Along with the recent departure of Nick Garcia, the news that Jose Burciaga Jr is going to Colorado for more draft picks reveals signs that the Wizards will be looking to play a new formation. The lineup will feature 1 defender (who needs more than Jimmy Conrad anyway?), 6 in the midfield, and 3 strikers.
Jose Burciaga Jr is headed to the Colorado Rapids. In exchange for Burciaga Jr the Wizards will get a second round draft pick in 2009.
The Wizards may also be losing Eddie Johnson to Fulham. It seems the US National team is just moving to London. Now Fulham, who already has 4 Americans, is after Eddie Johnson and Chivas USA goalkeeper Brad Guzan. Who will be the next American to head for Fulham?
Is Eddie Johnson on his way out of Kansas City to play for Fulham?
The Daily Mail reports that Eddie “the Juice” Johnson has left the US National team training camp which is a sign that a deal with Fulham is near. Johnson has had an up and down career recently with the Kansas City Wizards. Right now he’s on the up side of that roller-coaster.
If this does happen and Johnson does end up playing at Fulham, he will be the 5th American to join the team. Brian McBride, Carlos Bocanegra, Clint Dempsey and Kasey Keller currently play for the London club.
There has been lots of talk about Americans playing in Major League Soccer to be moving to Europe recently. If Taylor Twellman and Eddie Johnson both go to play in England, will that be good for the US Nationals? Will it increase their chances of getting more time with the National Team? I think it they did make the move and got significant playing time it would have to help them.
Well a weekend full of season ending games and a couple more end of the year awards have been finalized. How are my predictions going?
I correctly predicted that the 4th seed Chicago Fire took out overall league leaders DC United.
I also predicted that the 5th place (East) Kansas City Wizards would defeat 1st place (West) Chivas USA. That happened after a 1-0 KC win in KC and a scoreless draw back in LA this weekend.
Both of the #2 seeds advanced like I predicted, but Houston had to come back and use overtime to dispose of FC Dallas. The Revolution just got a single goal from Taylor Twellman to drop the Red Bulls.
I correctly picked the goalkeeper of the year and the fair play award. The newest awards were given to Eddie Johnson for comeback player of the year, and then the first one I got wrong was defender of the year. Eddie Robinson was my prediction but Michael Parkhurst won the award. So much for a perfect round of post season predictions…
So the next round looks like this:
Chicago Fire @ New England Revolution
Kansas City Wizards @ Houston Dynamo
It looks like we are set up for a repeat of last years MLS Cup, but I’m not making my predictions yet. I imagine KC and Houston both are hoping for a Revolution win on Thursday because no one can lose the big game quite like the Revolution can.
ps - I kinda thought the LA Galaxy might beat Hollywood United yesterday, which they apparently did, 12 - 4.
Eddie Johnson turned down the possiblity of going to play in the English Premiere League. Derby County made an offer to buy the young striker from the Kansas City Wizards. Johnson himself decided he’d rather stay with the Wizards.
Earlier in his career Johnson was courted by a european team. Benfica tried to sign Johnson when he was still at FC Dallas.
The MLS All Star game first 11 was announced today. This isn’t necessairly the starting lineup, just the first 11 guys voted onto the team. 7 more will be added later. No representative from the Colombus Crew, Toronto FC, Chicago Fire, Colorado Rapids, LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake.
Juan Pablo Angel - Eddie Johnson
Chrisian Gomez - Dwayne De Rosario - Juan Toja
Sharlie Joseph - Ricardo Clark
Jonathan Bornstein - Jimmy Conrad - Michael Parkhurst
Matt Reis
Eddie Johnson and the Kansas City Wizards are hot. Eddie “The Juice” Johnson just made Major League Soccer history by being the first player to score hat tricks in consecutive games.
The Wizards topped the league leading New York Red Bulls on Saturday where Johnson got his second consecutive hat trick. The Wizads get some time off now. Their next game isn’t until June 16th when they travel to New York to take on the Red Bulls there. Maybe The Juice can make it a hat trick of hat tricks then!
Last year the Wizards and Red Bulls played on the last day of league games to decide who got the bottom playoff spot in the East, which the Red Bulls won. This year it seems they might be playing for the top spot in the league.
I hope you all had a good long weekend. Mine was exhausting and then work was even more so when I got back. A lot of exciting stuff went down while I was out of town and then locked in my office.
Beckham may be missing from the Galaxy if he gets called back to England for some Euro 2008 qualifiers.
Then there is talk of him going on loan to Newcastle (or other European club) after the MLS season, but Frank Yallop says it won’t happen and I doubt it myself.
The Kansas City Wizards proved that they are no joke. Going down two-nil to the top team in the league usually spells trouble, but the Wizards did it and came out on top. Eddie Johnson notched a hat trick in the game. It is official, his sports psychologist is paying off big time!
Eight Major League Soccer sides will have representatives on the team that will represent the US in this summer’s Gold Cup. Bob Bradley announced the roster today featuring 12 MLS players and 11 from outside MLS. The Gold Cup is the number one priority for Bob Bradley this summer, so this should be his top team. The US won the Gold Cup in 2005. All of the players listed as forwards come from Major League Soccer.
MLS Members:
- Steve Ralston
- Taylor Twellman
- Michael Parkhurst
- Brian Ching
- Ricardo Clark
- Brad Guzan
- Jonathan Bornstein
- Landon Donovan
- Pablo Mastroeni
- Frankie Hejduk
- Justin Mapp
- Eddie Johnson
Non-MLS Member:
- Tim Howard
- Kasey Keller
- Carlos Bocanegra
- Jay DeMerit
- Oguchi Onyewu
- Frank Simek
- Jonathan Spector
- DaMarcus Beasley
- Michael Bradley
- Clint Dempsey
- Benny Feilhaber
Well the score was impressive, that is really all I got out of the MLSnet.com match tracker.
After a very impressive season opening win in DC the Wizards dropped out of the US Open Cup to RSL and then went into Chicago and lost there. Tonite they came back strong with a 3 - 0 victory over very unimpressive thus far Toronto FC. I hope those Toronto fans are gonna stick with thier team through the bad as well as the good.
The Juice (Eddie Johnson) got back on the score sheet and now has equaled his goal tally from last season.
Eddie Johnson didn’t have the best year last season with the Wizards. Before the game one of the announcers said that Eddie Johnson could beat his entire goal count from last season in their first game. He didn’t do it, but he is half way there already, and he’s got one man of the match award for his 2 assists and 1 goal in the beat down they placed on DC United.
“the Juice” is Eddie Johnson’s nickname in case you didn’t know. You probably didn’t know because I think this was given to him by a frined of mine, so there are about a dozen people who know this nickname for him. Hopefully a couple more after reading this.
