Week 2’s Goal of the Week candidates

I probably won’t do this that often but I wanted to comment briefly on this week’s Goal of the Week nominees because I saw some comments on Twitter that they maybe weren’t as impressive as we’ve seen before. I disagree.

First, the goals:

What’s not shown in the lead-up to the Innocent Emeghara goal is a fantastic steal down the flank by the ‘Quakes which led to a tremendous passing sequence and a dribble that left Brad Evans sprawling. Stephan Frei never had a chance. Seriously, the lead-up was fantastic.

Next is David Villa’s goal which, to me, is the least impressive of the candidates. It’s David Villa doing his thing, weaving through traffic and making short work of the defense. Maybe the video angle wasn’t the best, but, aside from it being David Villa and, yes, he’s a really good soccer player, I wasn’t overly impressed by the flair (and, let’s face it, GotW is all about flair).

The Adi goal was very similar to the Emeghara goal in that the final finish wasn’t nearly as impressive as the lead up and it comes off a great back heel by Darlington Nagbe. By the time Adi got a touch, he takes a look behind him and you can almost see that he can’t quite believe that he’s so wide open. I watched Adi the whole time, waiting for the offside flag to go up, but he held himself on thanks to Robbie Rogers.

Alan Gordon’s stoppage time heartbreaker is impressive in the angle he gets on it. He manages to put enough arc on the ball so that it sails over the defenders and the Portland keeper and into the back of the net.

Finally, the tap in by Castillo is anticlimactic compared to the way FCD dismantles KC’s defense. Like Adi’s goal, he ends up with so much room it should be criminal after faking out the keeper.

The theme here is that none of these goals are mind blowing goals in themselves, but they all have really impressive sequences leading up to them. My vote goes to the Emeghara goal, though. That give and go and then the final switchback to take out Evans is a perfect introduction to the new Earthquakes DP and leaves you thinking “hey, maybe they won’t completely suck this year.”

You can put in your vote for who should come away with the GotW on MLSsoccer.com.