United 3, Colorado 0

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See what happens when Planet and Earthgirl actually attend a game? Three times under the shirt, mofos, three times under the shirt.

Colorado is pathetic, so don't get carried away, and remember it took Louis "The Not-Zach" Crayton's terrific volley over the top of the net to preserve the lead just at half and a Cory Gibbs's gack in front of an open net early in the second half to preserve the lead before Quaranta's wonder strike (crowd reaction above) to seal the game.

Here's what I saw that thrilled me:

Freaking phone camera, that baby blue blob in the middle is Tom Soehn and he's talking to, talked to, Ben Olsen for a good ten minutes after Benny warmed up regularly before the game, flinging himself around like a kid.

Benny was listed as a substitute, and though he did not warm-up in the second half behind the clock-end goal, he sat on the bench in an orange vest, and !!! maybe.

Here's Goff's player ratings (and Goff seems giddy from the result):

Crayton 7; Namoff 7, McTavish 7, Martinez 7; Thompson 5, Simms 7, Vide 7.5, Quaranta 7, Guerrero 6; Moreno 6, Emilio 6.5. Subs: Zaher 5, Cordeiro 5, Kirk 6.

Crayton does bring a comfort level of competence that Wells never would. Crayton commands the box, he directs his defenders, he's confident on crosses. There's a reason he was a second-stringer in Switzerland - he's not Petr Cech - but the upgrade is apparent and welcome.

I actually thought this was a relatively poor game by Simms, though how much is attributable to Craig Thompson (who can go away) not showing up where he should as Simms tried to move the ball from back to front, I'm not sure. At least three times Simms was unable to move forward and dangerously back-tracked balls almost sprung on by Colorado lout Conor Casey. Simms looks tired.

And it wasn't Vide's goal that was encouraging, it was the vision of some of his diagonal passes into space. I am not at all sold on Kirk yet, but Vide? - I'm coming around. He's not an MLS starter, but as 12th or 13th  player off bench, first midfielder off the bench, OK.

All praise to Jaime Moreno.

OH! It was Colorado Face-Plant night, Burpos!

OH! There was a contingent of folk wearing yellow Philadelphia 2010 t-shirts up in the upper deck. I shook a couple of their hands while buying a beer, and we expressed best wishes for hating each others' fucking guts soon. Excellent!

Lordy, a beautiful evening at the stadium

not least of which, guess who says she wants to come next Saturday v Metros?

UPDATES!

Landru thinks I taunt Ba'al too much, D approaches Zen (speaking of taunting OM), and Fullback is jaded, taunting his ennui.

UPDATES!

Stollar broaches the subject of Gallardo, which I thought about doing when singing about Benny then thought, why taint a good thought about Benny with the taint of Gallardo's possible gold-bricking?

I've been a Gallardo defender (for his play on the field), but....