Important dates in Real Salt Lake’s offseason

OK, So I was a huge slacker this weekend and didn’t finish my post, so some of this might be a bit disjointed.

MLS Cup

First up is this weekend’s MLS Cup match, and while Real Salt Lake missed being a part of the match by one goal, the league championship is always an important date and when the comish gives his state of the league address (I will be doing a more in depth review of that on Tuesday).

Columbus has won the Cup and it was a great match to watch, exciting and upbeat tempo by both sides. I did think it was interesting how many empty seats there were, perhaps the league needs to do a better job of controlling how tickets to their big match are handled. I found a number of Galaxy season ticket holders purchased a bunch of tickets with the hope of reselling them for stupidly large profits, and a large number of the empty seats were ones that people tired to gouge prices on. I am actually happy that nobody bought them; perhaps it will discourage this type of behavior in the future.

Some FO awards

Yup a couple of the RSL front office staff were among the league award winners this season:
Best XI, New Season Ticket Sales:

Steve Peterson (Real Salt Lake)
Andrew Lukanich (Real Salt Lake)
Rookie Salesperson of the Year:

New Season Ticket Sales, Andrew Lukanich (Real Salt Lake)

Expansion Draft

Next up will be the MLS Expansion draft, this year it will take place on Wednesday the 26th and we will find out which MLS players will be joining Seattle Sounders FC. Already on their roster are: Sebastien Le Toux, Kasey Keller, Sanna Nyassi, and their DP Freddie Ljungberg, RSL didn’t lose a single player to San Jose in last year’s Expansion Draft, but I don’t expect that will be the case this time around.

Teams announce the 11 players they are protecting on Monday by 3pm EST, I will post the list as soon as it comes out. I am currently looking for the Generation Adidas information and which if any RSL players may no longer be in the program and how that could impact who we protect.

CONCACAF Champions Cup

November will also see Houston try to qualify for the quarterfinals of the CONCACAF Champions cup, the day before Thanksgiving, a win of CD Luis Angel Firpo should secure a spot for them as the only MLS team with a shot. DC United didn’t get a single win, and only managed one draw in their group.

2009 schedule

The 2009 schedule news will come shortly after the expansion draft and how will having another Western Conference team impact the schedule? There will be fewer teams that we face 3 times, as the league moves to 15 teams and a 30 match schedule. This will mean only room for us to have 2 opponents that we face 3 times, my guess will be Colorado and Chivas, but it could be San Jose. I don’t expect the full schedule to be released until January, but it was the first week of December that we got the news about opening days, home openers and big matches like LA and Chicago.

SuperDraft

January will bring the Combine and the SuperDraft, but RSL has moved most of their draft picks so I don’t expect a lot of action in this seasons draft. Towards the end of the month RSL will likely once again journey to California or Florida to begin their off season training, this is also the major opening in the FIFA transfer window and could see RSL busy once again in the international market place. Last season we brought in Joy, Borchers, Olave, and a few others that didn’t stick, I expect we will see a number of fresh faces in RSL’s preseason camps.

2010 World Cup Qualifiying

We will also see both 2010 World Cup Qualifying continue, can’t wait to find out where the Feburary 11^th USA vs. Mexico match will be held. Hopefully RSL will be able to secure one of the qualifying matches, here is the list of Qualifying matches for the US squad.

I would love to see that Sept 5^th match be held at Rio Tinto, it would be a great birthday present from the team to me.

Anyhow that is it for now, I will post the protected lists later this afternoon.

OFF MY SOAPBOX

This entry was posted on November 24, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under The soapbox. 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.