This group could look a lot different in 2010. (Getty Images)

Moving forward once again in our expansion draft coverage. Today we take a look at the Supporter's Shield winning Columbus Crew. More than likely we will see a player picked from this bunch, anytime you go through the regular season and are as good as the Crew were this year you will most certainly see a player picked off in an expansion draft.

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STARTERS
Columbus & Salt Lake square off in the 2nd leg of their first round playoff series. The winner advances to the Semifinals.
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6 teams have already secured their spot in the Round of 16 knock out stage - Chelsea, Porto & Sevilla, Bordeaux, Lyon & Manchester United. Click to continue reading...

So again, we take a look at the Orange Crystal Ball moving from the unidextrous to bidextrous results.
The first weekend, I have to say, was more than a little strange. From the sublime of the Dynamo/Seattle match to the ridiculous of Warzycha sitting Moreno AND Schelotto to the utterly predictable of a Steve Nicol-team being Lucy to the Chicago Fire's Charlie Brown to the completely surreal of the HDClasico draw. Click to continue reading...

Eric Brunner and Columbus try to slow down Yura Movsisyan and RSL tonight. (Getty Images)

Tonight the second leg of the first round playoff matches kickoff in Columbus as the Crew host Real Salt Lake. RSL holds a slight 1-0 lead in the goals department in this two-legged series thanks to the late goal from Robbie Rogers last weekend.

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The playoff version of the SuperClasico got off to a bang with a 2-2 draw. (Getty Images)

Some could say the results we saw in the first week of the playoffs were fairly expected. The SuperClasico ended in a draw that I think most folks expected to get; Real Salt Lake found a way to get a win over the Crew at home; Seattle and Houston battled it out to a scoreless draw; and maybe the only real shocker of the weekend was the Revs beating Chicago 2-1.

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Robbie Findley, MLS's Player of the Week during the last week of the regular season slipped a late goal past the diving Columbus Keeper from a beautiful Yura Movsisyan pass, and delivers the victory to Real Salt Lake in the first leg of the Eastern Conference semis. The score came late in the game, and it became apparent early on that Columbus would have been happy to get out of Rio Tinto with a nil-nil draw, but RSL was just as determined to get a win at home.

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The Columbus Crew begins defense of its MLS Cup title today at Rio Tinto Stadium against Real Salt Lake in Game One of their Eastern Conference series (6pm, Direct Kick).

The Crew will come into the match with a surprising lineup that does not include MLS MVP Guillermo Barros Schelotto or forward Alejandro Moreno.

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The Columbus Crew begins defense of its MLS Cup title today at Rio Tinto Stadium against Real Salt Lake in Game One of their Eastern Conference series (6pm, Direct Kick).

The Crew will come into the match with a surprising lineup that does not include MLS MVP Guillermo Barros Schelotto or forward Alejandro Moreno.

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The Columbus Crew owes The Chicago Fire a favor. Actually, the Crew owes Eduardo Lillingston a favor. Maybe a beer next time Chivas comes to town.

Lillingston chalked up an own goal tonight when the Fire took on Chivas at Toyota Park. Chicago held on to win the affair, and in the process handed the MLS Supporters' Shield to Columbus for a second straight year.

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Jogaram em Campo Grande, pelas eliminatórias da América do Sul, e para um público de 30.000 pessoas, as seleções do Brasil (1º no ranking da FIFA) e a seleção da Venezuela (51º no ranking da FIFA).
Antes desse jogo, as 2 seleções jogaram:
Eliminatórias da Copa: 14 jogos, 13 vitórias do Brasil, 1 empate, 57 gols do Brasil e 3 gols da Venezuela. Click to continue reading...

Jogaram em Puerto Ordaz, na Venezuela, pelas eliminatórias da Copa do Mundo, para um público de 41.680 pessoas, jogaram as seleções da Venezuela (51º no ranking da FIFA) e Paraguai (21º do ranking da FIFA).
Antes desse jogo, as 2 seleções jogaram:
Eliminatórias Copa do Mundo: 10 jogos, 9 vitórias do Paraguai, 0 empates, 1 vitória da Venezuela, 16 gols do Paraguai e 4 gols da Venezuela. Click to continue reading...

On a stormy Saturday night in Columbus, 21,000 fans packed into Crew Stadium hoping to see one of two things: 1) A Massive win extending an unbeaten streak to 24 games, or 2) David Beckham. I'm not going to say who was in the majority, but I will tell you that only one of those groups got what they come for.

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Photo by Getty Images
And those words are: Not the time to tinker.

Let me be clear at the beginning. I'm not a coach, I've never been a coach, and I don't have access to the kinds and amounts of information an MLS coach has at his disposal, nor the skills to interpret it. But, having said that, I just plain didn't understand Bruce Arena's starting lineup yesterday.

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So, no points in New England. It happens. Everyone got all excited when we went ahead, but when you're relying on world class goals (and damn, that was amazing), you're going to come up short.
As for the Revs, I can't see New England going very far in the playoffs, especially if Ralston's badly injured. Click to continue reading...

An absent David Beckham. An invisible Landon Donovan. A Galaxy loss.

The Galaxy went meekly down 2-0 to the Columbus Crew Saturday even though the co-MLS leaders rested the likes of reigning MLS MVP Guillermo Barros Schelotto, former Galaxy striker Alejandro Moreno and Rolling Hills Estates' Robbie Rogers ahead of Tuesday's CONCACAF Champions League game against Costa Rica's Saprissa.

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Regarding what happened yesterday? I'm over it. Done. New day. Time to end suckers.
At least RSL and TFC lost last night. Thank god. The only bad part was having to listen to Glenn Davis be a smarmy tool throughout the Houston game. As for Houston and Kinnear? That's a team slowly dying inside:

A visibly frustrated Dominic Kinnear could be seen on the bench and the Dynamo continued to make poor decisions on the ball, lacked movement and generally played direct.

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I don't think so. Last night they became the first MLS team to beat Deportivo Saprissa on the road in the CONCACAF Champions League. It was a gutsy match where the Crew left 5 regulars at home - Chad Marshall (injury), Eric Brunner (discipline), Alejandro Moreno (rest), Frank Hejduk (rest?), Gina Padula (illness) - and Schelotto was parked on the bench. Click to continue reading...

The best team in Major League Soccer faces the worst in the last MLS match of the weekend as the COlumbus Crew take on the New York Red Bulls.

Given the sad state of the Red Bulls it's almost a sin to remind folks that this is a rematch of last year's MLS Cup, but it is.

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One thing I will say about this new signing for the Columbus Crew is it is about time they made some moves. While they are doing well on the field and I am a big believer in the "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" mentality, I just felt they needed to add some depth for the big run of games they have coming up here.

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Last night a handful more than 19,000 people crammed into Crew Stadium to watch the hometown side extend it's home unbeaten streak to 20 games and it's overall winning streak to five against FC Dallas.

There really isn't much to say about this game, The Crew played like champs (again) and dominated a Dallas team that many people thought was making a late-season playoff run.

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Just the six matches in Major League Soccer this last weekend, with other teams taking advantage of the opportunity to get schooled by Real Madrid in pre-season friendlies. But we don't care about those games here at Football Americana, so let's get down to business.
At Pizza Hut Park, it was that man Jeff Cunningham making the difference once again. Click to continue reading...

So this past week had a load of quality goals. I mean a load that were just great from top to bottom. A couple could really be classed as goal of the year quality too (Landon Donvoan's comes to mind). While I am sorting out the issues with the post I had for the weekend recap, here are the week's best goals to get us started this week.

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We are Massive.

The Columbus Crew have officially shown the world that winning the 2008 MLS Cup wasn't a fluke. The Crew traveled to San Jose to play the Earthquakes in the early half of a day/night doubleheader that also featured CD Guadalajara and FC Barcelona.

After a first half which was at times painful to watch, Columbus coach Robert Warzycha decided it was time to change things up.

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MLSR has just received a report that Venezuelan striker Emilio Renteria is going to Columbus. Perhaps it is the connection with the current Venezuelan at the Crew, Venezuela national teammate Alejandro Moreno. If true, Emilio would join the Crew from Venezuelan side, Caracas FC where he scored 10 goals in 56 appearances (2 goals in 12 appearances this season). Click to continue reading...

This one is for the Nordecke. Columbus striker Alejandro Moreno is playing up top for Venezuela:
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Another stunted week in Major League Soccer, and another week of surprising results and solid if unspectacular footballing goodness Stateside. The focus was very much on the Eastern Conference as DC, Chicago and Columbus were all in action looking to cement their playoff challenge.
Week 16 kicked off at the altitude of Rio Tinto on Friday. Click to continue reading...

Not too many goals to bring up this week but there did end up being a couple quality ones. A couple great headers though that could end up winning goal of the week nod from the fans.

Order of video: Alejandro Moreno, Alecko Eskandarian, Wilman Conde, Jeff Cunningham, Kai Kamera, and Arturo Alvarez.

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With a chance to reshuffle the top of the Eastern Conference table, only Chicago takes all three points. Meanwhile, a new signing makes the difference for Los Angeles while Houston adds three more points to the to of the Western Conference. DC 1 - Columbus 1 Christian Gomez put DC United up in the 33rd minute and that carried into halftime. Click to continue reading...

D.C. United continued their habit of taking the lead only to allow the opposition to hang around and tonight in Columbus it resulted in an undeserved 1-1 draw. Click to continue reading...

When six MLS teams took the field on Tuesday night in U.S. Open Cup play, the group was expected to be able to handle competition from lower level USL teams (and one PDL team). By the end of the night, only D.C. United was able to win in regulation, while four other MLS teams saw their U.

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When six MLS teams took the field on Tuesday night in U.S. Open Cup play, the group was expected to be able to handle competition from lower level USL teams (and one PDL team). By the end of the night, only D.C. United was able to win in regulation, while four other MLS teams saw their U.

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On a day when most eyes in the soccer world are on South Africa and the Confederations Cup, a trade has gone down in Major League Soccer. The Columbus Crew have shipped forward Pat Noonan to the Colorado Rapids in exchange for their natural first-round selection in the 2010 MLS SuperDraft and an undisclosed sum of allocation money, the club announced this afternoon. Click to continue reading...

Saturday night's game at the CAB was just that. Ugly. The Wizards showed little creativity, little effort and little of anything as they fell (and got swept for the season) by the Columbus Crew 2-0. Here is my recap and commentary.

The Game:
Columbus was missing 2 of their best players in Alejandro Moreno and Frankie Hejduk while KC was missing part time started Roger Espinoza.

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The Wizards welcome the defending MLS Cup Champion, Columbus Crew to town tomorrow at Community America Ballpark. Like the Galaxy last week, the Crew come into the game tomorrow on an extended unbeaten run. The Crew is unbeaten in 7 games, but like the Galaxy that is not as good as it actually sounds, as they've only won 2 games out of those 7, the other 5 have been draws. Click to continue reading...

Columbus and KC battle it out this weekend at the CAB. KC is coming from giving up a tie vs. a 10 man Galaxy team while the Crew tied its away game vs. a 10 man Seattle team.

The big story this weekend, as the Crew try to sweep the season series, is if the Crew will be able to overcome the international absences of Alejandro Moreno (Venezuela), Duncan Oughton (New Zealand) and Frankie Hejduk (USNT) for this game at Community America Ballpark.

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