Father vs Son

Last week against Houston, Teal Bunbury scored his 4th league goal of the season and of his MLS career, tying his father, Alex Bunbury for the number of goals he scored in his 1 and a half years as a Wizards player. So I thought I'd take a quick minute to compare the two's goal scoring thanks to a conversation Thad and I had on this week's podcast. All four of Alex's goals came in his first season with the Wizards, 1999. His first game was June 26th, a 3-0 loss to DC. He would score in his second game, a 1-1 (3-2) shoot out win over Tampa Bay. Overall, it took Alex 836 minutes to get his 4 goals, a span of 10 games, 9 of which he started.

Teal also made his first appearance as a substitute, also against DC United, but this game was a 4-0 win on opening day this year. It took Teal 12 league games before he scored his first goal, the only goal in the Wizards 1-0 win over Columbus. It took Teal 21 games, 9 starts to reach the 4 goal mark in league play, a total of 1,006 minutes to hit the mark.

At this point, Teal has only played 2 less games for the Wizards in league play than his father did for the Wizards. But while Teal is 22 games played compared to his dad's 24, Alex still holds a big lead in starts over his son. While Teal has started 9 games this season, Alex started 20 games for the Wizards during his time in KC. Alex also has 757 more minutes in his Wizards career than Teal has with all those extra starts that Alex had by this point of his Wizards career. Alex finished his Wizards career with 1,838 league minutes played. Granted it's not a completely fair comparison because Alex was an established pro when he came to KC while Teal is a 20 year old rookie.

The thing that Teal has going for him over his father is that the Wizards are 4-0 when Teal has scored this season. While the 1999 Wizards were 2-2 (1-2-1 if you count shootout wins as draws) when Alex scored.

It's certainly a given at this point that Teal will pass his father when it comes to league goals for Kansas City, hopefully he does it over the course of the next few games while helping KC into the playoffs.