Without having watched RSL’s tilt against their namesake, I’ll only say 2-0 wasn’t a bad scoreline, given everything (e.g. players). And some reports tell me that RSL played a decent game as well. That’s to their credit and I hope it broadened the horizons - not to mention the opportunities - of some of RSL’s younger players.
Mehdi Ballouchy, I’m looking at you. Carey Talley...eh, not so much...
The full 90 of Red Bull versus Barcelona, which I did see, was just a fun thing to see; that goes double for the first 45 when Red Bull didn’t look all that bad out there. As Bruce Arena said somewhere, Edson Buddle played a real good game"; hopefully, the (not-so) youngster’s stock will continue to rise and his health will hold out to assist with this. Between a hard shot from way out on the the right, some good spells of possession (including one where he simply held the ball too long), and the shot that set-up the tap-in for Red Bull’s lone goal, Buddle was everywhere and, by and large, doing good things.
Red Bull’s other stars - Amado Guevara, Youri Djorkaeff, etc. - didn’t show as well. Dema Kovalenko, the club’s new boy/thug, did well to steal the ball around the halfway line that set up Red Bull’s first goal, but, before that, one struggled to confirm that Kovalenko was even on the field (and at forward?). In spite of ceding the first penalty, Marvell Wynne showed a bit of why he was the first rookie selected in this year's draft.
The game ended 4-1 in Barcelona’s favor, of course, and it could have been worse. One quote captured a thought that came to me when I saw Barcelona’s Eidur Gudjohnsen clearly pull up when running onto a ball for an easy score:
“[Red Bull head coach/technical director Bruce] Arena wasn't kidding himself. He understood Barcelona could name the final score, depending on its commitment. The Barca players were playing their final preseason match, pacing themselves for the start of the Spanish season.”
That’s all to say, of course none of the Major League Soccer’s teams possess the quality of Barcelona - or Real Madrid for that matter - and not a few, though by no means all of them, would likely face relegation competing in those leagues. But, by avoiding a disaster - e.g. by not serving as the Washington Generals to either Spanish team’s Harlem Globetrotters - even MLS’s “B-sides” did the league proud in the end. Speaking specifically to Red Bull’s situation, the decision to come out and play, to open the game up and play it like as exhibition and for the fans, was the right one - and for 45 minutes, they looked like they belonged on field with the current European Champions.
That’s all a long way of saying that, with exhibitions, the result doesn’t matter near as much as, well, the exhibition - i.e. what people see on the field.
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