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| I shit you not, Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming is EXCELLENT. |
What Sporting Kansas City v. FC Dallas lacked in heightened
moments - ended knotted in zeroes again; like SKC wanna be this year's Colorado - it more than made up for in framing. Call it the bone-dry coming of age comedy to the action movie experience we all expect from spectator sports, but
that we get less often than we’d like to admit.
All in all, Dallas had the better game – and not in the way
that Sporting’s color commentary kept bitching that they did. Yeah, Dallas
played conservative, maybe even safe, but they played the better game: they
consistently had defenders where they needed them and they created the best, cleanest
chances.
The other subplot in here is the one alluded to in the first
paragraph. Dallas…hold on, but, true story, I’m looking at the graphic line-up
for the first time (sorry, people on twitter; I just checked the names, not
where they lined up), and now where I saw specific players totally makes sense,
for all that, continuing, Dallas didn’t just play back-ups; they played
first-year players and a freakin’ 17-year-old kid, Paxton Pomykal. And that’s
the thing: KC played veterans, plus a couple guys who, by broad consensus, rate
in MLS – e.g. Benny Feilhaber, Dom Dwyer, Roger Espinoza, Matt Besler, etc. Now
re-read paragraph 2. And Pomykal? He looked just fine. Even cleaned Benny's clock around the 43rd. So, yeah. Fuck off, old people. Look, even if you think I’m crediting Dallas too much, it’s
remarkable that the equivalent of a Dallas B-side played KC to a draw at home.
OK, moving on to talking points now…
