And so it goes; the plucky underdog from the second tier league who often got by on luck and circumstance saw it dream run through a tournament it had no business winning come to a desultory end.
Watching Puerto Rico go down last night, after 120 minutes of soccer and penalty kicks, was supremely disappointing. I was rooting pretty hard for the men in orange, though it became difficult to hold onto hope with the way they played and the domination that Cruz Azul showed.
More after the jump.
Puerto Rico did what any smaller club would do in the away leg with a lead; they bunkered in, put ten men behind the ball, and hoped that the ball would stay out of their net.
And, as usual, the "prevent defense" prevented the team employing it from winning.
To be fair, the Islanders were able to hang out until PKs, though a little more resolve and effort might have had them through to the Champions League final. An extra time goal by Sandy Gbandi gave the USL side a chance, and it seemed the Puerto Rico might loosen up strategically enough to keep Cruz Azul honest.
That didn't happen, of course. After Cesar Villaluz found himself free on the back post and tied the match on aggregate, the only question left for those watching was whether Cruz Azul would score again to win the series outright, or if penalty kicks would be necessary to decide it.
Penalty kicks it was, and it didn't go well for Puerto Rico. Two poorly taken shots, combined with a hobbled Bill Gaudette's inability to stop shots that he might have saved when healthy, brought an anticlimactic end to the Islanders Champions League run. Gaudette almost single-handedly kept Puerto Rico alive, and to have the competition end for the club with him whiffing on a penalty was the worst kind of injustice.
I'm still sorting out exactly what the USL success in this tournament means on a larger scale; while I expect nothing to change in the way that MLS approaches international competition (other than the artificially-important and therefore completely meaningless Superliga), I think Montreal and Puerto Rico have both shown that success is not dependent on money. I'm not on the "USL is better than MLS" bandwagon, but I do worry that Major League Soccer's inability to show well in this tournament will have far-reaching effects for the league.
Another post may be coming on this subject, likely to focus on several things at once: USL's rise as a potential direct competitor to MLS, the failure of MLS to allow its teams to properly compete on the international stage (which is now much more apparent with the USL club success), how Montreal and Puerto Rico gave North American soccer fans outside of Mexico a reason to watch the tournament, and how USL stands to gain from that attention.
Whew. That's a lot to commit to; if I fail to follow up, something might need to give me a nudge.
Crushed with work today (boo, and I hate it here), though I'm going to work hard to get the first USL Project post up later today.
