Let’s start this week off with a bit of a tale, shall we?

Once upon a time in a place called the IE our hero, The Rodius, finds himself 18 years old and playing pick up games over the summer.  What I witness that day is an example of what I like to call the “Keeper Too Cool” dynamic.  Wherein the team needs someone to play keeper, and there is a player everyone knows plays keeper, but he wants to play on the field instead.  Everyone has experienced it, and nothing makes a team full of players resent a guy quicker than when a dude pulls the KTC card. But what makes this particular KTC event, back when I was 18, even worse is that I had heard rumors that this dude was playing for the U-20 Olympic Development team.  So now I am enraged that we have potentially a really good keeper at our disposal and rather than get between the posts and do what he is good at, I had to watch him give the ball away in the midfield for 90 minutes.

At this point, in true hater fashion, I say, “Screw it, he probably sucks in goal anyway…”

Saturday night I watched that same keeper block three PKs in a shootout to send his team to the MLS Cup final.  That keeper was, IE native, Nick Rimando.

“A Darkness Warshed Over The Dude…”

That is what the text message from my brother read as I sat in the unlit confines of the HDC Friday night.  But I didn’t really mind because in the dark I couldn’t see the Canadian albino fugliness that is Houston’s Andrew Hainault.  Seriously if we needed illumination to play the game in, we could have just shined a flashlight on him and played in the reflection of his skin.

Words I never thought I would say… “Alan Gordon changed the game.”  And not in the he-tripped-over-his-own-feet kinda way that I would expect.  No, Alan Gordon changed the game in a good way when inserted into the line-up Friday night.  Suddenly the balls going forward were being controlled, possessed and distributed with his back to goal the way Edson Buddle could not.  Pressure was being relieved enough up front for players to make runs in behind the defense.  Don’t believe me?  Go watch it again for yourself.

Not only that but the guy made a move!  I know I could barely believe it myself.  He actually attempted and somewhat pulled off a dribbling move where he split two defenders to draw the PK.

When I got home at 1am I logged onto to Twitter to hear what people were saying.  Holy Cry Babies Batman!  Dynamo fans were crying like someone just told them they live in Houston.  The most common complaint I read?  That they were cheated on the goal called back off the corner kick in the second half.  Let’s put this to rest right now.  Everyone, after enjoying WSR, go over to mlsnet.com and watch the highlights of the game.  Then watch the third replay of the foul.  You can clearly see Ching has his forearm in the back of DeLaGarza.  It’s a foul.  I know they don’t want to believe it, but if you look at it objectively it is a good call.

Facts:

-Little known fact.  God hates Gingers.  That’s the real reason LA won and Houston lost Friday night.  Houston’s Ginger ratio was too high.  Lesson learned for next season.

-Little known fact. Will Johnson is the most Canadian looking player in all of MLS.  He is all canucked up.  Take it from a guy that worked a few months in Canada, that dude is as Canadian as coffee breath on a hairy legged female.

-Little known fact.  Kyle Beckerman went to see Love Happens, the Jennifer Aniston rom-com, back in September.  At the theater the kid four rows back took a JuJuBe out of his mouth and hoisted into the air, where it eventually settled in the natty dreads of poor Kyle.  In the two months since The JuJuBe Incident the gummy candy slowly hardened and crystalized.  Saturday night it finally realized it’s destiny when it cleanly sliced open a gash worthy of Hattori Hanzo himself on Patrick Nyarko’s eyebrow.  Fate…

-Seriously, Beckerman’s hair needs to start getting patted down like Roman Polanski at a Gymboree class before each game.  There literally could be anything up in there.

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