Major League Soccer

For anyone who's so inclined, a couple of Fire fans are producing a podcast starting this season.

http://hotmesscf97.podomatic.com/

Great humor, good analysis, a complete overview of where the team (and others around the league) are at the start of the new season.

Yah we did! But I think the climate has changed/different people are in charge of stuff/the people doing it weren't the main supporters club.

nobody goes to their games anyway lol

xp Would crosstown derbies work in the US if, say, Cosmos get off the ground? It doesn't seem to be a big deal in other sports e.g. I never hear about a Giants-Jets beef.

I am not a knowledgeable NFL fan, but afaik the Jets and Giants don't play each other because they're in separate conferences. I do know that Giants/Eagles is a huuuge rivalry.

Crosstown derbies could work though, imo, once there are some more teams. Gals/Chivas could be huge but the issue is that the Chivas branding tends to drive some fans away from their side. It definitely happens in other sports -- the baseball crosstown classic here in Chicago, Cubs/Sox, is always huge. The various California teams in other sports all hate each other, etc etc.

Jets and Giants could maybe meet in the playoffs? Dunno.

I'm not up on what's happening w the Cosmos name & future these days, but until maybe a year ago, it wasn't even clear that the NYC-area market could make ONE team really work, much less two. I would say we're a ways yet from having to worry about a cross-town derby.

There would DEFINITELY be people who'd join up for the Cosmos/any 2nd team just out of spite for Red Bull changing the name of the 1st team all those years ago -- a certain number of fans left after that who've never re-engaged, although some of them crumbled when the stadium opened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpOnM4SHPO0

Cosmos got a bit of publicity here last week when Cantona did an interview with the bbc - our awful pundits were left open-mouthed when he named the Kung-Fu kick as the best moment of his career

They're the trolliest non-team in existence.

I might have had too much coffee but I cannot sit through 10 mins of that interview.

I did, however, just buy my ticket for the home opener tonight and ALL the supporters sections are sold out! Now let's see who's actually sitting in them....

Normally I'm not one to care much about screen-size when watching games on video (lol internet streams) but the prospect of watching the Fire on a 10x30ft screen tonight has got me a little geeky.

So following the retirement of McBride and Brown and the departures of Ljungberg, Castillo, Conde, and a bunch of other dead weight, Coach looks to be running out a 3-5-2 with a youngish bunch of hungry no-name (outside the league, at least) players against the playoff runners-up from last year... should be quite interesting.

lol toronto

cd9 getting 2 goals as well

fire don't look like shit in a road draw, I'll take it

MatchDay Live (their name for the internet game interface) season pass is $39.99 until the 28th. Decided to give it a go and am watching the Vancouver - Toronto game from the other night. Boy do Toronto look bad; horrible fullbacks and midfield. It's gonna be a while before the Ajax system reaps any dividends. A while being years, based on the start.

a good first day! lots of goals, glad to see charlie, agudelo is a wonder, lol sounders.

Oh man so the Toronto-Vancouver game had video feed issues on Match Day Live and I didn't get to watch it (as it was happening)! And then the other game I was really excited about wasn't on MDL, the Timber's season opener. Had to go to some streaming site that probably gave me worms. Terrible defense on the Timbers side, the goalie looked so frustrated!

DC United kicked some serious ass, that was good.... I gotta put Charlie Davies on my fantasy team if he keeps up that level of play.

Watchin' the DC game as I type. Looks great, especially compared to the SD stream for the Tor-Van game. Love Pat Onstad.

That was a great MLS game. Chippy, some great defending, a couple of good goals.

The Fire home opener on Saturday is forecast to be in the low 40s, rain, w/ chance of snow. Still excited.

On a brighter note, our supporter sections have almost hit 800 season tickets sold, more than doubling our previous high mark. And this is after the team missed the playoffs last year for only the 2nd time.

I wonder if that's a MLS-wide phenomenon or just limited to Chicago... I think last years world cup created a lot of new American soccer fans.

It could be, but I think it's also a side effect of ownership deciding to try and give a shit about their fanbase. They've cut parking prices in half, offered up a lot more perks for buying season tickets, it's looking like they'll play Man Utd in a friendly at Soldier Field and all season ticket holders get that game included at no extra charge, etc. Numbers are up all over the park, not just in the end sections.

Also fwiw I don't remember a big bump in attendance after the WC finished last year.

hey dan - bit more -

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/nfl/03/23/ochocinco.ap/index.html

Publicity stunt or no I have to wonder what it makes ppl think of the league.

can i say how happy i am for omar salgado? (#1 pick but wasn't allowed to play by fifa bcz he's 17 and it'd be an international transfer-dumb, but all smoothed out now) just one more fun kid to watch in MLS.

don't fuck it up, kid

lolseattle again last night

hyped for game day here, 35 and sunny, no precip

kansas city: pick a state, pick a state, pick a state

The Real Salt Lake - LA Galaxy game was impressively one sided. RSL looks really good; their spacing and teamwork is top notch. Hustling right until the end.

Don't know what happened to LA... they lose Omar for one game and everything goes to shit? Yikes it was embarrassing.

RSL looked like a buzzsaw. I wasn't too impressed by the Galaxy in the game against New England, but they at least dominated huge swathes of that game. I don't think Landycakes could have done much too change the result.

The Metros game was hiiiiideous, but we were missing 6 players and down to 2nd or 3rd string in some places. And a 0-0 draw on the road at the start of the season is not the end of the world...but international weekends are going to SUCK.

RSL is the best team in the league and has been for the past 2 years or so.

Fire benefited from some questionable calls yesterday but won so I'm cool with it. I'm liking that they have avoided putting many international-level players on the team so we can avoid the kind of shit NY etc deals with.

We have not, in the past, been a team with much (any) depth. It's kind of perversely exciting to HAVE a third-string at all, tbh.

so i was actually physically present at that seattle game. decent atmosphere, but good christ the dynamo is TERRIBLE

also do we have a US SOCCER thread for the nat'l team?

usmnt

thankin u

seattle ain't lookin' like much this year yet either imo, still early tho

no, they didn't look great, but the dynamo looked legitimately ~terrible~

ives announces derosario traded from tfc to red bull, then quickly recants... wonder if he got taken in an april fool's joke?

dang, no joke: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/red-bulls-acquire-de-rosario-toronto-fc

h8 u red bull

weird, MLS just sent out a different headline on facebook less than 5 minutes ago, "Toronto Coach: De Rosario still plays for us"...

Just watched LA vs Philadelphia on ESPN. Beckham still delivers a mean dead ball - not sure what else is left in his game.

"A clean sheet... also known as a shut out" - still pandering to non-soccer audience after all these years.

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congratulation rsl

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w275/gwiser1/ReAL%20Salt%20Lake%20Fan%20Club/Kyle-1.jpg

didn't get to see it, but man it'd be something if they could pull it off in the final

lol KC trying so hard to fabricate some sort of rivalry

http://www.sportingkc.com/firehouse

get in line behind every other team, jackasses

always a joy to beat chicago

i think that this must be the first time in MLS history that a team has had a starting 11 that are/were full senior internationals.

Coudoul - Senegal (5)
Miller - Costa Rica (22)
Ream - USA (3)
Marquez - Mexico (101)
Solli - Norway (40)
Tainio - Finland (51)
De Rosario - Canada (55)
Richards - Jamaica (27)
Lindpere - Estonia (74)
Henry - France (123)
Agudelo - USA (4)

that is 505 senior international caps starting tonight for RBNY.

keller saved yr asses, plus fuck wtf is wrong with our backline