Photo by ISIphotos.com
Real Salt Lake midfielder Javier Morales scored a pair of quality goals to help the MLS champions down the Columbus Crew on Saturday and the brace helped him earn MLS Player of the Week honors.
Morales opened the scoring against RSL with a well-struck shot off the far post to make it 1-0, then finished off the Crew with a perfect free kick that found a gap in the Columbus wall left by an RSL teammate to give RSL the victory in the battle of the past two MLS Cup champions.
What did you think of Morales' performance? Who got your vote for MLS Player of the Week this week?
Share your thoughts below.
Not just the player of the week, but that performance was as good as any other individual performance I have seen this year at any level of soccer, including the world cup. He completely dominated that game against a very good team and against one of the other best players in the league in former MVP GBS. Well deserved for Morales and incredibly fun to watch as a soccer fan.
Please at least watch the game before putting down a players performance. Solid defence is team defence, from front to back. Any good defender would rather have an uneventfull day on defence than spend 90 minutes frantically chasing breakaways and clearing shots at the last minute. If that happens then something is wrong on defence.
Well deserved he played great against Columbus
That free kick was impressive but that goal off the post was damn unbelievable.
Great performance by Javi. I was extremely disappointed by the lack of coverage this match received in the media, including this blog. While RSL is getting a lot more love this season (for obvious reasons), I was astonished that this match seemed to be completely overshadowed by the Galaxy’s 1-0 victory over the Red Bulls. RSL beat the #1 team in the East, whereas LA, the #1 team in the West, defeated the #2 team in the comparatively deficient East. Sure, this may just be a question of big versus small market, and of course those DPs, but I thought that RSL’s performance was more impressive and more notable.
Like others have said I almost always disagree with the “who scored the most goals in that week” award, and believe they need to fix the format. However this week that was not the case. Morales absolutley dominated the Crew in every way possible, he passed around them with ease, he used several displays of foot skill to blow past them (In fact I remember just after the first goal he was dribbling up the field, and came up to a couple of columbus players, instead of just passing it off, he stopped the ball in front of them, as soon as they stopped to defend, he rolled his foot over the and ball between the defenders legs and ran around continuing to dribble. It was one of the best megs I’ve seen in MLS.) and then of course the two goals. Morales genuinely deserved this PotW award.
Absolutely.
no doubt in my mind.
best non DP in the league??
chupacabra is right, and it is a complaint I have made this season. But in this case, Morales was simply dominant in all phases of the game. Plus, he was key in the midweek tie away to Philly. Well deserved IMO.
You cleary didn’t watch him play this week
Javi has been a pleasure to watch for a long time now. This season he has been terrific, he dances through challenges and delivers with accuracy. Well earned..
Apparently the formula for MLS player of the week = score two goals and win.
The reality of MLS is that good defense contributes as much to a win as a couple of goals do, but solid defensive efforts get overlooked when it’s time to hand out meaningless awards.