Söccer Röcker

It’s been a long time, folks. Too long, too long. Sometimes it feels like the MLS off-season is longer than the Trail of Tears. “But,” you say to me, “you follow an English team! Your season never ends!”

The team I follow is Newcastle United, people. You want to talk tears, we’ll talk.

But enough of that foreign mish-mash and jibber-jabber. Our own top flight league has restarted and restarted in quite a fashion thanks to Seattle. But we’ll get to that in a little bit. This time around you’re going to get my opinion, oh you lucky computer owners, on a few things related to MLS. Ready?

01.) The Offseason

Isn’t it sad how we don’t have a league anymore because The David Beckham Experience brought to you by E! and Hello! has been rescheduled to Saturday mornings in Italy? “Ooh,” the Euro snobs preen, “your league is crap. Beckham left you. LOL.”

Yes and no. He hasn’t completely left yet. He obviously will after playing just half a season which is reason #3,687 I’m glad I don’t support the Galaxy. Explain to me how MLS is crap after every single soccer (yes, I called it “soccer”) pundit on the European Continent who wrote him off as a worthless has-been with an evil wife is now screaming that Signore Becks suddenly now has to, oh my god he HAS TO, play in Serie A to preserve his England chances. Geez, I guess our league isn’t so bad if he kept in enough shape to play for AC Milan. Remember how Bolton was after him and our British cousins were saying he’d be lucky to even play for them? Quite.

Three loud cheers for MLS’s Board of Governors for bringing the most exciting rivalry in American soccer to the top flight ranks for the first time in decades. I’m talking, of course, of the “promotion” of the Seattle Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps to MLS. These teams have a vicious distaste for each other (and each other’s fans) that spans back to Engelbert Humperdinck’s days on the charts. Each team’s supporters groups have traveled in large numbers to see their teams play in the First Division (and the A-League, and the USISL, and probably a few other alphabet soup soccer leagues) for years. It warms the heart to think of what they’ll do in 2011 in MLS.

Three even louder cheers to the BOG for wisely telling Barcelona, “thanks but no thanks.” The entire saga of FCB Miami reeked to high heaven of CD Chivas USA Part Dos. Another “outlet store” team for a foreign giant with one or two older stars from The Mothership and a bunch of MLS castoffs. Throw in owners with little-to-no understanding of MLS’s…peculiar, shall we say, way of running things as well as a market that won’t support the championship pro sports teams they have and you have a recipe to make Jim Rome smile. That’s not even mentioning the plan to play on fake turf at a college (and not even a big college!) football stadium. Say it with me people: no more spinoff teams. Not ever.

Of course, getting back to Cascadia, I’d rather Vancouver not play in a cavernous CFL stadium (go Stampeders, by the way) and get their long-gestating waterfront stadium built. If Guns’N’Roses can release “Chinese Democracy” before The Second Coming, Vancouver’s city council should be able to tie in a soccer stadium with the Olympic construction up there.

We lost Khano Smith, first to Video Game Latte FC and then to FC Energy Drink. You loved him, you hated him, you thought he was doing it on purpose. He will be missed and reviled and in equal measures by the Revs faithful. Personally he’ll always be a friend of this space after knocking the New York/New Jersey/Greater TriState Area Empire State MetroStars out of the 2005 playoffs.

02.) Flags On The Jerseys

Really Adidas? Flags on every team’s jersey? Did TFC’s jersey not scream “CANADA!” enough to you? Did the Revs not already look enough like Captain America’s road crew? Do you think soccer fans won’t know MLS teams are Americans (well 99% of them)? It’s stupid enough when teams in baseball do this (in an MLB game not involving the Blue Jays- what’s the point?). It’s dumber when American college basketball teams do it. Yup, you’re all Americans. The whole thing is just silly. Now before some crank starts calling me anti-American, let me say this. Were they not “American” before? The entire thing is superfluous and silly. To those who would say that well now MLS teams play in international tournaments I say this: did the Galaxy wear Old Glory when they won the CONCACAF Champions Cup? If you can’t tell an MLS team is American (most of them by just looking at the name) I feel bad for you. It smacks of some kind of odd feeling that people won’t think MLS is “really American” with flags on the shirts.

Ask this guy, copping Captain America's look is dumb.

Although personally I find it hilarious that CD Chivas USA, the people who brought you “Adios Soccer, Hola Futbol”, now not only have “USA” in their name but have American flags. I’m sure that’s really going to bring in the Mexican nationalist crowd who form a good chunk of original flavor Chivas’ fan base.

CD Chivas USA is neither really Chivas, nor USA. Discuss.

03.) The Revs Start To Get It. Kinda.

I think the Revs Girls are a misguided NFL-style idea from a misguided NFL-trained front office, lets just say that out front. You know what will really appeal to the Euro-fans who crowd Boston’s soccer bars and think MLS is “too American” (half of them think the clock still goes the wrong way)? American-style cheerleaders! YES! Brilliant!

BUT at least they’re doing something. There are signs of life from Foxborough Inertia Athletic. The idea that maybe the team being more invisible than Bernie Madoff’s soul in the biggest sports market in the region is a bad thing has, after a few years, set in with people other than the fans and staffers without power to change it. I applaud the team for getting started down the right track before they got lapped by every team in the league. FC Dallas and Colorado are still behind us, anyway. We have that.

I still think “designated” flag-wavers is laughable. Amazing how Chicago can have that great playoff atmosphere with tifo and everything. Where the hell is their fire chief, I mean honestly?

04.) The Great Taylor Twellman Injury Epic

I know #20 has the power to make some people swoon and some people want to feed him knuckle sandwiches. His detractors would say that despite all the goals you still get the feeling he doesn’t really (not really) want to be here. That he’s gracing us peons with his presence. His supporters just point to the numbers and the bicycle kick. I’d say both are right. These feelings have colored the discussion of his incredibly mysterious injury that doctors apparently are still at a loss to totally explain. Some of us think he’s jealous of others who held out and got paid after he took his big-at-the-time payday. Some think he’s just really banged up and he’s raring to go. The only thing that will tell, just like the Enya song, is time.

05.) Number Five Is Matt Reis.

Duh.

See you Saturday!