During the inaugural MLS season, I and three friends decided to witness history by attending MLS
Cup '96. At the game, too cold to remove our hands from our drenched pockets, we stomped on the
Foxboro Stadium bleachers to applaud as rain streamed down our backs and wind created waves in the
puddles on the field.
MLS announced yesterday that the 2010 MLS Cup will be played at a neutral venue. League
officials had apparently toyed with the idea of moving the championship match to the higher seed's
home stadium but nixed that possibility with yesterday's announcement. No word as of yet in regards
to where the match will be played.
We have a final. It's not the one any reasonable observer expected, not does it have much of a
glamorous sheen. But this is what playoffs give us; even an adjustment to the structure to give
higher seeds more of an advantage in the first round could have given us this result.
Win your home games, and you have a pretty damn good shot at playing at a neutral site for MLS Cup.
This Sunday night marks the cumulation of the 2010 MLS season with what we hope will be a
cracking final in Toronto: FC Dallas vs. Colorado Rapids. OK, so that doesn't sound like the most
glamorous matchup possible, but I'm hoping for a good game nonetheless.
When the playoffs started, I said to myself, "If the final is New York against LA, I'll buy
tickets".
Cover Photo: Paul Rudderow
Union
The Union, along with its youth development partner YSC, will unveil its academy structure for
youth players aged 8–18 on Tuesday, November 23, at 6:30pm at YSC's brand new state-of-the-art
facility in Wayne. According to the press release on the Union's website, "The Union/YSC Model is
unlike any youth soccer development program in the United States, providing free training and
competition opportunities for elite youth players under a "club-neutral" format.
My predictions for the Western Conference Semifinals:
SJE over COL
LAG over FCD
So I pulled an o-fer. I'd be willing to wager that a lot of people did. I went for the scrappy
underdogs in San Jose, and they got bullied around by the, um, scrappy underdogs of Colorado.
Union
The only thing Union supporter's are thinking about is who will be on the protected list, due to
be submitted to the league at 2pm today. Is this piece on Kyle Nakazawa another message from the
Union about who will be protected?
A brief trade window opens today from 9am until 1pm. The league will release the list of players
available in the Expansion Draft at 5pm.
