Tweet
Updated: October 14, 2010, 9:49 PM ET
Richards hitting high gear for Red Bulls
By Leander Schaerlaeckens
ESPN.com
HARRISON, N.J. -- Extras shouldn't be better looking than the stars, the busboy shouldn't upstage the chef and the usher shouldn't get a bigger ovation than the conductor. In the same vein, a serviceable if slightly mercurial winger should not overshadow the second- and third-biggest signings in MLS history, and one of its most heralded strikers.
Lightning-quick Jamaican winger Dane Richards should not be stealing the show for New York Red Bulls.
But that's exactly what he is doing, like a triangle player busting into a shredding solo while the lead guitarist can only try to keep up.
Last Saturday against the Kansas City Wizards, Richards again lit up Red Bull Arena. In the 6th minute, Richards and his furious little feet sped up so violently that they overran a long ball but sufficiently unsettled experienced Kansas defender Jimmy Conrad to force a mistake and get the ball back. Faced one-on-one with the goalkeeper, Richards easily slotted the ball home for the only goal of the game.
Richards would spend the rest of the night tormenting the Kansas City back line, forcing errors and creating New York's only other real chances in the game, ending one run by curling the ball onto the post and another by missing the goal by inches. So blinding was his speed that in the 89th minute, a linesman failed to see that Richards had played the ball at least a foot over the touch-line, as indicated with a hand-gesture by a smiling Red Bulls head coach Hans Backe to his fuming Kansas City counterpart Peter Vermes.
Ned Dishman/Getty ImagesHigher-paid stars such as Juan Pablo Angel have benefitted from Dane Richards' improved play as part of the Red Bulls' attack this season.
Richards's goal was his fourth goal of the year, all of them coming in the last six games. Three of those, like Saturday's, were game-winners. In 95 prior games for NYRB, the 26-year old Richards had scored just eight goals.
The winner against Kansas City not only clinched a playoff spot for New York, which was the worst team in the league last year by some margin, but also put it in first place in the Eastern Conference.
"I've been scoring and this is what I always wanted -- scoring, playing well and playing good as a teammate," said an upbeat Richards after the game, his words still dripping with the Jamaican accent not at all dulled by seven years in the U.S. "Hopefully I'll be consistent throughout the rest of the season."
Of all the Red Bulls, Richards is the biggest benefactor of the Designated Player tsunami that washed over the team this summer, bringing in superstar midfielder Rafael Marquez and striker Thierry Henry. In a weirdly symbiotic partnership, Henry, Marquez, the already present striker Juan Pablo Angel and Richards create space for each other, as if to double the field in size when they're in possession. With the class striding around in the middle of the park, defenders leave Richards room in which to operate on the right. But his emergence there has meant that defenses need to shift as soon as he's on the ball, leaving room for Henry and Angel, as defenders run around like Spartans trying to hold off the Persian army, only with less success.
"Since Henry got here I started scoring. Players of their quality help you with your game," said Richards. "They attract a lot of players and create a lot of space for me so that helps a lot. My speed opens space for the guys in the midfield and up front."
Just how important Richards is on the right wing is best verbalized by the numbers. In the 18 games that Richards has started on the right wing in MLS games this season, New York is 11-4-3, a .694 winning percentage. When he's not out wide on the right, New York won just 44 percent of its games (3-4-2).
"He's a commodity when he uses space and stretches teams out," agreed Angel. "He creates a lot of space for me in the middle. When you have somebody with the pace that he has it makes things more difficult [for the other team]."
That's a view shared by opponents. "He's somebody you have to watch and you have to pay attention to," said Conrad. "He takes some pressure off the other guys and the more dangerous he is the more time and space Thierry and Juan are going to get."
Central defenders have to "pick their poison," says Conrad, because "with Henry and Angel playing off your shoulder, you can't go help out on Richards. [But] I don't know if one person can cover [Richards] by himself."
There are many explanations for Richards' rise from mediocrity, which can't be solely due to the arrival of better teammates. Richards himself credits his first goal for Jamaica on Aug. 11. "When I went away to play against Trinidad, I scored. And once I came back I just kept scoring, so it helped me a lot," said Richards. "That goal boosted my confidence. I am having fun out there. Once I'm having fun I can do anything on the field."
Others argue that he's acquired a better sense of how best to deploy his savage speed. "He's more aware of his pace and how to use his pace, of when to run in and how to run in behind," explained NYRB head coach Hans Backe. "When he's aware of [that], he's almost unstoppable."
"He's got a lot of pace and that was his number one attribute for a long time," said Conrad. "But he's definitely gotten a lot better as the years have progressed."
They say the teams that win in MLS are those that get the most out of the players making the modest amounts of money, extracting everything that their salary cap will bear. Richards, who will make a $135k base salary this year -- compared to Marquez's $5.5m, Henry's $5m and Angel's $1.6m -- is only the eighth-best paid player on the team. But whatever it is that's achieved Richards's new-found efficiency, he is the ingredient that makes the Red Bulls dish sing, what lifts them from being a contender into a title favorite.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at leander.espn@gmail.com.
http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/new...ed-bulls-surge
Richards hitting high gear for Red Bulls
By Leander Schaerlaeckens
ESPN.com
HARRISON, N.J. -- Extras shouldn't be better looking than the stars, the busboy shouldn't upstage the chef and the usher shouldn't get a bigger ovation than the conductor. In the same vein, a serviceable if slightly mercurial winger should not overshadow the second- and third-biggest signings in MLS history, and one of its most heralded strikers.
Lightning-quick Jamaican winger Dane Richards should not be stealing the show for New York Red Bulls.
But that's exactly what he is doing, like a triangle player busting into a shredding solo while the lead guitarist can only try to keep up.
Last Saturday against the Kansas City Wizards, Richards again lit up Red Bull Arena. In the 6th minute, Richards and his furious little feet sped up so violently that they overran a long ball but sufficiently unsettled experienced Kansas defender Jimmy Conrad to force a mistake and get the ball back. Faced one-on-one with the goalkeeper, Richards easily slotted the ball home for the only goal of the game.
Richards would spend the rest of the night tormenting the Kansas City back line, forcing errors and creating New York's only other real chances in the game, ending one run by curling the ball onto the post and another by missing the goal by inches. So blinding was his speed that in the 89th minute, a linesman failed to see that Richards had played the ball at least a foot over the touch-line, as indicated with a hand-gesture by a smiling Red Bulls head coach Hans Backe to his fuming Kansas City counterpart Peter Vermes.
Ned Dishman/Getty ImagesHigher-paid stars such as Juan Pablo Angel have benefitted from Dane Richards' improved play as part of the Red Bulls' attack this season.
Richards's goal was his fourth goal of the year, all of them coming in the last six games. Three of those, like Saturday's, were game-winners. In 95 prior games for NYRB, the 26-year old Richards had scored just eight goals.
The winner against Kansas City not only clinched a playoff spot for New York, which was the worst team in the league last year by some margin, but also put it in first place in the Eastern Conference.
"I've been scoring and this is what I always wanted -- scoring, playing well and playing good as a teammate," said an upbeat Richards after the game, his words still dripping with the Jamaican accent not at all dulled by seven years in the U.S. "Hopefully I'll be consistent throughout the rest of the season."
Of all the Red Bulls, Richards is the biggest benefactor of the Designated Player tsunami that washed over the team this summer, bringing in superstar midfielder Rafael Marquez and striker Thierry Henry. In a weirdly symbiotic partnership, Henry, Marquez, the already present striker Juan Pablo Angel and Richards create space for each other, as if to double the field in size when they're in possession. With the class striding around in the middle of the park, defenders leave Richards room in which to operate on the right. But his emergence there has meant that defenses need to shift as soon as he's on the ball, leaving room for Henry and Angel, as defenders run around like Spartans trying to hold off the Persian army, only with less success.
"Since Henry got here I started scoring. Players of their quality help you with your game," said Richards. "They attract a lot of players and create a lot of space for me so that helps a lot. My speed opens space for the guys in the midfield and up front."
Just how important Richards is on the right wing is best verbalized by the numbers. In the 18 games that Richards has started on the right wing in MLS games this season, New York is 11-4-3, a .694 winning percentage. When he's not out wide on the right, New York won just 44 percent of its games (3-4-2).
"He's a commodity when he uses space and stretches teams out," agreed Angel. "He creates a lot of space for me in the middle. When you have somebody with the pace that he has it makes things more difficult [for the other team]."
That's a view shared by opponents. "He's somebody you have to watch and you have to pay attention to," said Conrad. "He takes some pressure off the other guys and the more dangerous he is the more time and space Thierry and Juan are going to get."
Central defenders have to "pick their poison," says Conrad, because "with Henry and Angel playing off your shoulder, you can't go help out on Richards. [But] I don't know if one person can cover [Richards] by himself."
There are many explanations for Richards' rise from mediocrity, which can't be solely due to the arrival of better teammates. Richards himself credits his first goal for Jamaica on Aug. 11. "When I went away to play against Trinidad, I scored. And once I came back I just kept scoring, so it helped me a lot," said Richards. "That goal boosted my confidence. I am having fun out there. Once I'm having fun I can do anything on the field."
Others argue that he's acquired a better sense of how best to deploy his savage speed. "He's more aware of his pace and how to use his pace, of when to run in and how to run in behind," explained NYRB head coach Hans Backe. "When he's aware of [that], he's almost unstoppable."
"He's got a lot of pace and that was his number one attribute for a long time," said Conrad. "But he's definitely gotten a lot better as the years have progressed."
They say the teams that win in MLS are those that get the most out of the players making the modest amounts of money, extracting everything that their salary cap will bear. Richards, who will make a $135k base salary this year -- compared to Marquez's $5.5m, Henry's $5m and Angel's $1.6m -- is only the eighth-best paid player on the team. But whatever it is that's achieved Richards's new-found efficiency, he is the ingredient that makes the Red Bulls dish sing, what lifts them from being a contender into a title favorite.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at leander.espn@gmail.com.
http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/new...ed-bulls-surge