The first XI was decided last week, and now the All Star roster is complete.
MLS All Star coach Steve Nicol added 5 players of his choosing, and then Don Garber added his two commissioner’s picks. Nicol choose Brian Ching, Landon Donovan, Ronnie O’Brien, Kevin Hartman and Pable Mastroeni. Don Garber choose Jones and Pope, both long time MLS stars who are retiring after this season.
Maybe they aren’t quite all stars this season, but Cobi Jones and Eddie Pope have served Major League Soccer for a long time and deserve a spot on this team.
The MLS All Stars will be facing Celtic at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on July 19th. The game will be televised on ESPN2 at 8:00 PM CST.
When the all star game comes around this year, the New England Revolution’s Steve Nicol will be in charge of the MLS all stars that will face Scottish Champions Celtic. The Revolution head coach got the job because his team has the most points per game in the league right now. The job would have been given to Bruce Arena had the Revolution not beat Toronto FC this weekend.
I used to not really enjoy the format of this all star game, but since the MLS all stars beat Chelsea I’ve been a fan. With a small league it works for me. The single all star team will draw just as many fans as 2 all star teams will, but their opponents will bring some more attention to the game and also make it a little bit more competitive. You can always argue that Chelsea was (and Celtic will be) in pre-season playing a meaningless game, but no European team is going to want to come into the US and lose to an all star team from a league most of them probably view as second rate to wherever they are coming from.
Well that can’t last too long, because soon those big clubs will not have any reason to come to the US and lose to the MLS all stars. Then what will we be left with? The regular old boring no-defence east vs west completely meaningless just like baseball or basketball all star game. I don’t want that, so I hope the all stars take it a little easy on Celtic.
