Week 9 Notes

• No TV coverage of Chicago v Colorado? What if Freddy Adu shows up? Then nobody will see him! And that would be a disaster! What’s going on here? Attica! Attica!

• Peter Lorre has been reincarnated and is playing soccer in New England under the name Clint Dempsey. This is odd, because, while he was undeniably a great actor, Lorre had no game whatsoever. I’m a bit surprised People Magazine hasn’t picked up on this.

• Writing this column will become much easier after this week, as I’ve taken the plunge and ordered DirectTV-DVR powered by Tivo.

• Note to the folks at DirectTV and/or Tivo: feel free to send me a little swag for the plug. Thank you.

• Memo to Freddy: You’re not playing in Europe (yet). That means when you fall down, you get RIGHT BACK UP, unless you’re unconscious or have lost a leg. In the future, when in doubt, ask yourself: WWESD? (What Would Earnie Stewart Do?)

• Just for the record, I benched Ronnie Ekelund and Damani Ralph in MFLS this week. I leave it to you to see if my curse continues. Ekelund is injured, (mlsnet.com reports he has a neck infection. Yes, you read that right, a neck infection . . . eww . . .) so at least he can’t go on a scoring rampage.

• Troy Perkins made the best PK stop I’ve ever seen in my life against Taylor Twellman. He placed his shot about as close to the post as you can place it, but Perkins guessed correctly and stretched like a rubber band to knock it away from goal. Twellman is snakebit this season; he can’t buy a goal.

• Twellman was stoned again by Perkins 10 minutes later on a hard shot from the 18, and then left with an injury in the 70th minute. If it weren’t for bad luck, he’d have no luck at all, as they used to say on Hee-Haw.

• Wow. Manny Lagos gets a yellow card for a two legged scissor action chop tackle on Brian Mulrooney. Think he’s bitter about being traded? I kid, actually. Manny is one of the good guys in the game today. But man was that a rough tackle.

• Is there a league on earth with better goalkeeping than MLS? Even the backups in this league are top-shelf. Jon Conway for San Jose and Matt Reis for New England both were stellar this week. Maybe the Premiership has better keepers top-to-bottom. But even in that league, the Goalkeeper of the Year has been a Yank the last two seasons in a row.

• If Warner Wolf were writing this column, he’d say “Break up the Crew! Two in row!” Who was it just a few weeks ago making disparaging comments about Columbus, saying they weren’t about to pull their season out of the dumper any time soon. Hmm . . . my memory fails me. Certainly it wasn’t yours truly? No, surely not.

• Eddie Gaven almost tore Jimmy Conrad’s face off with an elbow while going up for a header near the end of the first half of the NY/KC game. It was unintentional, clearly, but man was it gory. It looked like a scene from “Silence of the Lambs”.