The Kansas City Wizards were one of the hottest teams early in this 2007 MLS season. Now they are one of the teams still looking for a playoff spot with only 2 weeks remaining in the regular season.
Last year the Wizards’ post season schedule was not decided until the last day of the regular season. That day the Wizards and the New York Red Bulls played in New York. A Wizards win or a draw would have sent the Wizards into the playoffs and left the Red Bulls out. The Red Bulls did get the victory and the last playoff spot.
This year the Red Bulls are in and the Wizards can clinch a spot with a victory when they face each other tomorrow in NY. The other difference is that if the Red Bulls beat the Wizards again, they still have a chance next weekend when they go into FC Dallas.
Even 2 losses for the wizards could see them on to the playoffs if 2 other teams are not able to pass them in the standings. Currently Chicago, Colorado, Columbus and LA all have a possibility of moving up.
This is how the current situation looks, we have 5 teams fighting for the last 2 playoff spots:
#. Team - points (games remaining)
7. KC Wizards - 37 (2)
8. Chicago Fire - 36 (2)
====================
9. Colorado Rapids - 32 (2)
10. Columbus Crew - 31 (2)
11. LA Galaxy - 30 (3)
The following table represents how high the bottom 3 teams could possibly go:
LA Galaxy - 39
Colorado Rapids - 38
Columbus Crew - 37
I don’t think anything is going to change before the end of the year, unless Chicago moves into the #7 spot and KC drops to 8, but they both will be playing this post season.
The Galaxy looked like a team that Brianna Scurry could have shut out tonite. Then they got one shot on goal and it happened to go in.
Good thing the Galaxy have Joe Cannon in goal. He was forced to make a nice save on what would have been an own goal had he not stopped it. Other than that the Wizards didn’t force too much out of him all game.
That one goal scored by Gavin Glinton in the 80th minute was all the Galaxy needed to move 3 points up on the other teams fighting for the playoffs. With their game in hand it doesn’t look like an impossible mission for them to come back and sneak into the playoffs this year. I still wouldn’t bet on it though.
Kansas City finished the game with only 9 players on the field after Davy Arnaud and Jimmy Conrad were both shown red cards for hard tackles on Peter Vagenas. Vagenas was not very happy about the second one and could have got a yellow for his bit of a retaliation on Arnaud.
I was surprised to learn was that Marky Mark Wahlberg plays for the Wizards.
Eddie Johnson turned down the possiblity of going to play in the English Premiere League. Derby County made an offer to buy the young striker from the Kansas City Wizards. Johnson himself decided he’d rather stay with the Wizards.
Earlier in his career Johnson was courted by a european team. Benfica tried to sign Johnson when he was still at FC Dallas.
Tonite I came across a fun website. It is the Unofficial MLS Club Championship website.
The idea is simple. The winner of the first ever MLS game is the champion. They hold the title until they lose a regular season regulation time game. If a game ends in a tie, the current champions remain champions.
It appears that the current champions are Toronto FC and the Houston Dynamo are next in line for a title shot.
So being a Wizards fan I went ahead and created the all time results that the Wizards have had in UMLSCC games. Click the link below to view a spreadsheet with all the Wizards results.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pQB5qvkZFlXY23Z1u7dHaWw
The Wizards have won the title 7 different times and are 25-29 in title games all time.
This might be what was expected at the beginning of the season. I still remember the excitement of that first Wizards game of the year when they went to DC and beat DC United 4-2. The season has a lot of promise, and it kept going good for the Wizards.
Now aparently anyone can beat them. They’ve dropped 3 strait games, including a 1-0 loss to DC today and DC United is winning now. That is probably more of what was expected at the beginning of the season, but that isn’t how it started. And now the Columbus Crew are winning games too. What the hell is going on. At least the rest of the season should be pretty interesting if nothing else.
The LA Galaxy sent Santino Quaranta to the Kansas City Wizards for a future draft pick. Good deal for the Wizards probably. Hopefully after the Copa America the Wizards, with the addition of Quaranta, can change this last weeks form. Losses to the Crew and Dynamo don’t seem like the Wizards we’ve grown to know at the beginning of this season.
It was a crazy weekend for Major League Soccer.
Way to go DC United, now every team in Major League Soccer has a win. Before this weekend Real Salt Lake was the only team without a notch in the W column. I don’t know if you guys felt bad for them or what is going on. And what was up with scoring the goal at the very end of the game like that? Why not just give them the shut out as well? Well done Robbie Findley, they should build a statue of you outside the stadium there in Salt Lake. Quite a way to make an impression with a new team, 2 goals that lead to the first victory of the not-so-young-anymore season. Sorry but that wouldn’t have been quite as impressive if you had been traded to someone like the New England Revolution and done that. The should be setting up their teammates and winning games. Real Salt Lake shouldn’t.
Too bad the Galaxy didn’t have Robbie Findley still on their roster for their loss to the mighty Columbus Crew. Some recent acquisitions paid off in this game as well. Alejandro Moreno scored the game winning goal for the Crew, and Edson Buddle scored a late consolation goal for the Galaxy. Not worth anything really, but it was a goal and I’m sure Galaxy fans have to take what they can get.
Moreno’s old team, Houston Dyanamo have been hot this week scoring two big wins. Well beating Chivas maybe can’t be considered real big, but they also went to Kansas City and took a one nil victory from the powerful Wizards, who also lost to the might Columbus Crew last week.
So the Crew and Dynamo win 2 games this week. Dynamo fans probably expect a lot of this, and Crew fans will probably never forget this week. The Wizards drop 2 games that a team so close to the top should expect to win. DC United’s great run comes to a screeching halt. But most importantly, the US is Gold Cup Champions!
Jimmy Conrad occasionally writes for ESPNsoccernet and it is usually pretty good stuff, but recently we got a great article in which Jimmy interviews his teammates asking them some “semi-serious” questions.
My favorite part of this is that they reveal what their team huddle pre-kickoff cheer is: “Taste the Rainbow”. Maybe some of you don’t know they used to have a pretty sweet rainbow on their jerseys. I looked for a good picture of one but couldn’t find one so I’ll take a pic of my old Wizards jersey and post it here later tonite.
Get the whole archive of everything JC has written for ESPNsoccernet.
Eddie Johnson and the Kansas City Wizards are hot. Eddie “The Juice” Johnson just made Major League Soccer history by being the first player to score hat tricks in consecutive games.
The Wizards topped the league leading New York Red Bulls on Saturday where Johnson got his second consecutive hat trick. The Wizads get some time off now. Their next game isn’t until June 16th when they travel to New York to take on the Red Bulls there. Maybe The Juice can make it a hat trick of hat tricks then!
Last year the Wizards and Red Bulls played on the last day of league games to decide who got the bottom playoff spot in the East, which the Red Bulls won. This year it seems they might be playing for the top spot in the league.
