Enjoyable Soccer That I Did Not Watch

On the whole it seemed like a fairly good weekend for Spurs and United, which meant, of course, that a perfect storm of outside forces and channel choice keep me from watching either. Setanta and Direct Kick continue to be my mortal enemies. On the other hand, I had a good day watching the Final Four and the goalless part of NY-Columbus and Chivas-RSL, the latter being mostly good for annoying other people at the bar who wanted to turn to "a real sport." The real sport turned out to be arena football, and the irony was lost on many.

I did manage to see the highlights of DC United's apparently deceptive 4-1 ass-kicking of Toronto. All of them were essentially garbage goals, which is a little worrisome when viewed out of context. But then again there were four of them, and every one featured a whole lot of black running around the six yard box, so that's progress of a kind. But the general tenor of post-game commentary was not terribly positive, and the MLS highlight package included more quality chances from a lousy 10-man team than you'd think permissible. I remain unconvinced, and I guess we'll see whether or not the progress is real come Wednesday.

As for Spurs, I saw not even highlights, but a 1-1 draw on the road against a good team seems to be about as much as you could ask for these days. Even over the Spurs BigSoccer boards, the apathy was fairly widely-acknowledged and the first "Rate the Season" threads have already sprung up. It's post-mortem time, and no lousy actual games can get in the way of uninformed speculation about next season