I went to the Irishman to watch the Sounders play Colorado tonight. It looked like a fascinating game, both team need the points and Colorado are the champions. It’s always nice to beat the champions.
Four minutes in Steve Zakuani had his leg broken by a reckless tackle by Brian Mullin. There was little attempt to play the ball and Mullen crashed into Zakuani’s planted right leg. The prognosis is bad and I can’t see Zakuani playing again this year.
There is a tradition where the crowd applauds as a player is stretchered off. The entire bar went silent when the tackle went in, stayed that way through the replay and until Zakuani was moved off the field. The entire bar stood and clapped as he left the field.
The tackle was bad enough, but it looked to me to be in retaliation for a hard, but clean tackle a minute or two earlier on Mullen. This is league that’s historically allowed players to get away with a certain level of retaliation. I’ve played contact sports and get that the red-mist can take over, but it’s the lack of punishment that needs to change.
Mullen does not reputation as a dirty player, but it does not matter. It needs to be a lengthy ban from the league. A few minutes of research shows the toughest ban handed out by the league was a 10 game ban to Ricardo Clark for taking a kick at Carlos Ruiz in a Houston/Dallas game a couple of seasons ago. Ten games seems light punishment for what is at best a season ending tackle. The league needs to make a statement that retaliation and playing the player rather than the ball is not acceptable.
There are dirtier players than Mullen, far dirtier, but that makes no difference tonight. He retaliated, that is unacceptable and it needs to be a significant ban. In the post game show Eric Wynalda stood up for Mullen, repeated what’s been said a few times tonight, that he is not a dirty player. He retaliated, it’s simple, even in a physical league like the MLS there is no place for that sort of play.
The result tonight seems far less important. It was a good Seattle performance against a team that was playing very tight, disciplined football. “Workman like” would be a good description for the first half. Montero scored on the overlap on the left hand side, it was a well-created chance and Seattle did a good job of stretching the defence.
The second half was very poor for Seattle, they were lucky to hang on for the win.
Again Mario Rosales created the goal, he is a player that has a really good understanding of the game. However he seems to be struggling to play with Montero, he was less effective over all tonight when compared to the last couple of games when he was in the Montero role playing off Brian O’White. Sigi needs to work out how the two of them are going to make this work. Two very good players, but just don’t seem to be clicking together, despite the goal tonight.
Update-1
“I’m sorry for Steve. It was never my intention to injure him in the least. It’s a tackle that I’ve done hundreds of times and would probably do again. I had no intention of hurting him. It’s a freak, freak thing, and I apologize and wish Steve a speedy recovery.”
This is the quote from Brian Mullen after the game. It’s the “would probably do again” part that’s disturbing; there should be no league where a tackle like this, whatever the outcome of the contact, is acceptable.
A couple of hours after he broke the tibia and fibula in Zakuani’s leg he said he’d do exactly the same thing again. This is one of the WTF was he thinking moments. I feel surer than ever that the league needs to show that there are consequences for crossing the line between hard and reckless.
Colorado come to Qwest in July, we are is not going to forget this one.