Go to any article on the MLS site that has anything to do with the Seattle Sounders or the Portland Timbers and you will find back and forth snide comments from Seattle and Timbers fans. Even in the Goal of the Year and Save of the Year articles you had the constant bickering between the two fan bases.

By Kirsten Schlewitz / Senior West Coast Beer and Aston Villa Correspondent
In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you: I'msitting here wearing a "Beat LA" sweatshirt. Sure, it's meant to be ananti-Dodgers sentiment, but it applies to Sunday's match between the LosAngeles Galaxy and the Houston Dynamo.

Culture?

The following is perhaps the most accepted as insurmountable.

Soccer in the Home

The scapegoat is usually of the "soccer isn't popular" variety. Which of course implies that daddy wants to play catch with the kids; not kick the ball. And even if all those daddy's chose to help their kids with soccer, they never played the game themselves, so what can they possibly teach them?

How hard it must be for baseball in America right now. Ongoing sagas with the Dodgers and the Clemens trial and then a most unspeakable tragedy of the fan falling headfirst for a foul ball, it really can't get much worse for baseball. There's sadness at every turn, including an all-star game that is not relevant at all.

So the world is now a place in which LeBron James can own a stake in Liverpool. On Twitter yesterday, the news was greeted first breathlessly and then, by People Who Know Things, with derision. Ives Galarcep pointed out that athletes buy small stakes in teams all the time. Jen Chang declared that this was no different than if David Beckham bought 0.