Last week, shortly after the 33-year-old Welsh forward Robert Earnshaw announced his retirement from the national team, there was a brief wake among fans and journalists for the player on Twitter. With the news coming only a few days ahead of Wales’ European Championship qualifier against Israel, more than a few remembered Earnshaw’s first full international in 2002, in which he scored the winner in a remarkable 1-0 victory against Germany in a friendly at the Millennium Stadium. It would be the first of 16 goals in 58 international appearances.  It turns out that making good first impressions is something of a specialty for Earnshaw, who coupled his retirement announcement with news he’d signed for the Vancouver Whitecaps. He scored a brace for Toronto FC in his first home game for the club in 2013, a 2-1 victory over Sporting Kansas City, and then scored in his first match for the Chicago Fire in August of the following year.  It’s not clear if Vancouver Whitecaps’ Welsh head coach Carl Robinson was aware of Earnshaw’s streak when he subbed him on in the 87th minute against the Portland Timbers, though it would make sense if he was. The game was finely balanced at 1-1, and Portland were pushing forward after Fanendo Adi scratched out Nicolas Mezquida’s first-half free-kick. Adi had tapped the ball in after David Ousted had palmed away Rodney Wallace’s low cross, one of several saves the Whitecaps keeper was forced to make in the final few minutes.  Then Earnshaw, having only just come on, somehow found himself level with the last man Alvas Powell in the 91st minute to pick up Pedro Morales’ speculative through ball. He scored, and his three minute appearance gave Vancouver maximum points, second place in the Western Conference, and temporary Cascadian bragging rights. Earnshaw for his part praised his team-mates, but even he seemed stunned at yet another incredible first match in new colours. “It’s amazing how many times debuts seem to go your way in games. What an amazing, amazing feeling,” Earnshaw said. Robinson and the Whitecaps however will hope that despite the brilliant start, Earnshaw’s feeling lasts a little longer than in seasons past. RW  Orlando City’s Kaká and Ribeiro show flashes of a fruitful partnership  While collective differences in skill, whether in coaches or players, tend to separate clubs over a nine-month season (even in the competitively balanced Major League Soccer), individual games often come down to single, indelible moments, whether brilliant or boneheaded. There were quite a few of both this weekend; DC United’s last minute winner courtesy of Chris Pontius against the clearly superior LA Galaxy comes to mind, as does Earnshaw’s aforementioned winner.  Orlando City’s 2-2 draw against the Montreal Impact produced at least five of them. First, there was Sean St Ledger’s inexplicable decision to palm the ball away in his own box, gifting Montreal a spot-kick early in their match on Saturday afternoon. Seconds later, Orlando keeper Donovan Ricketts shouted bloody murder to himself when he failed to stop Ignacio Piatti’s 14th minute penalty despite both guessing right and reaching the ball. Thirteen minutes after that, Jack McInerney blew the roof off the Big O with a high looping kick past a Ricketts who’d come well off his line, doubling the Impact’s lead.  At that point, Orlando City head coach Adrian Heath – who was, as ever, committed to pacing up and down the technical area with pinch-faced incredulity – might have forgiven a squad playing away from home and down nearly a dozen players to international duty and injury, including young gun Cyle Larin and defender Brek Shea, for coughing up an insurmountable 2-0 lead.  Yet if there was a ever a player born to generate something out of nothing, it is City’s designated player Kaká. In a two-minute span beginning in minute 29, the Brazilian Ballon D’Or winner combined with Pedro Ribeiro twice in Dempsey/Martins-esque fashion to assist and equalize against Frank Klopas’ Impact, who seem to have all the luck midweek and none of it on the weekend. Though, like Pele once requested of his fellow New York Cosmos players, the time may come when Kaká will kindly tell his team-mates, “Don’t give every ball to me,” for now the DP is living up to his billing. If you haven’t watched the Brazilian yet, it’s best to watch him now, while he’s still got a spring in his step. RW  Before Saturday evening there were six occasions when Sporting KC had handed a team their first loss at a new stadium.  And while Yankee Stadium may not be the new home MLS had in mind when they inked the deal with City Football Group that brought New York City FC into being, it had been the scene of a triumphant home debut for the expansion team a couple of weeks ago and will be home for the forseeable future. NYCFC could do with it being something of a fortress in their expansion season.  Saturday was a very different occasion from two weeks ago however, and Sporting duly racked up their seventh win in that record of spoiling parties. In truth, the party felt slightly spoiled even before Ike Opara got on the end of Matt Besler’s long throw in the 12th minute, to head the only goal of the game.  The historic home opener with it’s 43,000 plus crowd, and merchandise sell outs, was always likely to be something of an exception, and while the 27,000 who showed up for the Sporting KC game was very respectable, there was an inevitable drop off in atmosphere.  Some of that was down to the unseasonably cold conditions, though as much was down to key absences for the hosts. Injuries and international absences had already taken their toll on the starting line up when news came through shortly before kick off that David Villa’s participation in Friday’s training session had effectively been a fitness test on a strained abductor he’s been nursing since pre-season.  With an off-week coming up and then a run of three games in a week to follow, Villa was withdrawn from Saturday’s game, and Patrick Mullins handed the start. And while Jason Kreis claimed afterwards that there were no moments where the ball fell to one of his players, and he found himself thinking, “Oh, if that was Villa that’s a goal”, it’s clear that in the mixed start New York have made so far, Villa has been at the heart of their most impressive moments.  Without him and others, New York labored willingly, without unduly bothering Sporting, and with that break coming up and the inevitable contrast offered by the anti-climactic second home game compared to the first, there’s a palpable sense that for New York this is the end of the beginning. They need only to look at Sporting, themselves coming off a season that ended in anti-climactic fashion, but which is part of a solid trend of steady progress, to see the value of institutional memory, and indeed, a home to call your own. GP  Speaking of institutional memory, while New York City FC were getting their reality check at Yankee Stadium, the Red Bulls were winning in Ohio, and racking up their 1,000th club goal in the process – appropriately enough thanks to New York native Mike Grella.  Grella had only been in the game a couple of minutes, when he pounced on a loose ball forced forwards by Bradley Wright-Phillips’ challenge on Michael Parkhurst, and chipped a stranded Steve Clark from 30 yards. It was an excellently taken goal, though in some ways the telling touch had been Wright-Phillips’ tackle, typifying as it did a Red Bulls pressing game that the Crew had no answer for – however prepared they’d thought they were for it beforehand.  After doing the same to DC United in their last game, the Red Bulls midfield trio of Kljestan, McCarty, and Martins outworked their counterparts thoroughly throughout the evening, with the Crew’s vaunted pass-and-move style looking flat and static as the visitors harried them.  Columbus did get on the scoresheet, thanks to Tony Tchani’s set-piece goal, but despite creating other opportunities, they’ve yet to reap the full benefits of a potential partnership between Kei Kamara and Federico Higuain – and thanks to the latter’s insult-to-injury late second yellow for dissent, they’ll have to wait out a suspension to try and get that option working.  The Crew could have few complaints at the way they were outworked by their opponents, particularly in the second half, while the Red Bulls now sit on top of the East after two wins and a draw in their opening three games – and with two of those games on the road. The Red Bulls are traditionally slow starters, but under Jesse Marsch they have sprinted out of the blocks and kept running – they and Dallas are the last unbeaten sides in the league, even so early in the campaign.  With DC beating LA thanks to a late Chris Pontius goal, DC versus the Red Bulls in two weeks will now be a second versus first clash in the East. There’s some history between those two teams too… GP  It’s become something of a latter day arithmetical party trick with Toronto — working out if the number of steps forward they’re taking can exceed the number of steps back, to add up to a playoff spot.  So far, no, though this year looks as promising as any when you consider the potential dividends of more home games later in the season (Toronto are on the road for seven games to start the season while BMO Field is renovated) and factor in the potential contributions from the Designated Player trio of Jozy Altidore, Michael Bradley and Sebastian Giovinco.  Assuming they play that is, as an additional complication to this year’s calculations is figuring out how the Fifa dates are going to impact these players’ contributions. As it stands Toronto could lose Altidore and Bradley for up to eight games this year – or over a quarter of the regular season.  It won’t have been much consolation for Toronto fans on Sunday night to note how well the two combined earlier in the week for the USA’s second goal against Denmark. Toronto could certainly have done with Altidore and Bradley as they tried to fight back from a 1-0 deficit against Real Salt Lake.  Those same fans may have been a little more heartened to see the spirit with which the second tier of Toronto players (and Giovinco) went about attacking Salt Lake in the second half at Rio Tinto, when they forced corner after corner to keep Jeff Attinella busy in the RSL goal. Attinella was himself standing in for an international absentee in Nick Rimando, but at least got to keep Kyle Beckerman, who in turn largely saw off the threat of Giovinco.  Toronto’s reward came late when substitute Jackson, who along with fellow sub Bright Dike, looked very lively after his introduction, got a late equalizer, but the game still had another twist in it.  Because however much Toronto change and however much their recalibrations bring them closer to the day they finally add up to the sum of their parts, they just can’t seem to shake their tendency to revert to being, well, Toronto. In the 89th minute, the decidedly non-Designated Player Jordan Allen rose unmarked in the Toronto box to head his first professional goal and the gamewinner for RSL. Some outcomes you just can’t calculate for – though Toronto might feel they’ve seen this game before. GP
Wise heads showed the way this weekend, while the New York teams had siffering fortunes on the pitch