Z/Web

The Earthquakes are back! Finally, a decent performance from the good guys in blue. The Quakes totally dominated, with chance after chance after chance, just the way they did earlier in the season. Dallas didn’t deserve a goal, but got one anyway on a phantom penalty call. Speaking of that, what’s up the refereeing in the league lately? It’s really gone downhill. I’ve been noticing it at a number of home games and thought it was just me being biased for my team, but I’ve also been seeing it in other games as well. It’s like league’s gotten better but the refs are stuck back in 1996-quality. In this game the ref was totally inconsistent, giving out yellow cards to San Jose for the tinest thing, but hardly giving any to Dallas, despite their frequent extremely rough tackles. I mean, San Jose got like four cards for protesting while at least a half dozen yellow card fouls by Dallas didn’t even get a warning. Crazy! At any rate, despite the ref’s best effort to wear a Burn jersey, the blue won anyway. Even the ref couldn’t stop the Quakes. Ariel Graziani got things going with a fanastic goal just seven minutes in: he took the ball down the left side, but inside of crossing it as expected, he shot the ball into the goal from an impossible angle. It happened right in front of me — I was maybe twenty yards from him — and it was totally unbelievable. One of the best goals I’ve seen all season. Later, Ariel and Landon Donovan paired up for Landon’s easiest goal ever: a tap-in after a feed from Ariel. Late in the first half Dallas was given their invisible penalty kick, but the Quakes came back with more in the second half, playing aggressively and very organized. I saw a few poor passes but there was much more one-touch like they used to do, and in one terrific sequence of attack play Ramiro Corales shot the ball through a crowd of players to score the third for the Earthquakes. Great stuff, and the Quakes qualify for the playoffs with this win. Final: 3-1 San Jose.