reaction after he called the semi-final, correctly once again.
At this point I went into work for a couple of hours to finish a couple of things for meetings today. Nothing interesting, but to round off the day of sport was Seattle hosting Dallas at Quest Field. Seattle needs to the points, is yet to beat a team in their conference (home or away) this year. Dallas is one of the teams that are fighting for a play off place and need the points as much as Seattle does.
There were a number of changes, both forced and unforced. Ljungberg was out with an ankle problem (hopefully real, not a “transfer window is almost here” ankle problem), Noonan, Marshall and Vagenas were dropped. Seamon, Sturgis, replaced them and Jaqua got his first start of the year after his return from injury.
These changes along with the inclusion of Montano provided a very different look, and they played with a lot of energy and for the first half played some of the best football I’ve seen all year from Seattle. They played far better as a team that last weeks big loss to LA (a very good team by the way).
Seattle went in at half time 1-0 up, good possession and some nice passing meant the lead was well deserved. Riley connected with Seamon, who swung in a cross into the box for Montero to head past Hartman. It was a well-worked and finished goal. Seattle looked comfortable coming in at half time.
Things changed shortly after the restart when Montaro was sent off, there was a hard tackle by Dallas’ Shea, and the two players had a big coming together. The ref said Montaro threw an elbow and he was sent off for retaliation. I was in the bathroom and caught the replay on the TV’s and did not see a sending off offence on the replay.
The call seemed very harsh, especially after watching the Dutch play earlier. Had there been a MLS referee in charge of the World Cup final there would have been 7 or 8 players left on the pitch.
Seattle played down a player for close to 35 minutes, the team defended well, defended in depth and worked very had to keep the lead. It took a very well taken goal in the 87th minute to equalize.
Another result they probably should have had, the defending was good enough that I had some confidence they were going to hold onto the lead despite being down a man. Keller made a couple of good saves and it took a very good header to beat him.
There are a lot of positives to take from the game, the improvement over the LA game was clear. The younger players did themselves no harm and hopefully gave Sigi something to think about for the game at DC United on Thursday.