Yesterday we learned the rules for this year's expansion draft, where the Philadelphia Union will select 10 players from the 15 current MLS teams to help to begin their process for building their roster. The Wizards are allowed to protect 11 players and 3 of the team's 4 international players will have to be protected. Click to continue reading...

Jimmy Conrad and Josh Wolff will certainly be protected in the upcoming expansion draft. (WVH Photo Correspondent Brian Stevens)

Staying with the two-a-day structure for the expansion draft lists, earlier in the day we looked at the Houston Dynamo now we turn our focus to the Kansas City Wizards.

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Tomorrow night the Wizards will end what's been a lackluster 2009 season when they take on DC United at Community America Ballpark. While this game means nothing for KC, it means everything for DC. DC needs a win and some help to get themselves one of the two remaining playoff spots. They're competing with 5 other teams for those 2 remaining spots. Click to continue reading...

After a season of many disappointments the Wizards close out the season against D.C United Saturday night at the CAB, in a game that means nothing to us but a lot to them.
They are playing for their playoff life, while we keep playing the retread game lining-up players that are in a slump, are old or who have already proven their value to the team.

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It's bad enough we have had a horrible season. It's bad enough that we played basically the same lineup that has given us little to cheer about throughout the season (with Zusi and Zoltan being the exceptions). Saturday we decided to give the Sounders some help by giving away 3 goals on big mistakes.

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Kansas City dropped a 3-2 result to Seattle Sounders FC tonight at CAB after falling behind early and surrendering a late lead. The Wizards had been eliminated from playoff contention earlier in the day by other results but could have put Seattle's playoff future in question with a win. As it turned out, Sounders FC clinched a playoff berth after a great performance from Designated Player and #10 Freddie Ljungberg. Click to continue reading...

Lots of stuff for Wolff again this week, who is having a career year in terms of goals and minutes played.
Josh Wolff's goal was his 11th of the season, a career high in MLS play for Wolff.
Wolff's goal was his 73rd in MLS play in his career, tying him with Edson Buddle for 13th all time. Click to continue reading...

It took a lot longer than I think many people expected it to, but the Wizards are now officially eliminated from the playoff race. The Wizards were eliminated before they even took the field against Seattle after Toronto's win over Salt Lake yesterday. Still it wouldn't have mattered, as the Wizards blew another lead and once again lost at home, this time to Seattle, 3-2 last night. Click to continue reading...

Yes Kansas City played better yesterday than their last game against Colorado; yes they could have won to keep the slim playoff hopes alive. But NO we didn't win; no we didn't finish off a team that played almost 70 minutes a man down and missing one of their best players; no, we aren't that much better with Peter Vermes than we were with Curt Onalfo; and no Peter Vermes should NOT survive the house cleaning that should take place in KC this offseason.

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Once again, Wizards goalkeeper, Kevin Hartman is up for the Save of the Week this week. This week the save is Hartman's first half stop on Omar Cummings, after Cummings had cut inside on Jimmy Conrad and Michael Harrington. Check out the save here, and vote here. Click to continue reading...

Random notes from the Colorado Rapids' third draw in nine days, a 0-0 tie with the Kansas City Wizards on Saturday night at Community America Ballpark:

SIZE MATTERS: The official dimensions of the pitch at Dick's Sporting Goods Park are 120 yards long by 80 yards wide. In contrast, the fields surrounding Dick's are 110 by 70.

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The Wizards have a chance tomorrow to make up more ground on the pack ahead of them and get even closer to the MLS playoffs this year. Tomorrow, the Wizards take on the Colorado Rapids, who are currently 8 points ahead of the Wizards and currently in the playoffs. Colorado comes into the game on the backs of 2 1-1 draws with San Jose, both on late penalty kick goals by the leagues leading scorer, Conor Casey. Click to continue reading...

Harrington at practice with bandage on his head...I talked with Michael about his collision with Jimmy, playing on the left side again and Peter being coach... Click to continue reading...

In a battle of teams sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference the Wizards made the most of a huge Jorge Rojas mistake to score the only goal in a game where the winning team just made one less mistake than the loser.

A Josh Wolff goal that came off a Claudio Lopez breakaway rebound allowed the Wizards to come home with 6 points out of a possible 9 in this 3 game East coast swing.

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Jorge Rojas is wearing the goat horns this week, as a costly and unexplainable turnover lead to the 17th loss of the season for the Red Bulls, and the first under the second Richie Williams era. Getting caught up field on a set piece and having to back track, Rojas twice helped the Wizards establish their attack on an errant header and then failed to catch 37 year old Claudio "El Piojo" Lopez on the break.

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Remember that 'do?
Tonight, the Jimmy Conrad Show will take place from Fox and Hound in Overland Park from 7-8 p.m. CT, broadcast live locally on Sports Radio 810 WHB or online at www.kcwizards.com. Conrad will be joined by old pal Sean Wheelock tonight for an hour of soccer talk. Please call in at 913-3-810-810 to ask a question or voice an opinion. Click to continue reading...

This might sound cheesy, but while watching the Wizards lose again, and worst of all, not score again a Madonna song from the early 1990s started to go off in my head.

On the game.

Not much to say. Pretty boring and we made a mediocre (at best) team look pretty good and we were incapable of scoring.

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Chris Wondolowski's late snap header earned San Jose all three points Saturday night in a game that had been dominated by the goalkeepers until that point. Hartman made five saves to reach 1200 career stops. He is the first goalkeeper in MLS history to reach that mark. Cannon made seven saves for the clean sheet. Click to continue reading...

Five without a win in league play, 10 in all competitions, the Wizards are struggling mightily. They are current 9 points out of a playoff spot with the Wizards having 11 games to play. Tomorrow the Wizards play the last place team in the Western Conference, San Jose in what is basically a must win for both teams if they have hopes of making the playoffs. Click to continue reading...

After a very slow week off (as the lack of posts show) the Wizards are back in action tomorrow against the Chicago Fire at Community America Ballpark. The Wizards stole a 2-2 draw in Chicago earlier this season, and can win the season series against the Fire with a win or a lower scoring draw tomorrow. Click to continue reading...

It was Josh Wolff's 250th appearance in all competitions for an MLS side.
Wolff also made his 114th start for the Wizards in all competitions, breaking a tie with Sean Bowers for sole possession of 14th place on that list.
The red card for Claudio Lopez was the Wizards' 7th of the season in all competitions. Click to continue reading...

The Wizards seemed to play a better game this past Saturday against New England than last week's home loss against Houston but still cannot seem to find the back of the net; luckily neither could New England.

To make a long story short (since I'm traveling for work) the Wizards again seemed to dominate the run of play but with little or no impact when moving forward.

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The Wizards created numerous chances last night, tying a season high with 11 shots on goal, but could not beat Revolution goalkeeper, Matt Reis. The 0-0 result gave the Wizards a point, but with that many shots on goal, you would have hoped that KC could have put one of them away.
It was actually New England that started the game stronger, and almost capitalized. Click to continue reading...

Sorry folks for the late post, it's been a long day here at Gillette--in a great way. Though we only earned a single road point against the Revs, the U.S. came from behind to tie Haiti and win the group with Davy Arnaud scoring his first international goal. Then, Honduras won 4-0 over Grenada to advance to face Canada with Roger Espinoza scoring the 2nd goal and winning the Miller Lite Man of the Match award by media vote. Click to continue reading...

It's been almost a month now since the Wizards won a game (the game against Minnesota technically goes down as a draw), and against opponents not from USL-1 they've managed to score a grand total of 2 goals in that time period. Last night's performance against Houston was just the latest in this current trouble for the Wizards. Click to continue reading...

On this 4th of July weekend Houston comes into KC hoping to improve on their goalless effort from last weekend against one of the worst defenses in the league (LA's), while KC, tries to make it 2 wins in a row in the league after a horrible Superliga performance.

KC will be missing defensive leader and captain Jimmy Conrad, as well as midfielders Davy Arnaud and Roger Espinoza due to Gold Cup call ups, while Kevin Souter will not be available due to injury.

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It took more than it probably should have, but the KC Wizards advanced to the quarterfinals of the US Open Cup after their penalty kick win over the Minnesota Thunder last night. Coach Onalfo made 9 changes to the lineup that started on Sunday against Santos Laguna. The only hold overs were Lance Watson and Roger Espinoza. Click to continue reading...

I was going to write this recap as soon as I got home last night after the game, but I decided to give myself a 12 hour "cool off" period so I wouldn't be too overcritical of the team. That being said I feel about the same and things seem to have just gotten worse since I've been thinking about the horrible uninspired soccer that KC played, not only yesterday, but throughout the SuperLiga.

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It was the 34th minute on a less than exciting game when New England attacker Michael Videira went up for a ball with KC defender Aaron Holhbein. In his effort to head it he swung his elbow back and struck Hohlbein in the face. Referee Jorge Gonzalez pulled out the red card right away and sent Videira to the showers.

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KC travels to New England to play the walking wounded Revolution. A win for NE and they are in to the next round, while a KC win will get them close and leave everything in the group up in the air until next Sunday when they play Santos at the CAB.

After the exhausting game Sunday vs. Atlas in 95+ degree weather where KC lost Hercules Gomez to a heat injury and Roger Espinoza to a Red Card, I am totally in the dark regarding who they are going to play.

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In the 37th minute, Kevin Hartman hit the 35,000 minute mark in all competitions, he finished with 35,053 minutes played.
Of the 15 players that saw the field yesterday, only Abe Thompson had previously played in SuperLiga. Adam Cristman has also seen the field in SuperLiga. They are the only two Wizards to play in the tournament. Click to continue reading...

The KC Wizards and Swope Park Rangers took part in a scrimmage today against PDL side, the Des Moines Menace today at the Swope Park training complex. Unfortunately I didn't find out about the game until after it had already started so I missed the beginning of the game. In the first half though, the Wizards starters (minus Santiago Hirsig who was rested due to a minor injury) played against the Menace. 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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Yesterday on the Major League Soccer Talk Podcast, one of our guests Jamie TYrecker of FOX Sports articulated an opinion which I happen to believe is well founded regarding the lack of player development by the USSF despite having a well funded and staffed National Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

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You have to feel for Bruce Arena. He has taken over the mess that is the LA Galaxy, tried to bring on new blood while mixing in veterans to serve as teacher and it's these veterans that keep putting LA in a hole they have to dig themselves out of. Last Saturday night was no exception, when Greg Berhalter, the experienced LA defender let Claudio Lopez passed him and was forced to commit a foul that denied a goal scoring opportunity and earned him a red card.

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