STORY OF THE DAY
James Montague of the New York Times with an article on one of the surprise teams in all of world soccer right now - Ironi Kiryat Shmona in Israel.
Argentine-American Bryan Gerzicich is a key member of the team.
LANDON DONOVAN V CLINT DEMPSEY
FA Cup Match
-Fri Jan 27
Everton v Fulham - live at 2pm CT on Fox Soccer
TEAM USA - EL EQUIPO DE TODOS
The team is done with the annual January training camp.

DU NORD AT THE CONTROLS
du Nord at the Controls - Jan 24, 2012 - new music mix at Spotify.
STORY OF THE DAY
Reuters with an article on the record profits in the German Bundesliga for 2011.
-Also the highest average attendance in the world at 42,000+ per game.

With the first friendly of 2012 producing a thrilling, though somewhat disappointing 1-0 victory against Venezuela on Saturday, the U.S. men's national team is now in Panama preparing for the first tough road match for this young group.

Jurgen Klinsmann scheduled this Panama match with the expressed purpose of testing inexperienced players in a hostile environment, and the opponent is one who should provide a tougher test than the one provided by Venezuela.

Here is the USA's starting lineup against Venezuela:
Hamid
DeLaGarza Parkhurst Cameron Pearce
Larentowicz Jones (capt.)
Zusi Feilhaber Shea
Bunbury
1-Bill Hamid2-A.

Now that preseason has begun for the New England Revolution, it's time to take stock of what the team has and where it needs to improve. In that vein, I've decided to do a quick "if the season began tomorrow" examination of the optimal starting XI (and game day 18) on the roster right now.

I have taken a few liberties.

Adu had some moments.The U.S. Men's National Team opened up 2012 with some very interesting talking points. Certain call ups, certain omissions, scrimmages and of course the obvious questions that accompany such things. First up would be the scrimmage between the full team and the Under 23's.
The senior squad paid a lesson to the U23 Olympic team with a 4-0 dismantling of their younger brothers.

Thursday marked yet another MLS Super Draft, but it was one with huge significance throughout Revs Nation: the players selected would be the first under new head coach Jay Heaps. Massive amounts of excitement were attributed to the fact that the Revs had their highest pick in almost a decade at #3, and with several holes to fill, this year's Super Draft was of utmost importance.

The USA will hold its annual January training camp for players who are currently in their offseason.
The camp will run Jan 3-26 and training will take place in Phoenix, Carson CA and Panama.
They will finish with 2 games:
-Jan 21 v Venezuela
-Jan 25 at Panama
USA Roster
G:
Bill Hamid - DC United
Sean Johnson - Chicago Fire SC
Nick Rimando - Real Salt Lake
D:
Geoff Cameron - Houston Dynamo
AJ DeLaGarza - LA Galaxy
Omar Gonzalez - LA Galaxy
George John - FC Dallas
Zach Loyd - FC Dallas
Michael Parkhurst - FC Nordsjaelland
Heath Pearce - CD Chivas USA
M:
Kyle Beckerman - Real Salt Lake
Ricardo Clark - Eintracht Frankfurt
Benny Feilhaber - New England Revolution
Jeff Larentowicz - Colorado Rapids
Brek Shea - FC Dallas
Graham Zusi - Sporting Kansas City
F:
Juan Agudelo - New York Red Bulls
Teal Bunbury - Sporting Kansas City
CJ Sapong - Sporting Kansas City
Chris Wondolowski - San Jose Earthquakes
Who surprises you the most?

The New England Revolution are all set to take on Toronto FC in the Great White North this afternoon for the final game of the 2011 season. Neither team will be making postseason appearances this year, leaving it a fight for pride future job security. For the Revs, that should be nothing new, since they've been out of it for weeks now.

Gillette Stadium Before The Gates Opened

New England Revolution and the Columbus Crew met in the Revs last home game of what has been a miserable season. New England comes into this match with a record of 5-15-12 while Columbus is 12-12-8.

While the Revs are playing for pride, a win for Columbus puts them in the playoffs.

Hello and welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Columbus Crew live game thread! With Sporting Kansas City's victory over the New York Red Bulls today, the Crew can clinch a playoff spot with a win tonight. So while the Revs may still be just playing out the season for little more than job security, this match should see Columbus come out swinging as they fight for three precious points.

It was a beautiful night in New England and I took my daughter and her friend to see the New England Revolution play the San Jose Earthquakes. As usual we sat in The Fort, which was a lot smaller and quieter than earlier in the season. Whether that was due to the Revs overzealous policing of The Fort, or because of the Revs poor play this year, I don't know.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. San Jose Earthquakes live game thread! Pride and roster spots are on the line tonight as both teams are out of playoff contention. San Jose are coming off a 1-1 home draw with Sporting KC, while the Revs are looking to wash the taste of a 2-1 home loss to Seattle out of their mouths.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Seattle Sounders live game thread! Everything you need to know going into this match has already been mentioned in the match preview, but I'll take a minute to let you know what the keys are going to be for the Revs in this match.

Seattle is a team that has weapons literally everywhere, and they aren't exactly calling off the dogs in the name of resting players.

After each match the contributors to New England Soccer Today will rate the performances of the New England Revolution players who made an appearance on a 1 to 10 scale (1 horrendous, 5 average, 10 perfection). This week Sean Donahue and Brian O'Connell contributed ratings for the New England Revolution's 3-2 loss to the Chicago Fire on Sunday.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Chicago Fire live game thread, on a Sunday afternoon in September because whomever is in charge of scheduling for MLS should be fired and blackballed from the industry for the rest of his or her born days. You would think that someone over there would have looked at the schedule and said "You know, putting two of the worst teams in MLS up against a full slate of NFL games might be bad for ratings," but apparently that level of reasoning is absent in Garberville.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Portland Timbers live game thread! This week we're doing something different. I'm teaming up with Sean Donahue, Julian Cardillo, Brian O'Connell and the others over at New England Soccer Today to run a joint live thread.

Thus, I will leave the lineups here, and after the jump, you will find the new live blog embedded in this post.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. FC Dallas live game thread! Tonight the Revs will look to defend their home turf against one of the league's top title contenders. They will be trying to put the disappointment of losing a 4-1 lead on Wednesday in Philadelphia behind them and get back to winning ways before an ostensibly friendly home crowd.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Philadelphia Union live game thread! Tonight will be the Revs' first match in 17 days as they play the fixture that was originally postponed due to hurricane conditions two weekends ago.

I won't bother with much in terms of preliminaries since the Revs - Union preview was just put up earlier today, except to say that Monsef Zerka is making his full Revolution debut on the right side of midfield.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. New York Red Bulls live game thread! Tonight the Revs face a stern test against a star-studded Red Bulls lineup that, even without marquee DP Thierry Henry, is positively oozing with talent and quality. New York has had a disappointing season thus far, sitting just nine points above the Revs in the East in 5th place when many picked them to be MLS Cup contenders.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Houston Dynamo live game thread! Tonight features a familiar foe, and the still-raw wounds of the 2006 and 2007 MLS Cup Final losses often open and fester again when these two teams meet. The Revs are coming off a disappointing loss to the Columbus Crew where they lost 3-1 after taking a first-half lead.

Houston Dynamo (7-7-10, 31 pts.) at New England Revolution (4-11-9, 21 pts.) Gillette Stadium - Foxboro, MA - 7:00 pm
BROADCAST: KHOU 11.2 (ENG TV) FOX Sports Houston (ENG TV) KPRC 950 (ENG Radio) La Ranchera 850 (SPN Radio)

REFEREE: Michael Kennedy - MLS Career: 137 games; FC/gm: 28.

US Forward Eddie Johnson joining MLS via allocation

Chivas still has top spot in the order, but passed on Feilhaber and Adu. Seattle is 6th and would likely have to trade up to get him. But he is a forward...

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Kansas City Wizards live game thread! I would like to open with a personal apology for the lack of activity in the last few weeks, including the absence of a "Know Thy Enemy" segment for this match. The truth is that I've been busy with my day job but I'm also struggling with writer's block and sheer laziness.

After each match the contributors to New England Soccer Today will rate the performances of the New England Revolution players who made an appearance on a 1 to 10 scale (1 horrendous, 5 average, 10 perfection). This week Sean Donahue and Brian O'Connell contributed ratings for the Revs 3-0 home loss to the Philadelphia Union.

When PSP runs our live commentary during away matches, we get lots of interesting comments and questions from readers. We take those comments and try to put together a list of questions that get to the heart of what Union fans want to know about the team.

The Question: Was last night's midfield lineup the most effective from both personnel and positioning perspectives?

Live thread, running late. Leave your comments after the jump.

Lineups

Revolution: Reis; Tierney, Coria, Soares, Alston; Feilhaber, Phelan, McCarthy, Nyassi; Mansally, Lekic

Bench: Shuttleworth, Barnes, Loewy, Boggs, Guy, Koger, Schilawski

Union: Mondragon; G.

Player ratings for the United States 2-0 win over Jamaica.

(Scale is 1 to 10, with 1 being horrible and 10 being world class)

(GK) Tim Howard: 6.5
Made a great early save that kept the score line even, if not, who knows what the outcome would have been. After that, was pretty lonely with not much to do.

So much going on this morning... I'm trying to get my thoughts together for my Press-Enterprise column so this kind of a rough draft for that...
I was originally going to focus on the Gold Cup but there's a lot to get to so I think I'll have my expanded Gold Cup thoughts right here since I've gotta get them out somewhere and Twitter's 140-character limit isn't quite enough.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Vancouver Whitecaps home match live game thread!

Since I just released the preview a few hours ago, I'll cut right to the keys of the game. The Revolution have to score, and they should probably score quickly. Vancouver's defense is big and physical but not particularly effective; most of their strength lies in attack, but their offense is erratic.

Much like the British stealing supplies at Fort Oswego (see game preview) the British-led Rapids stole a point from the Revolution in Foxboro on Saturday. An already beat up Colorado side got bad news when Jamie Smith couldn't start, causing the Rapids to set their XI without 5 regular starters and 2 regular backups, which forced them to play 2 more starters out of position.

As if anyone is surprised, the gap between teams is starting to show. Of course, the top three are probably the top three many had slotted that high before the season started - New York, LA, Real Salt Lake.
The first two had impressive shutout routs, over bad teams certainly but in combining for seven goals the two teams showed why there was so much hype over them before the year began.

This ones a head scratcher. Why you ask? Well, Feilhaber has some skill. Unfortunately, he's got some salary baggage as a DP player that several teams couldn't afford. Chivas, first in line for his rights, passed.Then Philly, with former NT assistant coach Piotr Nowak took a pass.As Scooby Doo would say, 'Argh?

Reactions to the almost-win against Seattle, an exploration of Chester's vibrant culinary scene, and Feilhaber-related rantings. It's CyberShotz!

Well, tha Dogg Pound thinks Benny has an attitude problem, and apparently they're not alone. I couldn't imagine Chivas USA turning down Feilhaber, but CUSA and the Union?
What's really damning about the Philadelphia snub is that it comes form Peter Nowak, who spent a good deal of time with the US national team.

Chivas USA did the unthinkable and let Benny Feilhaber slide on by.
Excuse me for a second while I pound my head into the wall.
I just don't understand how this club can continue to get things wrong when it comes to players. I'm not talking about the rank-and-file guys like Jimmy Conrad and Heath Pearce.

Revs to acquire Feilhaber, but wait...

Found a source which suggests the Revs have used their #3 acquisition spot to grab Feilhaber. What I find interesting is they said without much brevity the Houston Dynamo have already made an offer to pick up Feilhaber. What do you say Orange Faithful, is Feilhaber the answer at CAM?

Benny Feilhaber...After a career that spanned Germany, England and AGF Aarhus in Denmark, Feilhaber is returning to the US, to undertake a new beginning with MLS. Having fallen off the radar as of late with the US during friendlies despite some phenomenal outings, Feilhaber signed on the last day for international transfers, April 15th.

As the title suggests, this is me blowing off some steam after reading and hearing stupidities from people across the web. But there are takeaways here that are well founded.

Is the result all that matters?
It's a damn shame when the majority of the media, and dare I say fans, focus on the 1-1 instead of what transpired on the field.

As our Dear Leader - El Brucio - is off to Ciudad Nueva York and Nueva Jersey for the USMNT v Argentina match at New Meadowlands Stadium, Joe the Curmudgeon is here to make sure you have all the fixture info for the weekend.
US Men's National Team:
-Sat Mar 26
USA v Argentina - 7pm ET / 6pm CT
Venue: New Meadowlands Stadium - East Rutherford NJ
ESPN2 - ESPN3.