Friday Part I

I've had a dozen hours to recalibrate after the Ghana victory. A few thoughts:

• There will be a big call for Bruce Arena to be out as National coach. I agree for a few reasons. Eight years is enough, and it's time to move onto fresh blood with European experience (read non-US). Arena's preparation was either poor, ill-conceived, or didn't take; regardless, it sucked. His substitutions and ongoing decisions were rotten.
• Matt Matros had a great post today, but let me respond to his 2010 roster thought. The next coach should go to the Top 50 players age 14-22 and tell them to get to Europe, that they will not be on the team unless they're playing regularly for first flight teams. We are overachievers who have no depth and cannot be successful unless we have tremendous workrate from all players and some breaks. We had neither. Matt's alot more knowledgeable about it and bashed my comments on the MLS, but I think our players need to play against the best.
  
• I love McBride, but he never is successful alone up front (see Fulham). He does his best with service coming to him, as well as a small, fast striker making hay. He is by far my favorite US player.
• Beas was just dreadful the entire time. I know he had the assist today, but he just was weak for most of this tourney. Let's hope he can regain his form back with PSV.
• Matt was all over it with Landon regarding not being able to figure out his position. I've been a Donovan basher ever since he left Leverkusen, and I think he took the easy way out to return to the US and be a big fish in our small pond.

Fundamentally, we didn't go into the tourney like the underdogs we were, and it cost us. I don't have any sympathy for the officiating complaints. We obviously needed marginal calls to go our way, but I don't even have a huge problem with the PK call today. Position, position, position.

I've scheduled a first trip to the WSOP next Monday night through Sunday afternoon. Events going on will include the $1.5k NLHE, PLHE, and LHE events, the Short-handed NLHE $2.5k, the $2.0k NLHE, and the $3.0k LHE. I'll definitely play satellites, the question is should I buy-in directly to the $1.5k event (won last year by Allen Cunningham). Also, anyone interested in buying a piece of me can email me at csquard@gmail.com. I have a room at the Bellagio that is pretty much the same cost as the Rio, so I'm not sure if I'll stay at either or find a cheapie place.

I'd also like any ideas regarding what you'd like me cover while I'm out. If you've ever seen a tourney, it's alot like watching paint dry (it's bad enough to play your own cards). I'll leave hand documentation to others but will work hard on interviews, other stuff.

Pauly's Truckin' online magazine just published a short story I wrote, My First Lynching. I haven't written in forever, but Falstaff actually inspired me to do so through his writing there. At the least, check it out. I'm really not much of a reader, but it's fairly short.

Played in the Whatever It's Called tourney last night and crashed out very early. Waffles and MiamiDon got heads-up then played for I think about 173 hands over nine hours. They may still be playing as we speak. Waffles was extremely rude the entire time, I believe because of some issue with, uh, shortcomings that he may have.

More in the morning. I gotta hit the sack--big telecon in the AM. However, congrats to Waffles for pushing Don around like a grocery cart and taking home a 1st place finish.