With the impending addition of franchises in Philly, Vancouver and Portland, I thought it would be interesting to see how much of a "sophomore slump" expansion franchises experienced in regards to attendance.
Here are the numbers for the recent expansion teams, as well as Houston who moved from San Jose in 2006. Click to continue reading...

To follow up last week's post about the teams who had been seen by the largest percentage of fans, I ran the numbers to determine which teams had been seen by the smallest percentage of fans.
There have been 35 teams that were seen by less than 15% of the fans attending games that season. The only year no team fell below this threshold was 2002. Click to continue reading...

One of the folks who commented on the Expansion's Effect on MLS Attendance post pointed out that the Sounders have been seen by over 20% of the people attending a game this year. Another person thought that David Beckham's Flying Circus had probably beaten that mark. (This is in fact true.)
However it turns out that neither of these sides hold the record for the largest percentage of tickets sold to see a given team in a season. Click to continue reading...

There's an assumption that expansion teams dramatically help league-wide attendance in their first year. While it's true that these team usually draw above the league average at home, their overall impact is actually a lot less than I expected. The reason is that these teams don't draw especially well on the road. Click to continue reading...

Here is the Major League Soccer single table at the all star break. Â It isn't uncommon to see Houston on the top along with FC Dallas and San Jose near the bottom.

This table doesn't take into effect any of the games that will be taking place today. Â Ten teams will be seeing action later today while there is only one game tomorrow.

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Kenny Cooper is leaving Major League Soccer to join the former home of Kansas City Wizards striker Josh Wolff. Cooper will join 1860 Munich for reportedly somewhere a little over $1 million.

What is FC Dallas going to do without Cooper? Without Cooper on the team Jeff Cunningham is the leading scorer with 4 goals on the season.

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Several MLS teams took place in the 3rd round of the US Open Cup today. A few of those teams will play again in the 4th round several will not.

Defending MLS Champions Columbus Crew went to OT and then to PKs against the always dangerous Rochester Rhinos. The Rhinos came out on top in PKs at 5-3 to move on.

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I used to try to keep the MLS single table up to date here, but quit doing that after last year. I was too often several games behind and sometime would forget to update it for a whole week. It was not very reliable so I quit doing it. Today I started to miss the single table so I put together a very simple one.

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The official MLS website has a nice little pub guide that tries to list the pubs that are very soccer friendly. We all know it can be tough to find a bar that you can watch a soccer game at with sound. Usually you get some weird looks if you ask for Fox Soccer Channel. So this is a great idea to have a pub guide.

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Fan voting is under way for this years MLS All Star Game. Just like with other all star games sometimes the fans of one team can dominate the voting. Luckily for everyone that is not on the Seattle Sounders FC roster the fans vote only count 25% of the final tally to determine the starting 11.

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The Red Bull Reader has an interesting contest to give away tickets to this weekend's game when the Chicago Fire come to town. They have apparently gotten into Facebook and are asking that you change your profile image to the Red Bull crest. Then some user that has has the Red Bull crest as their profile image will randomly be picked and given tickets.

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These guys are on fire right now. Sorry if you think I'm excluding someone more deserving.

Josh Wolff

This 32 year old striker for the Kansas City Wizards struck Real Salt Lake for 2 goals today. This has Wolff right up near the top of the season scoring leaders.

Zach Thornton

Thornton started out as a backup keeper for Chivas USA.

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The MLS All Star voting is underway. This year Everton FC from England's top league is coming over to get beat up on by our MLS All Stars! The MLS All Stars have historically done very well in these all star games vs European teams. This time they will likely have to face former MLS goalkeeper Tim Howard.

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Ive been informed Ive ruffled some feathers surrounding the club I love...I also understand that Class VI members are often left scratching their head wondering, what is up with crotchety Bonji? Why is he up in Seattles jock and not... Click to continue reading...

Im not trying to sound like a total Homer in this post, but Rapids fans, Seattle is joining MLS and theyre coming hard. Youve undoubtedly read about their 20K+ season tickets, hosting MLS Cup (something the Rapids have yet to... Click to continue reading...

Even though Major League Soccer draws talented players from all over the CONCACAF region, there are still plenty of players who end up playing elsewhere. This is a list of players I'd like to see plying their trade here in the good ol' USA.
If I'd published this list a couple of days ago like I'd originally planned, new San Jose Earthquake Bobby Convey would have been at the top of the list. Click to continue reading...

Yesterday the 2009 Major League Soccer regular season schedule was announced. We already knew the first couple weeks of the schedule, but here is week #1 of the upcoming season.

Thursday March 19
New York Red Bulls Seattle Sounders FC 8:00 p.m.
Saturday March 21
Columbus Crew Houston Dynamo 7:00 p.

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Yesterday the 2009 Major League Soccer regular season schedule was announced. We already knew the first couple weeks of the schedule, but here is week #1 of the upcoming season.

Thursday March 19
New York Red Bulls Seattle Sounders FC 8:00 p.m.
Saturday March 21
Columbus Crew Houston Dynamo 7:00 p.

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Every year there are a couple of players who bolt from Major League Soccer to places across the Atlantic with crosses on their flags. Cold places like Norway and Denmark. So far this year the league lost Michael Parkhurst to a Danish club and Hunter Freeman to the Norwegians. We've also seen players like Marcus Tracy and Mike Grella skip MLS altogether to sign with lower-level European teams straight out of college. Click to continue reading...

The new team on the block could be in trouble with the league well before their first game is ever played.  Recently Sigi Schmid announced he would not return to Columbus after winning the MLS Cup with them this year.  Rumors flew that Schmid was going to take the job at Seattle Sounders FC for their first season in the league.

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If you were planning on getting season tickets for Toronto FC you better have picked those up already - other wise you are out of luck.

TFC play at the 20,000 capacity BMO Field.  They restrict the number of season tickets sold to 16,000, all of which have already been purchased for the 2009 season.

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Jack Bell at the New York Times recently had an excellent Q & A session with Don Garber, Commissioner of Major League Soccer. During the interview Garber basically told the euro-poser community that a couple of things you hear the "traditional" fans complain about will never happen.
On the subject of switching to a European schedule (which would necessitate games in the winter - good luck with that in Toronto) he said:

Basically that decision, if we were to schedule that way, we'd have to fold the league because we couldn't afford to do it.

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I thought a list of the most recent foreign stars that are coming to MLS might be fun.  The season is almost over and we've got a long winter to wonder what next year will bring.  Lets start early and see what mls-rumors.net has for us!

Allessandro Del Piero

He just turned 34, this guy is a legend and supposedly going to play for New York Red Bulls.

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I was just reading The U.S. soccer fan's Bill of Rights at sportsillustrated.com and one of them gave me an idea. Here is number 6 from their list:

6. The Right to First-Class Sports-Fan Citizenship. Every soccer fan in the United States has experienced this: You walk into a bar hoping to watch a match, but the bartenders have all five TVs tuned to a midseason baseball game.

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What Major League Soccer team do you think would have the most season ticket sales. If you based your guess on success on the field you might guess that Houston, New England or DC United might have the biggest season ticket sales. You'd be terribly wrong. The LA Galaxy have the 2nd largest number which is a far distance from the top team.

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I noticed that some teams don't show up on the TV schedule many times so I decided to count them up. Below is a table of how many times each team will be seen in my house (all the games on FSC/ESPN/ABC). I'm not surprised to the the Galaxy up there, but I am a little bit surprised to see the Columbus Crew one step above defending champions Houston Dynamo.

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I only put the ESPN and Fox Soccer Channel games on this list because that is what I'll get to see in English. All times are Central time zone. Get the full schedule here.

Saturday, Mar 29
Houston Dynamo at New England Revolution, 6:30, FSC
Los Angeles Galaxy at Colorado Rapids, 8:30, FSC

Thursday, Apr 03
New England Revolution at Chicago Fire, 7:00, ESPN2
San Jose at Los Angeles Galaxy, 9:30, ESPN2

Saturday, Apr 05
Columbus Crew at New York Red Bulls, 6:30, FSC/FSE

Thursday, Apr 17
Columbus Crew at D.

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I guess MLS is going to be changing its name due to the realtors use of the MLS acronym. Read the full story here.

They actually had me going for a second, but then I got to the 2nd sentence and it clicked. Should have noticed the category that post was put into right away.

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I don't know how I came across this weird article, but it is interesting at least. I don't understand exactly the point of it all, but oh well.  I suppose a lot of time there is not point to anything on this site either.

http://85896.blogspot.com/2007/11/major-league-soccer-then-now.html

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The finalists for the 2007 player awards have been announced. Here they are along with my choices for the winners.

Panasonic Goalkeeper of the Year Finalists
Brad Guzan - Chivas USA
Pat Onstad - Houston Dynamo
Matt Reis - New England Revolution

I don't think many people give Matt Reis much of a chance of winning this one.

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I read this evening on the Sports Card Forum that Upper Deck is going to be producing a 100 card set representing the 2007 MLS season. Sounds cool but why only 100 cards in the set. Assuming each and every team had only 11 players that ever played, 13 teams in the leage, works out to be 143 starters when each team plays a game.

So how does the challenge work?

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Before the weekend we get some not so exciting matchups.

Wednesday red hot DC United host 2nd to the bottom Real Salt Lake. Weird things can happen, but not in this game, DC should win eassily.

Thursday nite ESPN2 brings us another Galaxy game, another SuperClasico. Chivas are pretty hot right now and the Galaxy are in dead last place.

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Juan Pablo Angel hasn't even had time to stop and think about why he chose to come play in Major League Soccer. He hasn't looked back and is very happy with his decision to come to play in the United States.

Angel scored the first, and game winning, goal versus Celtic in the MLS All Star Game last nite which the MLS All Stars went on to win 2-0.

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Two more lower league teams dropped two more MLS teams out of the US Open Cup. The Seattle Sounders beat Chivas USA 3-1 to advance to the quarterfinals and will eventually face the Colorado Rapids. The Carolina RailHawks beat Chicago Fire 1-0 and will go on to face the Richmond Kickers in the quarterfinals.

Major League Soccer teams have not fared too well in this years US Open Cup.

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Toronto will host the 2008 MLS All Star game at the brand new BMO Field. For a fifth year the format on the MLS All Star game will be the MLS All Stars versus a high power international team. Coming up soon the MLS All Stars will take on Celtic. In the past years the MLS All Stars played against Chelsea, Fulham and CD Guadelajara. The MLS All Stars have won each of these games so far.

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