The international transfer window close a couple days ago. This doesn't mean too much, but it is a milestone in that MLS teams can no longer actively seek in-contract trades with other teams outside MLS. Still, the roster freeze date isn't until March 1st so we may yet still see more moves made, even if it isn't Juan David Duque (Franck Songo'o?

When I started this site back in 2009, I had expected the site to devote a significant amount of ink to the transfer market and the finances involved in buying and selling players. Over time the focus has shifted to marketing, promotions, broadcast and other business issues facing soccer in the United States.

One of the more potential-filled midfielders in the U.S. youth pipeline is coming to MLS.

The Portland Timbers have acquired U.S. Under-20 midfielder Charles Renken through the MLS waiver process, according to a team release, bringing the 18-year-old to the Pacific Northwest from TSG 1899 Hoffenheim.

By Tony Edwards - San Jose, CA (Jan 19, 2012) US Soccer Players -- In Tuesday's edition, Tony looks at the longer MLS season debate, an unexplored benefit of preseason training, Marco Etcheverry's new job, and contrasting styles of MLS management. Can you name at least one non-MLS city which is very excited about MLS pre-season training?

The winter transfer window in Europe is set to close today, and teams are still scrambling to fill vacancies and address needs for the second half of their respective seasons.

While we don't seem likely to have any megastars making winter transfer moves, despite resurgent rumors of Carlos Tevez to AC Milan, there is still some serious talent changing addresses.

Richmond Kicker Press Release:
KICKERS ANNOUNCE PRESEASON SCHEDULE Local Favorites, NCAA Champions and ACC Powerhouse Featured
RICHMOND, VA – (Monday, January 30, 2012) – The Richmond Kickers are pleased to announce the 2012 preseason schedule, featuring games against local favorites Virginia Commonwealth University on Saturday, March 3 and NCAA National Champions University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on Saturday, March 17 at the state-of-the-art sports complex, Ukrop Park.

One of the most hotly debated roster topics this off season has been whether the Seattle Sounders need to upgrade or add tactical depth to the roster at the more attack-oriented central midfield position. The discussion has often gotten bogged down in traditional soccer semantics. Many of us have expressed our desire for a more creative player by suggesting that perhaps the team needs to find a CAM.

The MLS 101 series will be a "living/breathing document" in that I will continue to edit and update these post to keep up to date with the inevitable changes that MLS will make. I encourage you to bookmark the post so you can use them as a reference going forward.

In this edition of MLS 101, it's time to tie up some lose ends about MLS roster rules, along with player movement and acquisition.

This past week has been a whirlwind for Fire fans. We had the MLS SuperDraft hoopla last week with a couple of new player signings sprinkled in (Robayo and Puppo). On the heels of that we had a sponsor announcement and new jersey unveiling. Somewhat lost in the shuffle was the announcement of the changes to the U.

Reports this morning out of Honduras were that two Real Espana players would be on trial with MLS teams. This evening Goal.com's Spanish language MLS subsite reported those two players are Ever Alvarado and Gutierrez Harlinton who will be with the Seattle Sounders. Alvarado, as previously noted, is a young left back who Diez.

So the bottom line is they're not thrilled:

But let us recall the stated policy of BSA – no atheists and no gays allowed. Period. They even succeeded in defending this position at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000.
So then, is it really such a great deal for our rapidly-expanding professional league to ally itself with an organization that openly espouses bigotry and intolerance?

The process that brought him in was a little unexpected, but the end result really wasn't. Today, Sporting KC acquired the rights to former San Jose Earthquakes draft pick, Michael Thomas for a 4th round Supplemental draft pick, the 73rd overall. The fact that Sporting had to give something to San Jose for Thomas is the surprising part.

Today has been an exciting day to be a Portland Timbers fan. First, earlier this morning, we received confirmation that Colombian central defender Hanyer Mosquera has joined the squad. As a big center back with experience he'll be invaluable in helping the Timbers shore up some of those defensive gaffes that were far too prevalent last season.

The Chicago Fire might be adding a new graphic to the front of their jerseys this season.

According to reports out of Chicago, the club is closing in on a jersey sponsor deal with Quaker Oats, something that would end the club's sponsor hiatus after one season. Best Buy had been the team's jersey sponsor from 2008-2010 before ending its commitment prior to last season.

It's going to be a busy week for KC in the last week of the offseason. There's plenty of information that looks like it will be coming out this week. Let's take a look real quick chronologically.
Tomorrow, as I posted earlier today is the Supplemental Draft. KC will possibly add 5 more players that would be coming into preseason this year.

Wednesday 3PM:

For whatever crazy reason I ended up driving to KC. It wasn't always meant to be that way. At first I was going to fly, then I was going to travel with other like minded lunatics, then that all fell through and here I was traveling on my own during the first real snowfall of the winter season.

The recent changes to the Major League Soccer schedule and competition format are hardly the only ones impacting professional soccer teams in North America.

Coinciding with the MLS SuperDraft, U.S. Soccer and CONCACAF announced major changes to the CONCACAF Champions League and U.

The MLS SuperDraft is over and teams are now gearing up for the start of training camps later this month. As typically happens this time of year, some of the best exposure for MLS came in the form of local newspaper articles about draftees. By covering the success of their locals products, these hometown papers expose the league and its teams to new audiences that typically don't receive coverage of soccer in their paper.

MLS teams gather in Kansas City to draft from their selection of college seniors, Generation Adidas players and a few pre-signed internationals. You can watch live on ESPN2/3 or MLSSoccer.com at 9 AM or just follow along here. MLSSoccer.com's final mock draft (their third) has Puget Sound native Kelyn Rowe going as high as third or as low as 14th.

Five years ago the New England Revolution won their first major title: the 2007 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. Since then, the team's participation in the 98-year-old tournament has been less than memorable.

The Revs fell in the semifinals in 2008, lost in the third round in 2009 and failed to qualify for the competition the past two seasons.

Today, US Soccer has announced changes to the US Open Cup that had been rumored for a few months. Plenty of changes have been made to the format and the design of the tournament. As a whole, all the moves that were made I would say were for the better.
First, all 32 professional teams in the United States will be competing in the tournament.

UPDATE: There were 230 orders placed during the pre-order phase. Thanks to everyone who placed an order. We Will still have about 100 left to sell, but they are now $20. Thanks for the support. Details should be finalized soon on the March 14 away-viewing party.

NOTE: As a point of clarification, the pre-order price of $15 is good until Jan.

Goalkeeper Sean JohnsonU.S. Soccer Communications
The 21-year-old Bill Hamid and 22-year-old Sean Johnson are prime examples of young talent hoping to get noticed during the U.S. MNT's January camp. Both have taken on significant roles with their respective MLS teams and also trained abroad during the offseason in Premier League environments.

U.S. Soccer Communications
The 2012 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup begins May 15, and with the 99th edition comes a multitude of changes. For lower-division teams, the most significant is the random selection process for determining home teams from the first round through the quarterfinals.
In previous years, all teams pursued this opportunity through a bidding process.

There was good news coming out of the TFC universe today as Joao Plata left the loan category and signed for Toronto. The deal was described as "multi-year" and no dollar amount was mentioned.
I like Plata, you have to admire the energy and dedication that he brings to the field. I am still convinced that he should be used as a super sub more often.

This Thursday, January 12 will feature the Chicago Fire's 5th MLS SuperDraft with Frank Klopas as the team's technical director. In order to establish how Klopas has stacked up to his competition over this time period, we will take a look at the highlights and lowlights of the draft histories of the other MLS teams.

The MLS SuperDraft is a bit of crapshoot, almost no matter where you are picking. If you happened to catch my article at SB Nation Soccer (link here), I tried to illustrate just how much of a crapshoot the draft really is. The later you get in the draft, predictably, the more of a crapshoot it becomes.

This Thursday, January 12 will feature the Chicago Fire's 5th MLS SuperDraft with Frank Klopas as the team's technical director. In order to establish how Klopas has stacked up to his competition over this time period, we will take a look at the highlights and lowlights of the draft histories of the other MLS teams.

Today the SB Nation MLS blog network conducted a mock version of the 2012 MLS SuperDraft. The advantage to doing this is that team bloggers should know their own teams better than a national writer. The disadvantage is that most of us don't follow the national collegiate scene in ways that a real experts like Maureci, Clark and Eskilson can.

As you no doubt have seen already, the schedule has officially dropped and now we all know where everything stands and how we should go about planning our various soccer vacations. It's quite exciting to get the schedule so early as compared to previous years!

In any case, we'll have a more in depth piece on the Timbers schedule a bit later.

The Philadelphia Union will welcome the Colorado Rapids to Chester, PA to open PPL Park for the 2012 MLS regular season, a great deviation from what many people have been speculating about the season's schedule on Facebook and Twitter.

A source with knowledge of the Union's 2012 regular season schedule tells the Brotherly Game that the Union will host the Rapids on March 18, which will be Philadelphia's 2012 MLS First Kick home game.

It isn't every day that a bright young player like Junior Flores comes around. Major League Soccer knows it and is trying desperately to add him to their 2012 Generation adidas class.

Reports from the Washington Post say that the league has already offered Flores a lucrative GA contract, one likely to be on the high end of those deals signed in this class.

BREAKING NEWS: Is Oscar Pareja about to become the new head coach of the Colorado Rapids?
-He was a player for the Dallas Burn, and is currently the director of the very successful FC Dallas academy.
STARTERS
This is one man dangling a piece of meat over a pack of ravaging wolves.

Every single agent should say that their player, particularly one of Alvaro Fernandez' quality, is interested in playing for Palermo, a team in a better league for more money. That Fernandez' agent did so is not a surprise. Palermo is a mid-table team in Serie A this season already on its third coach.

Various MLS teams carry associations with particular regions for their foreign players. The Chicago Fire rode their ability to scout Eastern Europe (decent football, middling economics) to an extraordinary launch for their franchise. D.C. United uses non-major nations from South America (decent football, poor economics) to become MLS first dynasty.

Featured image: Paul Rudderow

Editor's note: At the end of the 2010 season, we posted a series of season reviews of every Philadelphia Union player. Over the next several weeks PSP continues with a review of the 2011 season.

I saved Migs for my last player review of the season because really, what else is there to say?

With 2012 just a few days away, I thought it might be appropriate to guide everybody on what we can expect as we hit the new year. For those that weren't with us last year, it's quite the spectacle as January and a bit of February are often the most exciting months in the off season due to all the transfer rumors, transfers, SuperDraft, training, and so much more.

With rumors of Cordell Cato reaching a contract agreement and Mrisho Ngassa's club still waiting for confirmation that Tanzanian international will return for another training stint with Seattle Sounders FC it could be said that Hanauer & Co went for the U-20 Trinidad player rather than the East African U-23.

Overall a pretty quiet holiday weekend in the world of American soccer. We'll start in Philly, where the Union have hooked up with a local confectioner to add a new sponsor to the team's list of brands. Goldendberg Candy Company, the maker of Goldenberg's Peanut Chews will have signage and other brand opportunities at PPL Park.

Today Sporting Kansas City announced a portion of their preseason schedule. As expected, the team will be making a return Arizona, but as announced previously will not be competing in the Desert Cup, instead they'll also spend part of preseason in Orlando for the Disney Pro Soccer Classic.
Preseason kicks off on January 19th, a week after the MLS SuperDraft, and 2 days after the Supplemental draft, where the team has a combined seven draft picks, with physicals.