XBOX 360 Achievements

Someone involved with the XBOX 360 is a stinking genius. It's certainly not the person that was responsible for the overheating problem that killed a goodly number of the first generation of XBOX 360 hardware. I'm talking about the person who came up with the idea of achievement points.

The achievement points concept brings an entire "game within a game" concept into play, allowing players to chase goals that really have nothing to do with the main thrust of the game. The absolute worst achievement I've collected has to be from The Simpsons Game which rewarded me for pressing the start button. Lame....

My favorite achievement comes from Crackdown which rewarded me for killing five criminals while in mid-air. Normally I wouldn't recommend jumping while using a rocket launcher, but man alive was that fun.

Cuban Defectors Redux

Another tournament, another defection. The Washington Post is reporting that two members of the Cuban National Team defected prior to Saturday's World Cup qualifier. That brings this year's grand total to nine.

Seeing as how you could almost field an entire team with this year's defections, it seemed like a good time to give a full list of those who have wandered away from their hotels to try their luck in MLS/USL. Here's the list as I understand it, annotated with where these players ended up.

2008
Full national team: Reinier Alcantara and Pedro Faife

Under-23 team: Yordany Alvarez and Yenier Bermudez signed with Guaynabo Fluminese FC in Puerto Rico. As near as I can tell their teammates Erlys Garcia Baro, Yendry Diaz, Jose Manuel Miranda, Loanni Prieto and Eder Roldan have not signed contracts with any teams.

2007
Lester More and Osvaldo Alonso both signed with the USL1 Charleston Battery. More made 12 appearances for the Battery in 2008, while Alonso scooped up this year's USL1 Rookie of the Year award.

2005
Maykel Galindo walked away from the team during the Gold Cup. I wrote about him in a previous post.

2002
Alberto Delgado and Rey Angel Martinez defected during the 2002 Gold Cup in Los Angeles. Both of them have had pretty decent careers. The pair signed with the Colorado Rapids, making 14 and eight appearances respectively in 2004. Delgado moved on to the USL1 Puerto Rico Islanders where he has featured over 30 times. Martinez latched on with the Rochester Raging Rhinos where he appeared in 60 games before switching to his current team, the USL1 Carolina Railhawks.

Learning About Cuba... and Having Some Food

Being the coach of the Cuban national team comes with an added challenge -- every so often players defect and you never get to select them again. Since 2005 no less than ten players have defected from either the senior or Olympic teams. While it's too soon to know if any of the seven Olympic team members who defected this year will amount to anything, there are two previous defectors that many teams in CONCACAF would love to have.

Osvaldo Alonso defected during the 2007 Gold Cup tournament. After being low-balled by Chivas USA he signed with the Charleston Battery, who also signed defector Lester More. Alonso had a huge year for the Battery, scoring a total of seven goals while patrolling the midfield. His standout play led to him being named a finalist for the USL1 Rookie of the Year award.

Maykel Galindo defected after the 2005 Gold Cup and signed with the Seattle Sounders. After slightly less than two seasons in the land of Starbucks Galindo signed with Chivas USA. Although he's been injured for large swatches of this season, his blistering pace helped him score 12 goals in 28 regular-season matches last year.

Would adding these players back into the Cuban national team make them locks for a World Cup berth? Probably not, but it would certainly make games against them more difficult and add some spice to the qualifying process.

The House That Checketts Built

With Real Salt Lake's brand new Rio Tinto stadium set to open, I was planning on blogging about how teams had fared in their opening game at their new stadiums. However Michael C. Lewis at the Salt Lake Tribune already compiled the list I was going to create. The home teams in inaugural games at their new stadiums are 3-1-2, with the only loss belonging to expansion franchise Toronto FC.

When the game kicks off Thursday, the Red Bulls will become the third franchise to participate in two such games -- the former Metrostars were also the visitors when FC Dallas opened Pizza Hut Park. The other teams to play in more than one inaugural game are New England, who helped open Crew Stadium way back in 1999 and Toyota Park, and Colorado who lost to the Galaxy at the opening of the Home Depot Center before opening their own digs last year.

Houston, We Don't Have a Problem

With their thrilling 4-4 tie against Pumas earlier this week, the Houston Dynamo became the first American team to play an official game in Mexico and not lose... ever.

Congrats! Too bad the rest of the league has been a horrifying cesspool of suck in the CONCACAF Champions League.

Updated CCL Results By Country

Now that the group stage is half-completed (well, aside from the game in Houston that was postponed due to the hurricane) it seems like a good time to update the results table. On the whole USL1 fans must be pretty darn happy with Canada and Puerto Rico's entrants first and second in the charts.

                   W L T  GF GA DIF  Win %  PPG
Canada             3 0 2   5  1   4  60.0%  2.20
Puerto Rico        3 0 2  10  6   4  60.0%  2.20
Mexico             8 4 3  33 15  18  53.3%  1.80
Trinidad & Tobago  3 2 0   8  6   2  60.0%  1.80
Panama             4 3 3  14  7   7  40.0%  1.50
Costa Rica         2 2 1   6  8  -2  40.0%  1.40
Honduras           3 3 2  13 10   3  37.5%  1.38
El Salvador        1 2 1   4  7  -3  25.0%  1.00
Guatemala          1 3 1   6 12  -6  20.0%  0.80
Nicaragua          0 1 1   0  1  -1   0.0%  0.50
USA                0 6 3   6 18 -12   0.0%  0.33
Jamaica            0 1 0   0  3  -3   0.0%  0.00
Belize             0 2 0   0 12 -12   0.0%  0.00

Remaking the San Jose Earthquakes

Before losing this weekend, the San Jose Earthquakes were riding a nine-game unbeaten streak which has them on the verge of leaving the Western Conference basement. The team has turned over a fair percentage of its roster during the season, trading for proven MLS vets such as Arturo Alvarez, Kelly Gray and Scott Sealy.

However the biggest spark has been provided by two foreigners that might not have been on the radar of MLS fans -- Darren Huckerby and Francisco Lima. Acquired within days of each other in July, these two players have put up a total of six goals and six assists in the last nine games, breathing life into a toothless San Jose attack. So just who are these players?

Huckerby is the better known of the two stateside. He spent the last five seasons playing for Norwich City in the English Championship and Premiership, where he made roughly 200 appearances for the Canaries. In May of this year he was named as part of the club's "greatest ever line-up."

Brazilian midfielder Lima came to the 'Quakes from Brescia in the Italian second division. Prior to that he travelled Europe, playing in Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Italy. During four years with Roma, he played nearly 90 games, including almost 30 appearances between the Champions League and UEFA Cup tournaments.

I guess it just shows that you don't have to bring in big name stars to have a major impact on the quality of your team.