2007 FCTP MLS Rookie of the Week...Week 11...
With the Gold Cup in full swing many MLS teams have lost their top senior players to international call ups. This will continue for another month as the US team is going straight from the Gold Cup into Copa America. A busy summer to be sure. I was thinking that MLS teams would turn to their rookies even more this week, however it seems for the most part that the same rookies are getting playing time and that the MLS teams turned to other bench players as much as rookies.
This week MLS saw 190 players take the field, 8% of whom were rookies. 60% of the rookies started their games and 47% played a complete game. This week we saw some nice goals from rookies in Toronto, DC and New England. So let's see who played.
Complete games:
Andrew Boyens
Maurice Edu
Ty Harden
Adam Cristman
Wells Thompson
Bakary Soumare
Michael Harrington
Starters:
Dane Richards
Nick LaBrocca
Substitutes:
Joey Melo
Gabe Gala
Robbie Findley
Jerson Monteiro
Kurt Morsink
Sinisa Ubiparipovic
Bold players saw their first MLS action of the season this week.
First off, I'm not going to do this every week but this week I am going to single out the anti-rookie of the week. For my money, it was Nick LaBrocca. No offense to Nick, but he didn't look like he should have been out there. The Rapids were missing Pablo Mastroeni and Kyle Beckerman so there was a hole to be filled, but I have a hard time believing the combination of Jovan Kirovski and Nick LaBrocca was the answer to fill in for them. Certainly Daniel Wasson and Jose Cancela were looking better in practice then this combo. Thankfully for us Rapids fans Beckerman is available this weekend...LaBrocca still has a lot to learn.
Now down to the players who played well. As you all know by now, I tend to look exclusively at those who played a complete game for this award. While Dane Richards did look dangerous and tally his third assist of the season, I think we need to look at Toronto and New England for the finalists this week. First lets go to the Great White North and BMO Field. Toronto completely demolished league best FC Dallas. Boyens and Edu surely earned honorable mention for holding FCD to a clean sheet. Edu even got on the scorers sheet first for his team. However, my money this week is on Adam Cristman who is filling in for Taylor Twellman during the Gold Cup. New England fans should feel safe with Cristman taking shots on goal. True, Will Hesmer really sucked in goal and a better keeper would have saved Cristman's first goal...but not his second. That was quality finishing in any league and most keepers wouldn't have gotten to that upper 90 blast. Cristman not only gets the credit for the finish, but how about the 50/50 ball he won to set up Noonan's run that led to his goal? That was what you need out of a strong forward.
Congrats to Adam Cristman this week, winner of his third FCTP ROTW award.
This week MLS saw 190 players take the field, 8% of whom were rookies. 60% of the rookies started their games and 47% played a complete game. This week we saw some nice goals from rookies in Toronto, DC and New England. So let's see who played.
Complete games:
Andrew Boyens
Maurice Edu
Ty Harden
Adam Cristman
Wells Thompson
Bakary Soumare
Michael Harrington
Starters:
Dane Richards
Nick LaBrocca
Substitutes:
Joey Melo
Gabe Gala
Robbie Findley
Jerson Monteiro
Kurt Morsink
Sinisa Ubiparipovic
Bold players saw their first MLS action of the season this week.
First off, I'm not going to do this every week but this week I am going to single out the anti-rookie of the week. For my money, it was Nick LaBrocca. No offense to Nick, but he didn't look like he should have been out there. The Rapids were missing Pablo Mastroeni and Kyle Beckerman so there was a hole to be filled, but I have a hard time believing the combination of Jovan Kirovski and Nick LaBrocca was the answer to fill in for them. Certainly Daniel Wasson and Jose Cancela were looking better in practice then this combo. Thankfully for us Rapids fans Beckerman is available this weekend...LaBrocca still has a lot to learn.
Now down to the players who played well. As you all know by now, I tend to look exclusively at those who played a complete game for this award. While Dane Richards did look dangerous and tally his third assist of the season, I think we need to look at Toronto and New England for the finalists this week. First lets go to the Great White North and BMO Field. Toronto completely demolished league best FC Dallas. Boyens and Edu surely earned honorable mention for holding FCD to a clean sheet. Edu even got on the scorers sheet first for his team. However, my money this week is on Adam Cristman who is filling in for Taylor Twellman during the Gold Cup. New England fans should feel safe with Cristman taking shots on goal. True, Will Hesmer really sucked in goal and a better keeper would have saved Cristman's first goal...but not his second. That was quality finishing in any league and most keepers wouldn't have gotten to that upper 90 blast. Cristman not only gets the credit for the finish, but how about the 50/50 ball he won to set up Noonan's run that led to his goal? That was what you need out of a strong forward.
Congrats to Adam Cristman this week, winner of his third FCTP ROTW award.
Labels: MLS Rookies, Rookie of the Week, US Soccer
posted by Bonji at
8:04 AM
1 Comments:
The key is "could be". Sturgis has looked pretty decent but his presence wasn't keeping LA's defense from being a mess. And Findley COULD be something special. But as a 2nd round pick he's shown he has speed and.... well, speed + maybe just a little something else.
As for Klein, if he gets another 2 or 3 years of 8g 8a type numbers I think LA will have done just fine.
By
Allen, at 7:31 PM
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