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Driving to the match yesterday, about 60 miles from my house we had no idea what the turnout on this game would be like, but as we hit the Dallas Tollway it was clear that the Jamaican turnout would be weak compared to the El Sal turnout.
I put out a Jakan flag flapping from my sunroof and as soon as I did that it seemed every car around us (we were trapped in close to bumper to bumper traffic) transformed into a flag waving El Sal convoy of cars, SUV's , pickups you name it was there, windows were wound down left and right, jerseys waved, anything blue and white.
We then saw what at first seemed to be a Jakan convoy of SUVs flying down the sholder to avoid the traffic, blaring reggae music, Jakan and Marley flags turned out to be a couple of guys from my football team, then I really started to realize that yeah we were going to be a speck in an El Sal ocean of supporters.
The stadium was about a little less than 2/3's full, so I would say about 12-14 k people with about 250 of that at most being Jakan. the El Sal crowd was ready and raucous, it seemed they expected a bloodbath for some reason and they told us so as we walked our way to our seats, apparently they hadn't looked at El Sal's record over the past 10 years or so or maybe it was just the opportunity to get away and have a little fun in an El Sal way, they cheered for almost anything and tried to do the wave repeatedly throughout the game.
The 1st half was dominated from a ball possession standpoint by El Sal they had a few opportunities to score or put a competitive shot in the goal area but failed to do so and at no point were we ever really threatened due to poor finishing on their part.
The Ja team looked pretty spotty at first but as the game progressed they moved the ball around and had a few good build ups. El sal could not consistently penetrate the interior of the defense SO their opportunities came down the flank or trying to play the long ball more and more as the game progressed, one of their best chances came on them beating the offside trap but the effort was wasted with poor finishing.
The second half Ja picked up the pace especially after the intro of a few subs, the control of possession tide started to shift, El Sal found it increasingly difficult to penetrate the defense from an on the ground passing combination and continued to work the flank and over the top looked pretty weak for me especially knowing that this Ja team was composed of so many untested players at this level and El Sal brought their Panama beating team machine to the game.
With introduction of the subs the Ja aggregation seemd to shift into another level of attack and ball control with crisp, tight passing combinations on quite a few occasions, attacks straight up into the middle of the El Sal defense that froze the El Sal crowd to Easter island like statues in their seats with not a peep emanating, at one point the tiny Jakan group dominated the sound in the stadium, it seemed as if the Reggae boyz hit the mute button on the El Sal stereo sound. I am not sure how Ja did not score in that period but that segment ended with an injury to an El Sal player and that cooled the dominant, dangerous play of Jamaica, with less than 10 minutes left the match wound down from there with no real drama.
Limited player assessments.
The only players I recognized, Andy Williams, Evan Taylor from the Bahamas match, Omar Cummings and of course Mr Ricketts so what you are going to get is just feedback on the jersey numbers of the ones that stood out good and bad and I missed the guys who did not do anything eiether bad enough or did not standout in any way. I will just give impressions, no grading just not enough info gained by me to truly grade each man.
# 7 - Evan Taylor surprised me, looks like Simoes may have something here the youth is cool and collected and can also be quite aggressive as well, good ball control, never looked under pressure of losing the ball even when the man was right up on him, used his body well, obviously quite strong in lower and upper body, of course against El Sal this makes it a little easier as these guys are overall small framed and shorter than most of our guys. Taylor seemed to always find the time and space to make the pass and he clearly was driving this bus on the Jakan side. He made three horrendous looking tackles that seemed unnecessary especially for the role that he plays in the team, clearly something that he needs to work on and he got a yellow for one of those tackles. Good player.
# 9 Andy, played pretty well, even caught him tackling once or twice, even running, chasing and tackling (lick the Andy trifecta), I am sure many know here that I think Andy is too slow and is a defensive liability on the side, but he played well while he was on and in the course of the game he was definitely the go to guy in attack formation, was not sure what position he was playing exactly sometimes he was the highest man up like a forward and other times he seemed to be deeper like a attacking mid. Nothing but positives to say today, but him still cannot be on my final 11.
# 11 - Wolry Wolfe. Nothing really to say at all, cannot really remember much that he did and i made no notes on his performance. must have been ok as he did nothing bad or unusually good.
# 8 replaced wolfe, small youth ( I don't like small in my players at all) unless they are very good and intensely competitive and bring something unusual to the table, this youth started out missing a few basic headers, mainly due to lack of height, which really irked me, but this youth seems to be something unusual he is clearly competitive and had a little fire to his play, showed multiple instances of this and shut down a couple guys attacking on the flank, used his body well to hold off an El Sal player on a few occasions, I saw a few instances of good play and intensity of desire I would like to see more of this youth.
# 5 looked good for the most part, nothing memorable just solid.
# 16 It seems this is Kaemar Daley did not see much of anything, he did not get many touches he didn't do anything bad, of course i wanted him to really tear it up being a Rabalac man myself.
# 4 Looked like the man of the match to me, the youth was solid, cool, combative a man for all seasons, he was consistently tenacious and intelligent and brought it on every play, he clearly was a man intent on imparting his world vision on all within his domain. All the guys around me also thought he was the best player on the field, an English friend that was with me thought this guy was very good and thought he also was the best Ja player on the field yesterday.
# 14 did not look good at all, I am thinking this may have been Mr Cousins but I am not sure, he had a lot of bad touches, bad passes, bad control, maybe it was just a bad day, seemed out of his element. A couple of people in the Ja crowd were happy to see him off the field. i would like to see him again, if this was in fact the vaunted Mr Cousins then i would like to see him again.
#21 Came in for # 14, seemed to make an immediate impact but did not really see enough to make a good assessment had a few good touches and some not so good, need to see more.
# 2 - tentative especially in the first half, seemed afarid to commit and to tackle. a few bad passes that i remember, seemed to tire physically and mentally as the game went on, I was surprised that he was not subbed and he went on to make a few more mistakes in the 2nd half one that were particularly bad, one was a total miscue on a ball that should have been cleared out of your life, he barely touched it and sent it behind him almost resulting in a nice pass to El Sal that could have been very dangerous, this was broken up and cleared out by our other defenders.
#20 Omar Cummings looked good, threatening, but never delivered, i was at least hoping for a solid hard shot on goal, he had at least two opps one he passed and the other his shot was too weak. i have seen this guy play quite a bit for Colorado and he is very good, I prefer Shelton and King to him of course but he would be a nice second step.
Side note!!! (That's right, i don't want to see Fuller up front at all) attacking mid for Fuller coming a little off the front.
Overall excellent performance by the Boyz considering all the rabid El Sal crowd, on the road, local boyz team, a supposedly superior El Sal team, we need this result in Honduras.
Fundamental weak points, poor tackling, poor closing down space of attackers, giving too much space, tentative approach to tackling and addressing the opposing player.
I had a lot of fun, that was my first live Jakan match in probably 20 years!!
I put out a Jakan flag flapping from my sunroof and as soon as I did that it seemed every car around us (we were trapped in close to bumper to bumper traffic) transformed into a flag waving El Sal convoy of cars, SUV's , pickups you name it was there, windows were wound down left and right, jerseys waved, anything blue and white.
We then saw what at first seemed to be a Jakan convoy of SUVs flying down the sholder to avoid the traffic, blaring reggae music, Jakan and Marley flags turned out to be a couple of guys from my football team, then I really started to realize that yeah we were going to be a speck in an El Sal ocean of supporters.
The stadium was about a little less than 2/3's full, so I would say about 12-14 k people with about 250 of that at most being Jakan. the El Sal crowd was ready and raucous, it seemed they expected a bloodbath for some reason and they told us so as we walked our way to our seats, apparently they hadn't looked at El Sal's record over the past 10 years or so or maybe it was just the opportunity to get away and have a little fun in an El Sal way, they cheered for almost anything and tried to do the wave repeatedly throughout the game.
The 1st half was dominated from a ball possession standpoint by El Sal they had a few opportunities to score or put a competitive shot in the goal area but failed to do so and at no point were we ever really threatened due to poor finishing on their part.
The Ja team looked pretty spotty at first but as the game progressed they moved the ball around and had a few good build ups. El sal could not consistently penetrate the interior of the defense SO their opportunities came down the flank or trying to play the long ball more and more as the game progressed, one of their best chances came on them beating the offside trap but the effort was wasted with poor finishing.
The second half Ja picked up the pace especially after the intro of a few subs, the control of possession tide started to shift, El Sal found it increasingly difficult to penetrate the defense from an on the ground passing combination and continued to work the flank and over the top looked pretty weak for me especially knowing that this Ja team was composed of so many untested players at this level and El Sal brought their Panama beating team machine to the game.
With introduction of the subs the Ja aggregation seemd to shift into another level of attack and ball control with crisp, tight passing combinations on quite a few occasions, attacks straight up into the middle of the El Sal defense that froze the El Sal crowd to Easter island like statues in their seats with not a peep emanating, at one point the tiny Jakan group dominated the sound in the stadium, it seemed as if the Reggae boyz hit the mute button on the El Sal stereo sound. I am not sure how Ja did not score in that period but that segment ended with an injury to an El Sal player and that cooled the dominant, dangerous play of Jamaica, with less than 10 minutes left the match wound down from there with no real drama.
Limited player assessments.
The only players I recognized, Andy Williams, Evan Taylor from the Bahamas match, Omar Cummings and of course Mr Ricketts so what you are going to get is just feedback on the jersey numbers of the ones that stood out good and bad and I missed the guys who did not do anything eiether bad enough or did not standout in any way. I will just give impressions, no grading just not enough info gained by me to truly grade each man.
# 7 - Evan Taylor surprised me, looks like Simoes may have something here the youth is cool and collected and can also be quite aggressive as well, good ball control, never looked under pressure of losing the ball even when the man was right up on him, used his body well, obviously quite strong in lower and upper body, of course against El Sal this makes it a little easier as these guys are overall small framed and shorter than most of our guys. Taylor seemed to always find the time and space to make the pass and he clearly was driving this bus on the Jakan side. He made three horrendous looking tackles that seemed unnecessary especially for the role that he plays in the team, clearly something that he needs to work on and he got a yellow for one of those tackles. Good player.
# 9 Andy, played pretty well, even caught him tackling once or twice, even running, chasing and tackling (lick the Andy trifecta), I am sure many know here that I think Andy is too slow and is a defensive liability on the side, but he played well while he was on and in the course of the game he was definitely the go to guy in attack formation, was not sure what position he was playing exactly sometimes he was the highest man up like a forward and other times he seemed to be deeper like a attacking mid. Nothing but positives to say today, but him still cannot be on my final 11.
# 11 - Wolry Wolfe. Nothing really to say at all, cannot really remember much that he did and i made no notes on his performance. must have been ok as he did nothing bad or unusually good.
# 8 replaced wolfe, small youth ( I don't like small in my players at all) unless they are very good and intensely competitive and bring something unusual to the table, this youth started out missing a few basic headers, mainly due to lack of height, which really irked me, but this youth seems to be something unusual he is clearly competitive and had a little fire to his play, showed multiple instances of this and shut down a couple guys attacking on the flank, used his body well to hold off an El Sal player on a few occasions, I saw a few instances of good play and intensity of desire I would like to see more of this youth.
# 5 looked good for the most part, nothing memorable just solid.
# 16 It seems this is Kaemar Daley did not see much of anything, he did not get many touches he didn't do anything bad, of course i wanted him to really tear it up being a Rabalac man myself.
# 4 Looked like the man of the match to me, the youth was solid, cool, combative a man for all seasons, he was consistently tenacious and intelligent and brought it on every play, he clearly was a man intent on imparting his world vision on all within his domain. All the guys around me also thought he was the best player on the field, an English friend that was with me thought this guy was very good and thought he also was the best Ja player on the field yesterday.
# 14 did not look good at all, I am thinking this may have been Mr Cousins but I am not sure, he had a lot of bad touches, bad passes, bad control, maybe it was just a bad day, seemed out of his element. A couple of people in the Ja crowd were happy to see him off the field. i would like to see him again, if this was in fact the vaunted Mr Cousins then i would like to see him again.
#21 Came in for # 14, seemed to make an immediate impact but did not really see enough to make a good assessment had a few good touches and some not so good, need to see more.
# 2 - tentative especially in the first half, seemed afarid to commit and to tackle. a few bad passes that i remember, seemed to tire physically and mentally as the game went on, I was surprised that he was not subbed and he went on to make a few more mistakes in the 2nd half one that were particularly bad, one was a total miscue on a ball that should have been cleared out of your life, he barely touched it and sent it behind him almost resulting in a nice pass to El Sal that could have been very dangerous, this was broken up and cleared out by our other defenders.
#20 Omar Cummings looked good, threatening, but never delivered, i was at least hoping for a solid hard shot on goal, he had at least two opps one he passed and the other his shot was too weak. i have seen this guy play quite a bit for Colorado and he is very good, I prefer Shelton and King to him of course but he would be a nice second step.
Side note!!! (That's right, i don't want to see Fuller up front at all) attacking mid for Fuller coming a little off the front.
Overall excellent performance by the Boyz considering all the rabid El Sal crowd, on the road, local boyz team, a supposedly superior El Sal team, we need this result in Honduras.
Fundamental weak points, poor tackling, poor closing down space of attackers, giving too much space, tentative approach to tackling and addressing the opposing player.
I had a lot of fun, that was my first live Jakan match in probably 20 years!!
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
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