Last evening I caught a bit of the RSL and Houston Dynamo game and I was reminded of the incessant verbiage of Max Bretos and Christopher Sullivan who have the attention spans of fruit flies. Their attention to the match waxes and wanes as they offer their diatribe on what the match should look like which bears little resemblance to how the match is actually playing out.
I have no idea how Sullivan divines the coaches intentions as he neatly compartmentalizes what each club should do. Does Dominic Kinnear understand that the only way his club can win is if it capitalizes on set pieces? Does Jason Kries know that unlocking Robbie Findley is the only way to keep their playoff hopes alive? Sure, we all do it and I am sure each coach understands the strengths and weaknesses of their clubs but I have never heard anyone lay a narrative down in such bulleted fashion. Its like a Powerpoint presentation.
These prescriptions fall by the wayside as the game devolves into an untidy smorgasbord of bodies tumbling, yellow cards, red cards, stray passes, and very few goal scoring chances. Meanwhile Sullivan is droning on about RSL missing Yura Movsisyan. On the pitch, Clint Mathis has lost his mind once again. He is freaking out at the referee. Then he is ejected. The two chatterboxes suddenly stop their word cloud and pay interest. There is talk about Mathis low boiling point. But wait, every psychosis has a causality. The film rewinds and shows Findley clearly obstructed a number of times in the Dynamo box for a potential penalty call before the referee books the striker for a foul which sets off Mathis.
This was a golden chance for the two to take a stand on whether a penalty was missed, to offer an opinion on whether Mathis might have had a case, to actually comment on a pivotal moment in the match. But they never uttered a word as the footage rolled by. The moment was lost. It was time to cut to a commercial. It was time for me to switch to Deportes.