Struber parks the bus, blows the game, 2:1
September 14, 2021
In one of the episodes of season two of "Ted Lasso" (forgive us for writing about TV again, but, honestly, it's getting pretty difficult to write these game summaries in our usual fashion without repeating ourselves), Lasso's Richmond faces (there will be spoilers here, so for those who haven't watched yet, or do not care about fictional English football, feel free to skip this summary altogether; Metro lost 2:1, spinning the season's death spiral even further) much-favored Tottenham in the quarterfinals of the FA Cup. With the teams tied late and Lasso incapacitated, his assistant coach makes a bold move: he tells the team to park the bus. Somehow, it works, and Richmond escapes with an improbable victory. The assistant coach then explains that it was all part of his plan; you see...
Stupid, stupid Lasso! Parking the bus just doesn't work!
Earlier this year, when Metro was getting victories, they did so by continuing to press after getting the lead. A number of times, it resulted in the second goal and an easy victory. They have gotten away from that at the start of this terrible streak; in fact, the vaunted press, the supposed ethos that Gerhard Struber was supposed to preach, has disappeared into nothingness. It was more than evident tonight.
Struber seemed to have entered the "throw feces at the wall" stage of his tenure. Five defenders, but four of them outside backs? Why not! Useless Omir Fernandez starting in central midfield? We haven't tried that yet! Taking Dru Yearwood off in the first half after he got a yellow card? Err... not the worst idea in the world, honestly, that man is a card magnet. Park the bus for the entire second half? Perhaps Struber was watching Lasso...
Needless to say, it didn't work. Patryk Klimala opened the scoring in the 25th after a long throw-in, and somehow that was deemed enough. So the second half saw ten Metro players behind the ball, and Columbus scored in the 74th (Carlos Coronel saved the initial shot, but the Crew got to the rebound), and then again in the 88th (Coronel saved the initial shot, but the Crew got to the rebound). And that was that.
You know what? Let's just fire Struber and hire Lasso. Sure, he is fictional, but how much worse can he do?
Lineup: Coronel, Gutman, Nealis, Edwards, Duncan, Tolkin, Davis, Yearwood, Casseres, Fernandez, Klimala. Subs: Clark, Fabio, Reyes, Barlow, Diarra.
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