According to Fire Confidential, Carlos de los Cobos is considering a back four of Steven Kinney, Kwame Watson-Sirboe, Gonzalo Segares and Krzysztof Krol, from right to left.
This is absolute madness. Two rookies and one guy playing out of position instead of C.J. Brown? Yes, his last match wasn't great, and he lost Brian Ching on Houston's game-winner, but he's still the smartest and most reliable defender we've got. Brown knows he blew that play, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of this club -- which rules out the coaching staff and most of the front office except for Frank Klopas -- knows damn well he's going to work his ass off to make up for it.
Seriously, this sort of tinkering is making Juan Carlos Osorio look like the model of consistency.
In other lineup news, Calen Carr keeping Nery Castillo out of the starting lineup is shaping up to be Zach Thornton vs. Jorge Campos, Part Two. Carr seems acutely aware that he's playing for his career at this point -- he's got a lot to prove to the Fire and to MLS after being out for so long. And I'm not sure if it's Castillo's "fitness" that has him misjudging so many balls in the box -- I think it was about three in a row that bounced over his head against the Revolution last week.
Well, at least we finally acquired an actual MLS player from another squad for the first time since we took Diego Gutierrez back. On the other hand, our last three non-Salvadoran pickups have been on players with questionable locker room attitudes, streaky goal-scoring records, and/or a history of injuries. We've got enough castaways from other clubs that we may want to rename Section 8 Gilligan's Island.
The lineup prognosis probably goes a little something like this:
F McBride Castillo
M Pappa Pause Ljungberg Nyarko
D Krol Conde Brown Ward
G Johnson
Regarding that goalkeeper choice, I was actually hoping we'd put a bit in for David James as our second DP. Collins John is the first man off the bench, I would guess. Stefan Dimitrov will probably not see another minute of playing time all year. Other losers in all this are Peter Lowry and Baggio Husidic, for sure, and probably Mike Banner as well, which brings me back to one of my initial concerns about Head Coach Carlos de los Cobos, in that my gut reaction was that he would be detrimental to player development for the younger guys. Now that we've crashed out of every extracurricular tournament we've been in, they're not going to see much of any playing time.
Still, that's lineup looks like it may be enough to get us back into the playoff picture. I just worry that the long-term sacrifice may be significant, and we'll get set on a path of having to buy quality players every year instead of developing them from within.
In other news, Wilman Conde brought his A-game to the All-Star Game on Wednesday night against Manchester United, which is to say he got burned twice for goals.
It's been almost two weeks since Spain took home the trophy. I may or may not have more to say about it, but I don't know how much more I can add to what's already been written by the likes of the New York Times' Goal Blog, Steven Goff of the Washington Post and Kenn Tomasch.
One thing I will say is that I hadn't experienced the whole tournament -- particularly the group stages -- from the U.S. in a long while. It was weird, what with time zones, Internet feeds and just a small percentage of the local population even knowing what was going on, let along caring. Suffice it to say, I typically haven't had to explain how soccer works at the World Cup level to as many people I did this time.