Welcome to this week's Designated Player Roundup, taking a look at how the league's 16 DPs fared over the past week of MLS play. For some background on each of these fellows, check out the first edition of DP Roundup.
Week 9 (May 9 - May 15)
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]Archives: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8
David Beckham (LA): After sitting out the midweek draw against the Union with what I'm going to pretend was a dog-walking injury, Becks had the good sense to get cleated in the balls against SKC on Sunday to draw a penalty (converted by his pal Landycakes), then cleated the balls of the erstwhile Wizards with a curling, looping free kick goal that has surely guaranteed him a spot on England's Euro 2014 squad.
Juan Pablo Angel (LA): Deciding that he quite enjoys the feeling one experiences after scoring a goal in a professional soccer match, Angel used a cleverly-timed run to sneak behind SKC's defence Sunday and slot home his second goal of the season. I'd imagine there are other pleasant sensations associated with being a professional athlete (especially one that's just helped their team win), but I won't speculate any further about them here.
Landon Donovan (LA): So he potted his fifth goal of the campaign against Philly, then added numbers six and seven against Kansas City on the weekend, bringing his MLS career total to 110. That, by the way, is 110 more than Pele, Diego Maradona, George Best and Wendel Clark combined. And somewhere, bitter Eurosnob nerds are grousing about Landycakes' recent blistering form. Yeah, I said "blistering form".
Julian de Guzman (Toronto): What do you say about a guy like Jules? No, seriously, it's difficult to encapsulate the contribution of a holding midfielder into a few pithy sentences. A draw and a loss for Toronto this week but JDG did make his presence felt, picking up a yellow card on Saturday to become the latest DP this season to earn a suspension due to caution accumulation. That has to be worth something, right? (Note: It doesn't).
Branko Boskovic (DC): Fun fact about Bačka Topola, Serbia, the city that BB is (according to Wikipedia) from. In the 2008 local elections, the most votes (according to Wikipedia) went to a party called the Hungarian Coalition. If that seems strange, consider that (according to Wikipedia), a majority of inhabitants of that town are Hungarian. Since BB is out with a messed-up leg, I'm guessing he's spending lots of time doing similar research about his hometown [citation needed].
Thierry Henry (NY): Relax everyone, there are still plenty of good seats available for the Thierry Henry Face-Fur Experience. And they'll be playing all your favourite hits like "Scoring A Goal (On Sunday Against Chivas)" and "Yellow Carded And It Feels So Good." The tour is hitting various locations throughout North America this summer, with plenty of stops in Harrison, New Jersey, home of Red Bull Arena and... uh... probably several restaurants featured on Kitchen Nightmares at some point.
Rafael Marquez (NY): No red cards this week. OK, yeah, an assist on Henry's goal, fine. But still. I don't care if this joke is wearing thin, I want to see Rafa get mad!
Alvaro Fernandez (Seattle): Sometimes, when people exceed your expectations, it's a source of excitement and inspiration. This is not one of those times. Clearly doing his best to get his way off the DP Deathwatch, Fernandez went and made a big deal of himself, scoring the first goal in the first-ever Cascadia Cup showdown in MLS. Not only that, earlier in the week he got called up to play for Uruguay against Germany on May 29. Uruguay, the team that finished fourth at the World Cup. Seriously Alvaro, go back to being garbage. That was more fun.
Fredy Montero (Seattle): Ol' Fredy did help make Fernandez's goal possible with an assist, but after being at the centre of one of the most elaborate, amazing tifo displays in the history of all universes, really, nothing less than a hat trick was going to cut it. For shame, Fredy.
Omar Bravo (KC): Since Omar Bravo is out for a good number of weeks with a sports hernia, I'm going to fill this space with old quotes from Johnny Bravo instead. This week's gem: "Sweet! Bring on the Danish chicks and cream soda!"
Alvaro Saborio (Salt Lake): In what has quickly become an epidemic in MLS, Saborio is now the latest highly-skilled, marquee player to be felled by a bad tackle. He suffered the injury on... wait, what? Javier who? Hmm. OK, that makes sense. Then Saborio was the guy perpetually kicking the ball in the general vicinity of (but never into) the Houston goal on Saturday. Right. I get it now.
Eric Hassli (Vancouver): Hey, remember back when Hassli was the great new guy on the Vancouver sports scene, and the Whitecaps were on their way to a fantastic season? Yeah, opening day was somethin', huh? But with those heady days behind us, Hassli gets to instead enjoy the slog of midweek draws against San Jose and watching losses to New England from the press box. Glory, Mr. Hassli. Glory.
Andres Mendoza (Columbus): With most of the other DPs either rounding into form or suffering long-term injuries, it's good to know I can count on a guy like Andres to come in as a needless 85th-minute sub when his team is down 3-0 to the Earthquakes. $600,000 well spent, guys.
Fabian Castillo (Dallas): The 18-year-old (!!!) was one brawl short of a Gordie Howe hat trick on Saturday, leading his squad to a 2-0 win over the Philadelphia Bimbos. For those morally and viscerally averse to hockey references, what I'm saying is that he scored a goal and recorded an assist. As for Dallas's midweek game, well, I assume the police are looking for Castillo, since FCD's 1-0 win over TFC was outright robbery (if the reactions of Reds fans on social media are to be believed.)
Diego Chara (Portland): Amid the gross conditions and awesome atmosphere within Qwest Field, the Timbers were still able to scrape out a draw, on the road, against their heated rivals. Since DPs are invariably terrific leaders of men, I think it's safe to assume this was all thanks to Chara's motivational capabilities.
And since some people were asking/complaining about it, a special addition to the list...
David Ferreira (Dallas): He's hurt.
Boy, that was useful.
DP Deathwatch 2011
1. Andres Mendoza: That Simpsons clip I keep linking to has the immortal line "Get Mendoza!" -- which, with every passing week of uselessness, is something that fewer and fewer teams would actually be interested in doing.
2. Fabian Castillo: Since the parameters of the "DP Deathwatch" have never actually been defined, I'll include Castillo here as a means of saying he won't be a DP for long, at least if he has anything to say about it. "So, Fabian, you can play for $42,000 in MLS, or for a good amount more in (insert city of whichever non-MLS team gets wind of him first)." He's young, but not stupid. [citation needed]
3. Rafael Marquez: I'm gonna keep him here out of spite, as my disappointment at his lack of petulant lashouts continues to fester.
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