MLS and Real Salt Lake news/blog updates
MLS week 8 in review
Chivas USA Makes The Points ussoccerplayers.typepad.com
DC United once again get to be part of the main story for all the wrong reasons, dropping a 1-0 lead to end up losing against a club that has never - NEVER - come back to win an MLS game.
MLS Weekend Review: The Sack Rack csrnusa.com/ussoccerspot/
Another sign of Major League Soccer’s evolution is the development of a tradition reporters and pundits have in the motherland, the UK. That is the sack race. American soccer reporting and writing is generally not as negative or cynical as our British counterparts. This is largely because we have neither the history, the football infrastructure nor sharp critical historical lens they have en mass. But as MLS gets more attention albeit from non-mainstream sources, coaches face more pressures than in MLS first decade of existence.
SBI MLS Best XI: Week 8 soccerbyives.net
You just never know who you are going to see on the weekly MLS Best XI.
First there was Chad Barrett, then there was Alan Gordon. Now you can add Atiba Harris and Edson Buddle to the list of forwards who have made MLS Best XI this year.Buddle is joined on the squad by fellow attacking players, and MLS Best XI regulars, Landon Donovan and David Beckham, who both played their parts in the Galaxy’s 5-1 distruction of FC Dallas.
The Good, The Bad, The Coyote Ugly (week8) blog.washingtonpost.com/soccerinsider
THE GOOD
*Edson Buddle’s hat trick.
*Marcelo Gallardo’s change of direction and well-placed goal.
*TFC Coach John Carver, on Columbus’s tactics: “They’ve come to spoil the game. They’ve come to take their time. They’ve come to fall over and dive all over the park, and I think that’s what they did. Any team to go six wins out of seven and have a game plan like that surprises me a little bit.”
Other MLS news
Qualifying Format Unveiled for 2008-2009 CONCACAF Champions League™ concacaf.com
The new CONCACAF Champions League™ will be comprised of 24 teams, representing each of CONCACAF’s regions. The CONCACAF Champions League™ will feature four teams from Mexico and USA; two clubs each from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama; and one representative from Canada, Belize, and Nicaragua and three teams from the Caribbean.
The following is the qualification process, which will be completed by mid-July 2008, in preparation for the start of the Preliminary Round of the 2008-09 CONCACAF Champions League™ this coming August.
ON MY SOAPBOX
So am I the only one who thinks the timing of this tournament will stink for MLS squads? The group stages take place at the same time as the MLS playoffs, and even worse the next phase Quarterfinals and start of the Semifinals take place before the MLS season starts. I like the concept of something better than what current Champions Cup offers but this really seems like a stretch, USL teams from Canada get to try and qualify, but USL teams from the US are shut out (unless they can become the 2nd USL team to win the LHUSOC-Rochester did it in 99-since the MLS started competing in the tournament). Perhaps a better solution would be a smaller tournament, 12 teams instead of 24, or trying to get leagues to adjust their schedules to allow teams to better compete in the tournament? I am not sure, but we will see how this first attempts goes, I am not holding my breath for MLS success in this format.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
Another MLS team in Canada? (Commissioner’s Vancouver Statement) web.mlsnet.com
Following today’s announcement in Vancouver that BC Place will undergo renovations, Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber issued the following statement: “We believe Vancouver is a potential market for a future Major League Soccer expansion team. There is no doubt the market for professional soccer exists in Vancouver, as we saw last November when nearly 50,000 fans attended the exhibition match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and the Whitecaps.
ON MY SOAPBOX
Listen I think that the success of TFC is great, they have a great fan base, and while I am not sure how they are able to get a roster with so many international players (god knows the MLS rules get bent and broken more often than they get followed), but is that enough to bypass major US cities that have been waiting for expansion? St. Louis, Las Vegas, San Diego, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and others have had interest, some cities have funding already in place for stadiums, a few have even offered MLS their expansion fees, but the commish playing politics makes statements like this and leave fans scratching their heads.
Now add in the news that the recent partnership with FC Barcelona includes rights for them to own and control a team (read more here -”If you want to be a global brand, you have to be in the United States,” said FC Barcelona vice chairman Ferran Soriano, the club’s executive responsible for marketing. “We want to have a permanent presence here, and maybe that permanent presence will mean a team here someday.”), and add in the fact that as part of his deal with MLS that David Beckham also can become a franchise owner. Where is the talent going to come from for these teams, this could lead to a 20 team league within the next 4-5 years, and with the current salary cap in place this type of expansion could lead to MLS becoming a weaker league, at least when it comes to on field performance. I would urge Garber to deal with the issues current teams are facing and worry less about expansion beyond Seattle and Philly.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
RSL Updates
ON MY SOAPBOX
I will be doing a full ¼ season review over the next couple days but here are a couple of the things that stick out. Of all the new 2008 players, it is the defense that seems to be the most improved, but at the same time we have given up more goals to this point of the season than in the past, so is the defense really improved? We bring “Dr. Goal” to Salt Lake, and fail to get him the ball MLS has had very few pure strikers, and we get one but have no clue that he is not like most of the forwards in the league who want the ball 20 yards out, he will crash the box looking for either a ball over the top, or a cross into the box that he can use his height and skill to head into goal. We must figure out how to leverage him, before like many other players he gets frustrated and quits trying or leaves. I find that while our numbers look better than last year for overall performance, they still do not measure up to expectations.
OFF MY SOAPBOX
This entry was posted on May 19, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Blogs and News Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.