Last week, to celebrate the opening of Red Bull Arena, the club announced it's all-time First XI, as voted by the fans. And while we have absolutely no issue with ten of the eleven selections, one omission is of such concern that it needs to be dealt with in this space.

First, let's look at the ones that will receive no argument from us. In goal, Tim Howard is the clear choice over Tony Meola and Jonny Walker. On defense, we have no qualms about the trio of Jeff Parke, Mike Petke, and Eddie Pope (you can make the argument of Steve Jolley over Pope based on his complete body of work, but Pope's 2003 was above and beyond any season by any Metro defender). In midfield... here is gets interesting.

Interesting, but not quite. Here, we have five worth candidates for four spots, and after placing Amado Guevara above those remaining, you can't go wrong with any of the four. The official vote selected Youri Djorkaeff, Tab Ramos, and Dave van den Bergh, leaving Roberto Donadoni on the sidelines; you can easily make case for Donadoni replacing one of the former. At the end, the Italian maestro only played two seasons for Metro, and his contributions in either 1996 or 1997 cannot match Djorkaeff's amazing 2005 and van den Bergh's sublime 2008. When going up against his one-time cohort Ramos, you weight Roberto's two years against Tab's seven, and one can see how the selection was made.

But when you get to the forwards, one selection is absurdly puzzling.

No, not Juan Pablo Angel or Clint Mathis; those two are obvious choices. But the third selection should have been as obvious, and at the end, was robbed by the voting process.

For any First XI without Giovanni Savarese is an invalid First XI.

The man scored the first eight goals in club history. The man led the team in scoring three straight years, breaking double digits in each. The man scored a number of huge, memorable goals (the bicycle kick to complete the miraculous comeback vs Tampa, the playoff goal vs DC, etc, etc, etc). The man was the club's leading scorer from Day 1 and either until 2007 (if you count all competitions) or 2009 (if you count league play). He is still third and second on those charts.

Jozy Altidore? He's 13th.

Now, we love Altidore. We watch patiently as he is developing in Europe and can't wait for him to take the field for the US at this summer's World Cup. But when you compare Jozy's body of work with Metro to that of Gio's, it falls so short that it shouldn't even be a contest.

Savarese, all competitions: 96 games, 44 goals. Altidore: 43 games, 16 goals. Savarese's season totals: 14, 14, 16. Altidore's season totals: 4, 9, 3. Yes, two of those seasons were really halves, but even doubling the numbers doesn't get Jozy close to Gio.

Now, there is one argument that always lines these all-time selections: do you take someone who was great for a short period of time over someone who was good for a long period? But here, that's not even a discussion: none of Jozy's seasons matches to one of Gio's, and neither does his entire body of work.

The only argument that Jozy might win is the skill set one; Gio, for all this prowess, was not exactly the world's greatest talent. Altidore's ceiling is miles above what Savarese's was. But we're not talking about potential or what they have done outside Metro, for if that was the case, the First XI must include the likes of Branco and Lothar Matthaus. We're are talking about what they have done with this club. And here, the answer is clearly Savarese.

Now, we realize that Gio is long gone and Jozy's name is fresh on the minds that follow American soccer. And we realize that all of these all-time selections are just that, fantasy teams, where everyone's opinion could be considered as valid as ours. But at the end, we feel sad that Metro's original hero was not recognized among the club's best.