Алеко Эскандарян- D C United

[Dadanak]

Ди. Си. Юнайтед - Канзас-Сити - 3:2 (Эскандарян, 19, 23. Зотинкэ, 26, в свои ворота - Бурсиага, 6. Вольфф, 58, с пенальти).

Вашингтонцы упрочили статус самой титулованной команды МЛС, выиграв четвертый чемпионский титул. Самым ценным игроком плей-офф был назван форвард чемпионов Алеко Эскандарян, отличившийся в матчах на вылет 4 раза.

:up:

[Dadanak]

http://dcunited.mlsnet.com/MLS/sights/index.jsp?club=dcu

Alecko Eskandarian's goals :up:

[David-Mavid]

Да Алеко сильный игрок, но он для нас потерян он играет за сборную США уже.

[David-Mavid]

[Dadanak]

Да Алеко сильный игрок, но он для нас потерян он играет за сборную США уже.

[*Sashik*]

Его родители из ИРАНА ?

В игре Championship Manager в его инфе (владение языками) написано English, Persian !

[*Sashik*]

Кстати в MLS сделали европейские правила

Раньше пенальти били с центра поля (как булит) :lol:

И если ничья назначался овертайм !

Сейчас всё изменили и играют как во всем мире ! :up:

[David-Mavid]

А я где то сказал , что он может за Армению играть? Или :wallbash: ti просто решил интеллектом блеснуть?

[David-Mavid]

Его родители из ИРАНА ?

В игре Championship Manager в его инфе (владение языками) написано English, Persian !

[*Sashik*]

Это в какой части этой игры? А то у меня там его небыло.

Давид, это в последней игре (5 ноября вышла)

Football Manager 2005

[David-Mavid]

Давид, это в последней игре (5 ноября вышла)

Football Manager 2005

[Dadanak]

The Washington Post

November 14, 2004 Sunday

Final Edition

For Eskandarians, A Father-Son Game;

United's Alecko Enjoys Same Success

by William Gildea, Washington Post Staff Writer

RAMSEY, N.J

Andranik Eskandarian drove his white 2004 Cadillac Escalade through

the streets of north Jersey, past Paramus, on the way to Hackensack

and a sports store he owns there. He is the father of Alecko

Eskandarian, the surprise leading goal scorer of D.C. United, which

plays the Kansas City Wizards today in Carson, Calif., for the

championship of Major League Soccer. The senior Eskandarian once was

a standout defender for the New York Cosmos of the now-defunct North

American Soccer League, and, growing up, Alecko used to challenge him

on the backyard soccer field of the family's home in nearby Montvale.

"I always tell Alecko, 'You are playing now at a good time. I don't

play anymore,' " the father said good-naturedly. He turned down a

side street to avoid traffic and parked near the Main Street store

originally owned and now managed by a teammate on the Cosmos, Hubert

Birkenmeier, the former goalie. It was against Birkenmeier, one of

the NASL's finest netminders, that the young Alecko also honed his

shooting skills.

They played inside the store.

"Alecko has a very powerful shot," Birkenmeier said. "I know. He hit

it enough off of me."

"We used to break stuff," Alecko would say later. "I think we scared

away some customers."

Birkenmeier favors the area MLS team, the MetroStars, but he roots

hardest of all for Alecko. For years, he has kept Alecko's favorite

soccer ball tucked away in the store's basement. As recently as a few

weeks ago, Alecko visited the store and retrieved the ball, bouncing

it on his foot for the next hour.

"Here it is," said Birkenmeier, producing a green soccer ball. "This

is a football we will never sell."

He told how Alecko used to kick that ball between the rows of

clothing and racks of shoes, recalling hectic encounters that might

better have taken place outdoors, on a field somewhere. Now he

watches Alecko on television, or in person at Giants Stadium when

United plays there.

"Alecko is always in the right spot to score," Birkenmeier said

proudly. "But what I liked about him so much the last game, I never

saw him working so hard. He ran his butt off. You can see

improvement. He has still more confidence. I guess the coaching has

something to do with that, too."

He put the green ball back in the basement, treating it like a small

boy's favorite toy.

Alecko Eskandarian is still growing as a soccer player. At 22, he can

look forward to a future that many soccer observers foresee as

blindingly bright. For now, his skills and fame are ascendant --

never more so than eight nights ago at RFK Stadium when D.C. United

beat New England in MLS's Eastern Conference final. He is short, 5

feet 8, and compact, 160 pounds, with broad shoulders, and powerful

legs that enable him to run fast and for as long as any game might

last.

Off the laces of his left shoe after a run from midfield against the

Revolution, he blasted a 22-yard shot that rose and ticked high off

the inside of the far post (almost faster than the eye could see) and

ricocheted into the net to start the scoring in what turned out to be

one of the most exciting games in the franchise's nine-year history.

It was a virtuoso shot. He had reached top speed when he leaned

almost imperceptibly forward so that his head and torso were almost

above the ball, enabling him to bring the force of his entire body to

bear when he swung through with his kicking leg.

If beating his defender wasn't enough, he had to place the shot

perfectly because the New England goalie has an extraordinary reach

and a proven ability to stretch full out in an effort to make stops.

But he couldn't stop Eskandarian.

"He probably had an inch to score that goal," Andranik said one day

this week at his other soccer store, Eski's Sports, on Ramsey's Main

Street. "I watched the tape. If it was an inch inside, the goalie

would have saved it. It was that calculated a shot, an unbelievably

calculated shot."

The father knows much about such things. An Armenian descendant who

grew up in Tehran, he played in the 1978 World Cup for Iran before

playing for the Cosmos from 1979 through 1984. He was too late to

have been a teammate of Pele, who retired from the Cosmos in 1977,

but the roster still glittered with such international stars as Franz

Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto and scoring machine Giorgio Chinaglia.

Now 53, Eskandarian still plays three times a week -- for an over-40

team and an over-35 team. He weighs only five pounds more than his

155 with the Cosmos, and thus was in top condition when Alecko was

growing up and trying to score goals against him.

"As early as when he was 4 years old, he would look at the highlight

tape of all those goals by Giorgio Chinaglia [pronounced

Canal-e-ah]," his father said. "He would put the tape in and he

couldn't even sit down and watch, he would walk and watch it, because

he was boiling inside to do it. So he would take me in the backyard

and he would put me in the goal and he would start shooting. He grew

like that."

"That's all I ever thought about, scoring goals," the younger

Eskandarian said after a practice this week at RFK, before D.C.

United flew to California for the title game. "I think it's my

personality."

His brother Ara, three years older, who played soccer at Villanova

and now is an accountant in New York, "was shy, kind of. He didn't

want the spotlight. He was a defender, like my father. But with me, I

wanted a lot of attention, all eyes on me. I always wanted to be

scoring goals."

He almost always has: 154 goals in four years at Bergen Catholic High

and 50 in three seasons at the University of Virginia. After a

discouraging rookie year with D.C. United when former coach Ray

Hudson played him only sporadically, he scored a team-high 10 goals

this season, and has added two more in the playoffs. Peter Nowak, the

rookie coach who rescued Eskandarian from the bench, described him as

one of a few young players on D.C. United with exceptional potential,

"all guys still under their mothers' wings, so to speak," a group

that includes 15-year-old Freddy Adu.

"Eski can score goals when he's in good spots, and when he gets a

look at the goal he's deadly," Kevin Payne, United's president, said.

"What gets much harder at this level compared with college is getting

in those spots and getting those looks at the goal. When he came into

the league, he didn't really understand how hard he had to work off

the ball to give himself those opportunities. At the same time, there

wasn't any consistency to his playing time. So he was confused. There

wasn't as much coaching done with him, I don't believe. This year,

Peter . . . was going to see to it that Eski was one of guys who was

going to be vitally important because Peter was convinced that he

could do it.

"Right now," Payne added, "I would put his work rate up against any

forward in the world. And he's just going to get better and better."

Eskandarian's career almost was inevitable, growing up as he did in a

household where the sport was roughly the equivalent of breathing.

When he had barely begun to walk, he chased after a soccer ball and

kicked it rather than trying to pick it up. While that was hardly

unique, his father recalled Alecko persisting in kicking a ball.

"Look what we have here," he told his wife Anna, who also is of

Armenian descent and from Iran.

"I remember always having a ball around me," Alecko said. "When I was

little, there was a sponge ball I would sleep with and kick around

all day long. I just loved it. And when you have an older brother,

you do what he does, and he was growing up playing soccer.

"My parents would have to kick me off the backyard field because I

would be out there till midnight doing my own thing if they let me. I

would do it for hours and hours. You know, like little kids playing

basketball, pretending to be Jordan, taking the last shot. Well, I

was in the backyard pretending to be whoever and 'scoring' with only

a few seconds left."

He attended an Armenian elementary school, describing himself at the

time as prone to mischief. Because of his antics, he said, the school

had to create detention.

His father disciplined him, though. The elder Eskandarian always

coached the soccer teams his son played on -- and the father was

tough.

"Very tough," said Alecko, his dark eyes widening, "but in a positive

way. One of the many things my parents have given me is their

honesty. If I'm doing well, they'll tell me. If I'm doing bad,

they'll be the first ones to tell me. I remember in high school I

scored five goals in a game and we won 5-0 and my dad said, 'You

played terrible today.' I was like, 'I'm sure there was someone worse

than me.' He said, 'No.' "

Oh, yes, acknowledged the father, seated in his back-room office in

Eski's Sports, he was a strict father-coach. But, as he told it, he

believed in his son advancing "gradually" in soccer and keeping a

"humble" attitude no matter how accomplished a player he became.

"When he was in high school and people came to us and said, 'Send him

to England to play,' or, 'Send him to Germany,' I didn't feel that

way. I wanted him to stay in the family."

Anna called to her husband from out in the store. High up in one

corner of the room, near the shirts and shoes and opposite an oil

painting she made of him in his No. 2 Cosmos uniform, is a TV. Fox

Sports World was coming on with MLS highlights, specifically the

United-New England game. Even though he already had watched his own

complete tape of the game, Andranik stood next to Anna, enjoying

their son's exquisite goal one more time. She, too, thrives on

soccer, and Alecko sometimes calls her "Coach."

"They thought he was going to cross," she said, meaning that the

defenders appeared to be looking for him to pass the ball.

"Ah, but you could see it in his face," said Andranik, noting that

Alecko had looked toward the goal with his eyes while not moving his

head.

Moments later, she stepped toward the TV and pointed up to a player

breaking free in front of the net. Sounding much like a coach, she

said: "There was no defender. No one was covering."

Andranik laughed at her frustration over the play.

At length, United's players were shown celebrating the victory after

penalty kicks. "That was a nice moment," she said with a smile.

Ironically, Andranik experienced a similar feeling at RFK in 1980,

when the NASL held its title game there and the Cosmos won.

"So I was back there watching my son, and it was a beautiful feeling

for me," he said. "After 24 years, Alecko was holding that cup there.

For me, it's a blessing."

Eskandarian's two seasons with United could not have been more

different.

In last year's opener, he suffered a concussion when he was knocked

to the ground and landed headfirst. In this year's opener, he scored

in a 2-1 victory over San Jose.

Last season, he wasn't given much of a chance. This season, he was

slowed by hamstring problems after the opener and found himself back

on the bench, fearing more frustration. But on June 19, 21/2 months

into the season and with the team struggling, he was given a start

based on his hard work at practice and the team's obvious need for a

change. He scored two goals as United beat Columbus, 3-1.

Veteran midfielder Ben Olsen put it this way: "It's easy to say now

after he's had this year, but I saw some stuff from this kid in

college, the goals he scored, his size, his width, his speed, his

pace, his strikes on goal, he's got the whole package. We saw it in

practice a lot the year before. We knew that once this kid got hot,

he was going to be okay."

At forward, he has been perfectly paired with veteran Jaime Moreno,

who led the team in points (28) and the entire league in assists (14)

during the regular season. "When you're on the same page, it makes

everything easier," Moreno said. "That's how we've felt, that we can

go at the defenders and we can score."

Eskandarian, as his father would have it, sounded grateful to be

playing.

"The coaches gave me the opportunity to start against Columbus," he

said. "After that, the guys on the team kind of began looking at me

like, all right, you're going to be a goal scorer, we're going to

count on you every game to try to make something happen. That's the

role I wanted."

It will be his role today. A score of relatives who have settled in

California will be in the stands rooting for him, although the dean

of the family will have to watch on television at his home in nearby

Glendale, his health preventing him from going to the stadium. That

would be Andranik's father, Galoost. Alecko would like to win the MLS

Cup for him. He is 92.

[*Sashik*]

Давид, я тоже в другие не играю, всё остальное фигня !

А это самый лучший менеджер Football Manager от Sigames ! ! ! Это продолжение после CM 4 как у тебя (Я увидел на твоем рабочем столе) !!!

Не могу оторваться от этой игры

[David-Mavid]

Давид, я тоже в другие не играю, всё остальное фигня !

А это самый лучший менеджер Football Manager от Sigames ! ! ! Это продолжение после CM 4 как у тебя (Я увидел на твоем рабочем столе) !!!

Не могу оторваться от этой игры

[David-Mavid]

Сашик и еще я узнал есть СМ5 а есть ФМ5 разные вещи.