According to cbc.ca Toronto has sold over 10,000 season tickets for their brand new 20,000 seat soccer stadium. I would say that is pretty good numbers for a brand new team. Soccernet.com reports that most teams in the MLS are selling more season tickets after the announcement of David Beckham coming to play in Major League Soccer later this year. The Galaxy alone have nearly doubled their season ticket sales, but it did not mention how many of those sales happened after the announcement of Beckham coming to LA.
Whatever the cause for the increased sales, I hope it keeps up. Maybe someday Minnesota will get a team that I can get season tickets for. Well, maybe my grandchildren will be around to see that day!
Just yesterday it was announced that David Beckham is coming to the MLS, and today there is rumor about Edgar Davids joining up with FC Dallas. Davids spent time Ajax, Juventus, and Barcelona, three of the top teams in their respective leagues, before coming to play for his current club Tottenham in the EPL.
This would be another huge signing for the MLS that I’m sure any FC Dallas fan would be very happy about.
The MLS has steadily improved over the years since it started back in 96, but this new “Beckham’s Rule” could be huge for the growth of the MLS and of soccer in the United States. I always thought I’d live to see the day that soccer challenges other sports for popularity in the US, and when that day comes, we can probably all look back and say it all started when David Beckham and Edgar Davids came to play in the MLS!
The Boston Globe reports that the MLS has agreed to sell Clint Dempsey to Fulham of the EPL for an MLS record $4 million. It is too bad to see such a talent go, but its great to see that the MLS can produce such a talent that attracts attention from teams in one of the top leagues in the world.
Oguchi Onyewu is also reported to be making a possible move from his current club in Belgium to join Americans Carlos Bocanegra and Brian McBride who have been at Fulham for a couple of years already.
That would give Fulham 4 Americans that could all potentially hold down starting jobs there. That would also probably push them past any other teams in the EPL as far as my favorites go! I’ve already got the Fulham scarf hanging in my computer room! c’mon you whites!
Clint, you will be missed in the MLS, and I’m sure OO will be missed in Belgium. Good luck at Fulham guys!
One of the most important men to American soccer passed away today. If there was no Lamar Hunt, there may be no MLS today. Thank you for everything you’ve done for American soccer Lamar!
With the new playoff system I mentioned earlier today, this years playoffs would have looked like this:
East:
1. DC United
2. New England Revolution
West:
1. FC Dallas
2. Houston Dynamo
Wild Cards:
Chicago Fire
Chivas USA
Colorado Rapids
LA Galaxy
I don’t know how they’d all be matched up in the first round, and this is only based on my own 1 table standings. The only difference being LA Galaxy in, NY Red Bulls out. Thats not so bad I guess!
Some new rules were announced this weekend that will take effect for the next MLS season.
Teams will be able to have one designated superstar spot on their roster. The league will pay up to 400K/season for that player, the club is responsible for the rest. This gets teams around the salary cap for situations like LA wanting to get David Beckham. Each team gets one superstar allocation, which can be traded, but no team can have more than 2.
With the addition of Toronto to the league, I had thought they would go to a single table and not have the east/west division. But instead they plan to keep everything the same and then add Toronto to the east. Playoffs are messed up too. Top 2 teams from each division go to the playoff, in addition to 4 wildcard teams. And hopefully in 2008 only the east division will add a designated hitter, for the situation that a game goes to a shootout, and the goalkeeper is supposed to shoot, in comes the designated hitter to take that shot for the keeper! stupid….
but one good thing they did was worked out some deal so that 100% of the games are going to be televised lived. I doubt that will benefit me too much, but that would be awfully cool to be able to choose what game(s) I wanted to watch each weekend instead of letting espn/fox soccer channel decide for me.
Starting next year the MLS is following a bit of world soccer and starting MLS youth programs for each MLS team. This is something entirely new in US professional sports, and I think it will be a great benefit for the MLS all around.
The youth system works like this. Young players that live in an MLS home area for at least 1 year can join their youth teams. Each MLS team will have 6 different aged teams, from U15 to U25. As long as a player is the member of a youth team for 2 years, they can be signed to that MLS team without the team having to draft them.
This youth system can do nothing but good for the MLS and American soccer in general in my opinion. Teams will have a wider base of players to choose from, it will give players access to professional coaches that they might not otherwise have, it will create more home-town players in the MLS, and none of this will effect NCAA eligibility for any of the players who do not move onto the MLS before they could play college soccer.
Its nice to see the MLS taking a bit from world soccer. Most world soccer teams have similar youth systems. Manchester United probably had one of the best classes of players from their own youth system when they won the treble in 1999. Players such as David Becham and Paul Scholes came up from the Manchester United youth system. Without such youth system, you may well have never heard the phrase “Bend it like Beckham”.
Well done MLS. I fully expect to see the MLS become a respected league throughout the world and see the US national team win a world cup in my lifetime!
I really wish I could have watched the Dallas/Colorado game from this past weekend when the Rapids dumped FC Dallas out of the playoffs to see what waranted a six game suspension for FC Dallas goalkeeper Dario Sala. Six game suspension seems pretty harsh. I don’t remember there ever being a suspension longer (or even that long) in the history of the MLS. I have been a fan since the league started, but I do admit there were years that something like this could have eassily gone un-noticed by me.
Mike Petke, Ricardo Clark, Claudio Suarez and even Steve Nicol were all fined while Juan Pable Garcia got a two game suspension. That must have been an exciting couple of games last weekend.
I sure am looking forward to the games this Sunday! Predictions? Based solely on the play that I saw this last weekend I see NE Revolution vs Houston Dynamo playing for the MLS Cup. Based on what I think from my usually completely wrong instincts, I see DC United vs. Colorado Rapids. Final anwer: DC United vs Houston Dynamo.
I liked the idea of a single table so here are the final standing for the year with the single table. I wonder if the single table will become a reality next year with the addition of Toronto FC?
| team |
gp |
w |
l |
t |
pts |
gf |
ga |
+/- |
|---|
| y - D.C. United |
32 |
15 |
7 |
10 |
55 |
52 |
38 |
14 |
| y - FC Dallas |
32 |
16 |
12 |
4 |
52 |
48 |
44 |
4 |
| x - New England |
32 |
12 |
8 |
12 |
48 |
39 |
35 |
4 |
| x - Chicago |
32 |
13 |
11 |
8 |
47 |
43 |
41 |
2 |
| x - Houston |
32 |
11 |
8 |
13 |
46 |
44 |
40 |
4 |
| x - Chivas USA |
32 |
10 |
9 |
13 |
43 |
45 |
42 |
3 |
| x - Colorado |
32 |
11 |
13 |
8 |
41 |
36 |
49 |
-13 |
| Los Angeles |
32 |
11 |
15 |
6 |
39 |
37 |
37 |
0 |
| Real Salt Lake |
32 |
10 |
13 |
9 |
39 |
45 |
49 |
-4 |
| x - New York |
32 |
9 |
11 |
12 |
39 |
41 |
41 |
0 |
| Kansas City |
32 |
10 |
14 |
8 |
38 |
43 |
45 |
-2 |
| Columbus |
32 |
8 |
15 |
9 |
33 |
30 |
42 |
-12 |
I’m taking over this website and I will keep it very familar, a personal blog about the MLS. You may not always get an un-biased opinion here, but I will sometimes try.
