What a great week to be an MLS fan.
As with much of what goes on in American soccer, 95% of the sportsnation population is of course entirely oblivious to the combine and subsequent draft, and as far as I'm concerned it's their loss. I waste no pity on the intentionally ignorant.
For the rest of us - and despite the sniggering of the swath of fans Mr.

Damn! Damn, damn. Two times!@% Manchester City are actually doing REALLY well. Excuse us... 6's and 7's doesn't know what came over us. We? Wow, this referring to ourselves in the 3rd person/ Royal We thing is really getting us down. Meanwhile Manchester City, and "pluckin'" Carlos Tevez, have embarrassed Blackburn Rovers 4-1.

MLS Combine Day One:
The blues beat the greens, the whites tied the reds and the biggest winner of the day is the bar staff at the The Westin Beach Resort Fort Lauderdale who'll have to work double shifts this weekend.
The lousy weather conditions were the main story at the MLS Combine yesterday and will be the only story today as the league has canceled Sundays' matches and will try again on Monday.

The United States Soccer Federation held the functional equivalent of a shotgun wedding yesterday, with Sunil Gulati playing the role of the backwoods daddy holding a Remington double barrel 12 gauge.
And they say chivalry is dead.
When the confetti settled and the happy couple were finally headed down the road in the three-tone 87 Ford pickup, it was comfortimg to know that amongst all the hysterical blather of the past few weeks there was at least one thing that the "The Sky is Falling" crowd got right:
Neither USL not NASL will be sanctioned.

Now that Owen Coyle's "sideways move" to Bolton is yesterday's news, and the search for his "young, hungry," sexy "winning manager" has begun, we must move on to more pressing questions. Namely, was the pluck of Plucky Burnley all Coyle's doing? Or perhaps one of his plucky players? Or, in the hackneyed parlance, the result of a team greater than the sum of its parts?

Not too long ago I had a hearty chuckle at Major League Soccer Players Union boss Bob Foose, whose dire warnings about how FIFA would throw the US out of the World Cup if MLS didn't cave in to the players was met with derision far and wide.
As I said at the time, I'm sure Foose is good at his job but the US Soccer community isn't as stupid as he apparently thought and, frankly, knows a steaming pile of crapola when they see it.

Video games are no mirror of the real world, especially football games that allow old, weezy washups like us to win championships and gold boot awards. But real life, like video games, gets boring when accelerated to, in the words of Rick Moranis in Spaceballs, "ludicrous speed."
In this interesting piece about the evolution of football tactics and television broadcast's effect thereupon Jonathan Wilson doesn't make this same video game analogy.

Like every other red-blooded, gun-toting, crescent-wrench-wielding American male too drunk to get up and change the channel, I'm sure you did your patriotic duty and watched yourself a heapin' helpin' of NCAA Football over the New Years weekend.
If you didn't, please don't say say anything, lest fans of American footie call you "parochial" for refusing to enjoy the entirety of sport:
"You know, the reason you don't like football is because you don't understand it.

Oh so much, dear readers, to feed on in 6's and 7's absence. While we were lost in the snowy mountains with nothing to sustain us besides frozen pizza, Straub beer, and... hmm that sounds like most nights at ours, well there was loads to watch on the football box.
We'll skip to the highlights since most of the lowlights include Manchester City unfortunately looking pretty good so far under Il Manch, and Liverpool looking, well pretty Liverpool right now.

From time to time I've looked in on the Eric Frimpong case and the stench that surrounds his imprisonment.
Now comes THIS INVESTIGATIVE PIECE which sheds new light on some of the circumstances which have led to this young man's incarceration.
It's sad. It's shocking. And it's worth your time.

Maybe you've noticed - Lord knows I have - that whenever you write something positive about MLS Commissioner Don Garber (or anything that that doesn't include at least a few derogatory comments about his competence, intelligence or overall honesty) you're pretty much guaranteed to get buried in complaints about how you're just "shilling" for The Man and have debased yourself by becoming a running dog lackey of the corporate machine.

This time of year, there are no shortages of top ten lists, year's best, worst, exceptional, sexiest, forgettable, mundane, maudlin, terse, curt, and on and on and on. So I thought, why not add to it. So I present to you the 10 best moments in Mexican footie for 2009 (and then also the not so good moments later this week).

A funny thing happened on the way to the hotly-anticipated and much-discussed MLS "work stoppage".
For a year or more the mavens of BigSoccer, accompanied by soccer bloggers all across the fruited plain, have been happily chattering away about the prospects, odds and/or likelihood of the MLS Players Union going out "on strike".

If you're like us and traveling the winter-walloped East Coast countryside, taking in the mountains, creepy rednecks and barely in cellphone range let alone near a computer, safe travels to you. If you are not and therefore cursed to watch England's Premier Football League, The English Premier League, on a day on which the English traditionally box up their Christmas presents and store them away for next year; well there should be mildly interesting football to watch.

Here is a little ditty from my youth.
Pipes of Peace Pipes of Peace
Hoping that you and yours have a safe and happy holiday.