Galarcep Dumps on Red Bull/Buddle

While it's not so surprising to see Ives Galarcep, or anyone for that matter, dumping on Red Bull New York - they have "too many flaws" as he puts it - the critical attention the pundit gives to Edson Buddle caught my eye. Part of it comes from a personal fondness for Buddle, who has been one of Red Bull's better players every time I've seen them play.

That's when I turned to Galarcep's points against Buddle:

"When the Red Bulls lost leading goal scorer Jean Philippe Peguero to Danish club FC Brondby, the scoring load was supposed to be picked up by Edson Buddle. That hasn't quite worked out. Instead of scoring, Buddle leads Major League Soccer in number of balls lost after dribbling into traffic."

Sometimes one sees what one wants to see - and, in this case, that habit allowed me to overlook a distinct downside to Buddle's game: specifically, his penchant for, yes, trying, and too often failing, to make something out of nothing at the top of the area. That realization took me to Buddle's career numbers - which are neither hot nor horrible. Even though he never seems to have had a full season, injuries haven't hampered his career as badly as I thought they had.

Where am I going with this? A modest retraction from yesterday's post on nominating forwards for the men's national team: I threw Buddle's name out as a possibility...I know what I was thinking, but Galarcep made a good case as to why, at this point in time, he wouldn't be all that swell a fit.

(#######)