Quality isn’t great but these images smuggled out from the satellite feed in Bucharest show that little dustup between C O’B and Super Landon Donovan.
UPDATE: Sideline Views reports that O’Brien gets a two-game suspension and $500 fine. Good stuff also on Goff’s Soccer Insider.
Just a reminder that fan voting ends at 11:59 tonight on the name of Seattle’s new MLS team.
Backers of the “Sounders” name request that you simply write “Seattle Sounders” in the write-in spot.
Here is a link to the voting booth.
A year from now, we may be discussing the first game ever by FC Seattle Sounders Republic, or whatever they’ll be called.
But an MLS season kicked off its final season without a Northwest presence yesterday. There were some interesting results, none more so that Colorado’s rout of the LA Galaxy.
Here’s an opening day rundown from the MLS site.
Tacoma-slash-Federal Way’s Ciaran O’Brien was sent off in his professional debut Saturday night after a strange clash with Los Angeles Galaxy stars Carlos Ruiz and Landon Donovan.
O’Brien came on as a substitute in the 71st minute and was seeing out the Rapids’ impressive 4-0 win when, in the 90th minute, things got weird. He made a clumsy sliding challenge on Ruiz, who went down clutching his knee.
Donovan ran in and pushed O’Brien in the chest and put a hand to the rookie’s throat before other players intervened and separated the two.
As medics came on to stretcher Ruiz off the pitch, referee Abby Okulaja sent off O’Brien for serious foul play. No sanction for Donovan, the international star and America’s all-time leading scorer.
O’Brien was also in the middle of another strange turn in the match just a few minutes earlier. Galaxy defender Abel Xavier, already on a yellow card for dissent, sent O’Brien sprawling with a lunging tackle from behind.
As Okulaja moved in to deal with the foul, Xavier went bonkers and the referee sent him off for abusive language.
Pacific Lutheran Univeristy coach Lynnette Buffington wants to share this information about a girls soccer camp coming up at PLU:
What: PLU Girls Soccer Clinics
When: April 5th, April 6th and May 4th
Time: 9AM-12PM
Where: PLU Campus – Soccer Field
Ages: Girls 7-12
Price: $40 advance registration or $50 on day of clinic.
To register please visit PLU Women’s Soccer Website.
For more information contact Head Coach Lynnette Buffington 253-536-5182 or buffinlr@plu.edu
I know it’s not local but it’s hard to pass this one up: Paul Gardner’s amusing column about the Mascherano sendoff last Sunday in the Man Utd v Liverpool game at Old Traffod.
Evidently Gardner hadn’t seen this collection of video evidence when he concluded that referee Steve Bennett was wrong to send off Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano for “talking.”
Finger in the face. F-bombs. Persisent. Public. Personal. Bennett tried to stay away, even jogged by him with the finger to the lips, “Ssssh.”
Good sendoff.
Kids, don’t
…There’s an interesting state-of-the-league overview by MLS commissioner Don Garber in this LA Times story.
And it gets extra-interesting toward the bottom where it is hinted that the ambitions of ownership in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle could lead to the kind of big market/small market split that presently exists in Major League Baseball. And Garber points right back to MLB to say that maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Not for Seattle fans, it wouldn’t be.
The Colorado Rapids web site has Tacoma-slash-Federal Way’s Ciaran O’Brien in the first XI for Saturday night’s MLS opener v LA Galaxy. It’s live on Fox Soccer Channel at 6:30 p.m.
He’s starting wide on the left in the Rapids’ five-man midfield, which will line him up against some guy named Beckham.
O’Brien played for Sparta, FC United, Decatur High, and for a year at UC Santa Barbara before going as the fifth pick in the MLS Super Draft. His big brother Leighton is the Sounders’ fantasista – a role that we can see Ciaran growing
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