Fate is a cruel mistress, isn’t it? We’re winless in five, and in the process, we’ve dropped a grand total of 14 relatively easy points because of our inability to play our beautiful game. We’re sitting at 52 points and will need a win to seal third — and as much as others talk about taking the easy route, dropping into the wild card spots, and playing against easier teams, I think there’s something really wrong with that picture.
See, if we’d won those five matches, we’d be ahead of Los Angeles (they’re on 67 points now, but if we’d beat them, they’d be at 64) and in a furious race for the Supporters’ Shield. Maybe I’m selfish or crazy, but those are the aspirations to which we should be reaching. Not a game of finding our best spot in the playoffs, the easy way out: We should be aiming to be the best in the league. Look at our side: Every team in the league would be benefited by having at least one of our first-choice players, and even if we do have that rag-tag look sometimes, it’s not because Jason Kreis and Garth Lagerwey didn’t pick up good players.
Why aim for the easy route in the playoffs? At some point, you have to play the harder sides. If you can’t beat them early on, is there really an argument to beating them later? Are we going to be a side that will try to hold off on the big matches until we have better form? I hope not. We’re better than that.
We’ve seen our cachet drop week after week, but we’re the same side we were when we beat the Galaxy 4-1 at our place. We have our best players back, and though perhaps they are a bit battered, bruised and broken, they’re still the players we worshipped in the Claret and Cobalt week-in, week-out.
We’ve got one last home match to tie this thing up, and if we go down a goal or two early on, we can’t let our heads drop. Not the players, not the fans, not anybody in the Rio Tinto. We’ll never be successful if we slate our boys every chance we get, if we don’t give our all as supporters.
When we kick off against Portland, I hope the house is full and everyone’s raring to go. When that first whistle blows, I hope 20,000 people are there to see the first kick, and I hope they don’t stop cheering until well after the 90 minutes is up. The time, I think, has come to stop worrying about the referee as a fan base, to stop worrying about getting out of the traffic, to stop the madness for just a moment.
It’s time for us to stand up and support our side: Win, draw, or lose, they’re ours, and it’s time we let them know that.
Come on you Claret and Cobalt!
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