Bryan Ruiz Leads Costa Rica to Cup Victory

[Forever Fulham]

Bryan had an outstanding game Saturday with his national team against a fiesty Guatemala in good form.  Guatemala struck early with a penalty kick (questionable call).  Bryan equalized with a godly strike on a free from 25 yards out.  The ball was a curving bullet, arcing from left into the upper right corner of the net.  It stayed 1-1 until the 55th minute, when Ruiz made a beautiful assist for the go-ahead goal.  That proved to  be enough to win the final of the Copa Centroamericana tournament with the score ending at 2-1.  Ruiz patrolled up and down the center like a shark.  The Ticos play a simply gorgeous style of soccer.  A lot of ball control and short passes in heavy traffic.  A lot of speed and inventiveness.  One touch passing when possible.  Always moving forward.  Relentless on defense, they get right up into the ball carrier and poke and dive and gang defend until the ball pops loose.  God, there a good team.  Bryan went the full 95 and didn't look fatigued at the end.  Guatemala put it all out there, everything they had.  You could tell they wanted to win this tournament, and by all accounts were the darlings leading up to the final.  But the addition of Ruiz proved the difference.  He's clearly in shape for the next Fulham game, should Magath decide to play him.

[Nero]

hopefully it wont be magath decision

[FortCollinsFulham]

Impressively hyperbolic, but yes I hope Bryan will get a shot here upon his return. Although I think playing on Wednesday is unlikely. "He played in a tournament blah blah, etc." we will hear.

In reality it seems at this point he can only help

[MasterHaynes]

After 6 games, apart from Parker, Hoogland, who are ever present and Kiraly, I'm not sure anymore of who Felix might select for the other positions, my worry is he's not sure either. His remarks about Smith were very illuminating. In essence it sounded like he had gone for the equivalent of a hail mary, put all his chips on one play and player. No plan B, when he talked about how well it had gone in training tells you everything about how desperate he is becoming, to have focused so much training around one player to the detriment of the way he had trained the team to play all summer, ignoring how well we had played against Cardiff is just bunker mentality.
I have a horrible feeling that we will see the re-appearance of Fotheringham this saturday, if not starting definitely from the bench,with Burn, Voser,Hyndman,LVC dropped and the failed experiment with Kavanagh left back with Stafylides left midfield resurrected, Hugo in but chasing long balls as single striker so we are ready for the new game plan on the return of Smith.

I really hope I'm very wrong and that its just the depression of watching yesterdays game where we were outplayed, 2nd best everywhere, didn't appear to have very much cohesion, even in the first 18 minutes.