Thursday, December 16, 2010

Thank You Josh Wolff

During his time here, Josh Wolff was a bit of a polarizing figure for the team. It seemed most people either liked him or hated him, there was very little middle ground. He found the net plenty for KC (43 of his 75 career league goals came for KC, 46 of his 85 in all competitions came in blue), but those that didn't like him pointed to his lack of movement on the field and what seemed to be laziness many times on his part. But when a player finishes their SKC Wizards career second in league goals and 3rd in all competitions, he deserves respect and post thanking him for his time.

Wolff came to KC in a trade with the Chicago Fire that saw KC send their first round pick to Chicago for the national team forward. The Fire turned around and used that pick, the third overall on Nate Jaqua. Many KC fans were excited after his 2002 season and World Cup performance, but were also apprehensive as Wolff had torn his ACL after the World Cup and had missed the rest of the 2002 season. He had a slow start to his KC career, only scoring twice in an injury shortened 2003 season. In 2004, though he led the team in scoring in league play for the first of 3 times with 10 goals as KC advanced to MLS Cup. Wolff again led the team in 2005 before a drop off in 2006 where it looked like his mind was already over in Europe quite a bit of the time. After the 2006 season Wolff went to Germany and played with 1860 Munich for a season and a half. He returned to KC half way through the 2008 season. In 2009 he scored a career high in league goals with 11, leading KC in scoring for the third time. In 2010 he had another drop off as much of the team struggled to score at times. Wolff ended up losing his starting spot as the season went on.

Wolff finishes his KC career in the top 15 in multiple categories, along with his goal scoring points. He finished 5th on the list for league assists with 26, including a team high 10 in 2005 when he became one of only a handful of players to have a 10 goal 10 assist season. He was also 5th in all competitions with 30. Wolff is 3rd on the list of league game winning goals for KC with 11, and 4th in all competitions with 12. Wolff finished his career in 10th place for league minutes played with 11,467 minutes played, and 11th in all competitions with 12,939 minutes. Wolff finished tied for 9th in league games played for KC with 144, tied with Matt McKeon, 128 of them starts, good for 9th place on it's own. He was 10th in all competitions with 165 appearances, 144 starts, putting him in 11th place there. Wolff is also the most capped Wizards player while playing for the team, appearing 38 times for the Red, White, and Blue, scoring 6 goals during that time. Finally, he also scored the team's 400th league goal in KC's 3-2 opening day win in 2005 over Colorado and the 600th league goal in second half stoppage time of the team's 4-2 win over New England on 9/5/2009.

Good luck to you Josh, thank you for your service to the team, and for your last goal, which will likely be the one most fans remember over any other.

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2 comments:

Donald said...

Thanks Josh, and good luck.

Anonymous said...

I'm anxiously awaiting your "Thank you Jamar Beasley" post.