The Aztexan

FC Dallas saw their last flicker of hope for postseason play vanish Saturday night with a 3-1 loss to Real Salt Lake. RSL got their first win in the beautiful new Rio Tinto Stadium, and Dallas got served a heaping helping of offense, with a side of red cards.

Dallas will play their last game this Sunday, taking on fellow playoff non-contenders LA Galaxy. Pretty meaningless-looking game, though there may be a little Golden Boot excitement, if Kenny Cooper (#2, with 18 goals) can net a goal or two, and Dallas' defense can keep Landon Donovan (#1, with 19 goals) under wraps.

Ives has an interesting summary of the four teams that are now out of playoff contention: Toronto, San Jose, Dallas & LA.

And Buzz Carrick, of the Dallas fan blog 3rd Degree, has a joint game review covering both the loss to Real Salt Lake and the 2nd leg of the Rio Grande Plate against Tigres last week (Dallas won the game, but lost the series on PKs). Buzz has lots to say about the games, and some strong ideas about where some of the blame lies for this less-than-stellar 2008 season.

But of special interest to Austin fans are his words about Aztex alumnus Jamie Watson:

Jamie Watson was terrific at forward in the Tigres game and the previous reserve game, far outplaying Oduro. Watson was dangerous, created chaos, made intelligent runs, combined well checking back to midfield, scored goals, played defense, and drove the opposition crazy. It’s why he was on the travel squad and it’s why he got into the RSL game [subbed in for Cooper in the 80th minute]. He even scored on a header off a corner against Tigres. Don’t undersell in the Freddy Adu hype that Watson used to do all the dirty work for Freddy.

Labels: alumni, MLS

The first excitement, as you've probably seen, was when Jamie Watson signed with FC Dallas. That was just over a week ago, but already he's traveled to Toronto for Dallas' 2-0 win over TFC (though he didn't see minutes in that game). Then this week, he played for the FC Dallas reserve team in a match against Real Salt Lake's reserves. Although Dallas lost the game 3-2, Jamie scored both the home team's goals, getting a little player revenge on RSL, his former MLS club.

The excellent FC Dallas blog 3rd Degree had this to say about Watson's Hoops debut:

Jamie Watson was terrific against RSL with two goals. He was a bit lost through about 30 minutes until he scored and then raised his game after that. Obviously his nice performance might have been motivated by a team that dropped him. Still a good start for the kid. He combined well, took some guys on. He still needs to learn a bit of the role in Schellas’ 4-4-2.

"It was nice to see Jamie pick up two goals. He’s only been with us a short week and this game means something to him cause he was dropped by Real. So I think he had some internal motivation. I thought he did very well today, but I thought he faded also at the later part." - [FCD Head Coach] Schellas Hyndman

Also via 3rd Degree, a metric ton of fan photos from that reserve game. I went to the trouble of skimming through all 242 of them to find the decent ones featuring our man Jamie: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30.

Last but not least in this Week of Watson is this nice long story on him for MLSnet.com: Home sweet home for Hoops' Watson.

Ellinger, who is Hyndman's top assistant with the Hoops, is happy to have Watson playing for him once again.

"It's positive to have an extra addition to the team with what he brings. One thing I have always liked about him as a player is that he's always had that chip on his shoulder and isn't afraid to work. He feels that he can have a positive impact in any game whether it's an assist or a goal," Ellinger said.

Update: one last bit, a post by Watson himself about this whirlwind signing on The Original Winger, Damn It’s Been Awhile.

And though he hasn't gotten quite the press Watson has, the second big pro-signing news is for the very first member of the Aztex USL-1 team: goalkeeper extraordinaire Miguel Gallardo. Gallardo was also named by United Soccer Leagues this week as the PDL Goalkeeper of the Year, no real surprise given that he had the best GAA and most shutouts league-wide. It's hard to imagine a better nucleus around which to build next year's top-flight team.

Congratulations to Jamie, and welcome Miguel! Now, who's next?

Labels: alumni, MLS, players, U-23, USL-1