September 16, 2005 

First game of the playoffs. Timbers vs. Seattle Sounders at home. Hopes were high. Timbers record against Seattle was good this year, beating them 4/6 times we played them. It looked good. But there was one new element going into the playoffs: Seattle added a new player to their team.

In July, when Cuba's national team was in Seattle for the Gold Cup, one of Cuba's players decided to defect to the U.S. Rather than go to the game he was supposed to play in for Cuba, the player instead got on a city bus, told the driver he was from Cuba and wanted to defect, the driver called police, who in turn got the player in touch with immigration officials. Since then, the player, Maikel Galindo, has been in Seattle going through the immigration process and spending time practicing with... Seattle Sounders.

At that point, Galindo was not allowed to play any games with Seattle, being that officials from several leagues had to grant him permission to do so, but that permission finally came through just days ago. So Galindo, a striker from Cuba's national team, has now been added to Seattle's roster.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems unfair to allow a player from a national team to join a lower division team just for the playoffs. Galindo did not play in any regular season games with Seattle, none of the other teams in the league have had a chance to play against him and he didnt earn a spot in the playoffs like all the other players did. Adding an elite international player to your team for the playoffs seems like cheating. If he didn't play on their team during the regular season, he shouldn't be allowed to join now. It's not fair to the other teams and it skews the playoffs.

After that rant, you'd think Galindo was the key player in Seattle's victory over Portland tonight, but he wasn't. He was a factor, especially his speed, but he didn't score the game's lone goal. That goal came just five minutes in, a fluke header off a throw in that even surprised Seattle. But that kind of sums up the game, a big ol' fluke. Balls bounced the right way for Seattle, and Portland... Well, we're still trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with our team tonight. I think someone spiked their gatorade with tranquilizers because they had about as much zip as a herd of slugs.

Sigh. Too bad there's no elite, international player giving us his coattails to ride on in the playoffs. Ahem. Coughseattle coughsucks.

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