Fire goalkeeper Andrew Dykstra didn’t get the win in his first MLS start Saturday night at New York, but despite the result, the feels he acquitted himself well in his first foray into league play.
“It couldn’t have been a bigger test as far as the crowd, the intensity, but it was good,” Dykstra said after training Tuesday morning. “I thought I did fine and I think [head coach Carlos de los Cobos] is happy, too. There were some little jitters that I had to fight through but I didn’t think it affected me that bad. I was overall happy.”
Dykstra expects that his “jitters” will have mostly subsided by the time the Fire takes the field this Saturday at Colorado.
“I think it’s sort of to the point that the nerves will subside a bit,” Dykstra said. “Colorado is a bit of mild atmosphere … and we got the first one out of the way so it should only get easier in terms of the emotional tests. I’m just going to concentrate on my game and I think I’ll be fine.”
Dykstra played well in New York, the first start of his young career. At times he was a bit shaky -- a couple of botched clearances and a dropped ball provide evidence of that -- but by no means did he hurt the Fire.
There was nothing he could have done about Red Bull midfielder Joel Lindpere’s goal and he provided solid coverage of the net throughout the rest of the game. He’s still a bit of an unknown, but so far, Dykstra is performing just fine.
