MLS Goal #6,000

Last week, I mentioned that MLS was on the verge of a milestone, sitting at 5,994 goals going into the weekend. Well, we not not only hit that but also got up to 6,007 on a goal-filled Sunday. The only question is, who ended up with the milestone goal? NE-HOU was the day's first game, and there were 6 goals in that game. But you can't immediately assume that the sixth goal there was the milestone goal, because there were two other games going on at the same time. NE-HOU started at 4pm Eastern, while NY-DC and CLB-TOR started at 5pm Eastern. So both of those games played their first halves during the second half of NE-HOU. Both Crew goals were in the second half, so you can forget about that game. However, John Wolyniec's goal for the Red Bulls was early in that game, which means we have to check the play-by-play on MLSnet to find out where his goal fits in the order. NE-HOU play by play NY-DC play by play Here's the first three goals in the first game: 5,995-Pat Noonan 5,996-Dwayne De Rosario 5,997-Taylor Twellman The rest of the goals, however, were scored in a short time period. So we have to look at the MLSnet times which are conveniently given at the start of each half: NE-HOU - "Half 2 Started @ 5:11 P.M. ET." NY-DC - "Match Started @ 5:06 P.M. ET." Using this, we can now determine the order of the goals: 5,998-John Wolyniec (18'54" or 5:24 pm) 5,999-Brian Ching (59'11" or 5:25 pm) 6,000-Brian Ching (60'41" or 5:26 pm) 6,001-Shalrie Joseph (65'47" or 5:31 pm) So Brian Ching's second goal, the header off a Stuart Holden free kick, is the 6,000th goal in MLS history. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else other than this blog, so enjoy. Note: I don't entirely trust MLS to be correct to the second, so Wolyniec and Ching's first may actually be in the wrong order. But that has no effect on the 6,000th, as an error of a couple of minutes seems unlikely. Anyone who was watching both the games at the same time, please correct me if the order here is wrong. I did make sure to check the pbp threads on Bigsoccer, and it seemed Wolyniec's definitely was before Ching's second. MLS Milestone Goals 1,000 Thomas Dooley 9/14/1997 CLB vs KC 2,000 Alex Bunbury 7/3/1999 KC @ TB 3,000 Sasha Victorine 5/9/2001 LA @ TB 4,000 Mark Chung 6/25/2003 COL vs LA 5,000 Andy Williams 8/6/2005 RSL vs CHV 6,000 Brian Ching 7/22/2007 HOU @ NE Based on the current scoring rate (2.63 goals per game), I would estimate that we'll see the 7,000th goal sometime in June 2009.