So on Friday Tom woke up and thought it would be fun to play the devil's advocate on the issue of
the LA Sol folding. Really, it's good for the league! And everything's fine! And all you who think
AEG should have given them more time to find a buyer, don't you know, WPS isn't a charity!
At the end of the day, if women's professional soccer is to survive in the long-run, it
has to be because it's sustainable, not thanks to charity from Uncle Phil.
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Much love to my doppelganger SF for the link to FS. Our initials reversed couldn't mean anything,
could it? I didn't finally cave and link to myself, did I? Nah. Anyway, if you've never been here
before you'll see that this blog is pretty different from TOR, so you may be down with things over
here, you may not.
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You wouldn't think there'd be much to say other than it's probably a good sign both sides have been
talking and the deadline to negotiate the new collective bargaining agreement has been extended. On
the other hand, I'd really like to see this get done before February 12th. It shouldn't drag out
much longer than next week, if that long.
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You're still doing it wrong.
Edit: Ok, it did have some World Cup coverage information in there. I also had a link to someone
else complaining about that piece, but it seems to have vanished for the moment.
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Rapids defender Scott Palguta apparently was bored or bothering someone or something, so they've
handed him a netbook and told him to go do some promotion. As if Rapids fans didn't have enough
reasons to start cutting:
I know it's been a long off-season, so just in case I've escaped anyone's memory, I'm
Scott Palguta.
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I figured Saturday's USMNT game would have people telling me that I didn't know what I was talking
about Saturday, but instead I'm called on to defend my association with BigSoccer blogger "tone".
Richard Whittall, who didn't like my praise for Aaron Stollar's hammering of Kartik Krisnaiyer, and
apparently doesn't like BigSoccer, starts by lumping Dan, Bill and Stollar into the same
ideological camp, praises their writing, and then accuses them of sucky rhetoric:
Chances are, if you're a big time blogger and you write about MLS, and you think there
is a lot of room to improve the league, expect a forceful rebuttal from any one of the
above.
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Between Stuart Holden hanging around in England waiting to sign for Bolton, Landon Donovan's loan
to Everton, Ricardo Clark going on loan to Eintract Frankfurt, there's been a disturbance in the
soccer blogosphere. It goes something along the lines of "MLS is losing it's best playerz! Teh CBA
is the reason!
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Krishnaiyer's new gig is just bringing out the best in everyone today:
He was a voice of utter banality and stupidity on nearly every subject he approached in
American soccer. With Kartik, no conspiracy theory was ever left unturned, no mindless rant against
Sunil Gulati ever eschewed.
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I've been a bit facepalm since I read the NASL press release stating they hired "renowned soccer
journalist and blogger" Kartik Krishnaiyer to be their director of communications. My first
reaction was, man, I hope he stops blogging and podcasting, and thankfully, that appears to be the
case.
Personally, I've read very little of his work, but I wasn't all that impressed with what I did
read.
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This post is probably longer than it should be. If you want the cliffnotes, head over here. We're
going in a little more depth on the crazy train today.
So, even though there's not a contract in hand, it looks like the general consensus from people who
know what they're talking about (congratulations on graduating to that category, Sean Michelle, you
dirty hippy you) is that Guillermo Barros Schelotto has re-signed with the Crew for 2010.
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The guy's just delusional:
Increasingly, the go-to guy in all of this is FAKE SIGI who links today to, among other
things, comments from Peter Wilt, an excellent piece by Beau Dure and some intersting stuff on
Pitch invasion.
(And despite the deranged mewlings from North of the Ice Curtain, no, FS isn't me.
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I understand that there's a lot of money involved in the World Cup. I understand that a lot of
people are interested in the games. I recognize that this situation may lead to excess on the part
of some people.
However, what we decidedly do not need is a fake heavy metal band called "The Group of Death"
created by ESPN and their brain damaged ad agency Wieden+Kennedy:
In anticipation of the 2010 World Cup draw this Friday, we've worked with ESPN to put
together a fun little thing for football (soccer) fans.
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I was intrigued by a headline of MLS's official blog, MLS Insider, last evening: MLS Insider
Exclusive: 2010 Generation adidas Players Revealed:
Notice the time on the post, December 18, 2009 7:32 PM. The content of the post was that Akron
sophomore Teal Bunbury and former Rutgers player Dilly Duka had signed Generation adidas contracts
with MLS, and that Akron junior Blair Gavin was expected to sign a GA deal.
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So Chris from over at the Columbus Crew section of The Offside dropped by in the comments yesterday
to tell us that he heard straight from Mark McCullers that Robbie Rogers is under contract:
On the day of the World Cup draw, I was talking to Mark McCullers and asked him,
straight up "Is Robbie out of contract?
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So Ives Galarcep came up off-blog a couple times yesterday. First someone e-mailed to ask me what
my beef was. I responded that I think Ives plays fast and loose with the facts sometimes. He has
good contacts in New York City and with the National Team, and he's built his traffic off of that
and covering European soccer.
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Ugh, it wasn't even close:
Soccer By Ives 33%
Soccer Insider 16%
WNT Blog 14%
I'm not all that surprised - we've always been at war with Asia, after all.
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Is surprisingly gender neutral:
FIFA announced the [World Player of the Year] finalists earlier today.
Three of the five women finalists play in MLS - the others are Kelly Smith (Boston Breakers) and
Cristiane (Chicago Red Stars).
Thanks to Dan Loney for making me go back and reread that post.
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A lot of you have probably already seen the post where "James Chartrand" came out as a woman who
had been writing under a masculine pen name (via Broadsheet, among others):
Taking a man's name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the
income of my true name, with the same work and service.
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I would have expected something this ill-informed from elsewhere:
I find that "big time" men's college soccer lacks all of the things that I love about
the Beautiful Game- technical ability, creativity, intelligence.
. . .
The men's game at this level might as well be played with a laced ball, goals made of wood, and
players wearing actual studded boots.
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I think he's got a good point here. Not exactly groundbreaking, but hey:
Even as MLS continues to grow, and the academy programs slowly but surely being put in
place start to increase their role in developing talent, the college game will still be important
in developing players.
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So says Michelle, but Schelotto won't be a designated player. They're looking at using allocations
to buy down his salary:
The good news for Schelotto fans: A new contract could be structured in a similar
fashion to Schelotto's deals in 2007 and 2008, with the Crew using allocation money and other
resources to "buy down" his salary and temper the hit to the Crew's salary budget.
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I don't think any of the other MLS coaching vacancies have been nearly as juicy a soap opera as
what's going on in the Firelands (via Beau Dure):
It was difficult to take Hamlett serious on that occasion and many others. He tried to
demand respect rather than earn it, and as a result, he had a tough time getting players to fight
for him.
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Is it too late to talk about this? I mean, I know that everyone on the soccer interwebs has been
taking turns beating on it with a baseball bat, but there's got to be something left for me:
And then I read a book that detailed the history of Linux. And upon finishing the book,
I had an epiphany.
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I recently re-upped my subscription to the soccer portion of notabbot.com, and Chris Costello
rewards with a fairly scathing post on Chicago Fire Confidential's coverage of Denis Hamlett's
dismissal from the Chicago Fire head coach job (with a side swipe at Tom Dunmore more good
measure):
Oddly enough, the rap on Hamlett ended up being the same as the rap that ultimately did
in one of his predecessors -- Dave Sarachan.
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Head on over to US Soccer's site to vote for the best US soccer blog of 2009. There's a lot of good
in the nominees, but some head scratching as well. It looks to me as though the actual web design
might be an element of the evaluation process, as almost all the entrants have put some effort into
looking unique (and in a couple cases, doing a very good job).
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Looks like Ollie Irish is no longer blogging at BigSoccer. His name's been removed from the heading
and he hasn't posted since October.
Too bad. On his day he was quite good. I'm not combing through his twitter account to find out what
happened, but I'm guessing he's doing his thing back at "Who ate all the pies.
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Surf on over to Mgoblog, where Brian's sorrow at the University of Michigan's football season is
intertwined with that of Ireland's fall to France.
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Earlier today, me, narcissistically posting in Pitch Invasion's Sweeper, which was awesome enough
to link to me three times, and oh, yeah, had a bit about the depressing match fixing revelations
coming out of Europe:
Anyway, Declan Hill is working on his "told you so" blog entry right now.
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A few weeks back it made the news that Shawn Francis, purveyor of "The Offside Rules" would be
making the jump to MLS to act in an editorial role for their new digital media initiative. Earlier
this week, the first public fruits of that hire were unveiled with the new MLS Insider blog.
I have to admit that I never found The Offside Rules all that interesting.
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So what did I spend today doing? Bringing the rest of you up to snuff. First I had to correct Wilt
on when Columbus Crew Stadium was built and how much it cost in his "Top 20 MLS Stadia" post (it
was completed in 1999 at a reported cost of around $27 million [Ed. Although Wikipedia says $28.5
mil]).
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A nice piece from Whittall today on the digital media transition, with an intelligent critique of
the Clay Shirky article I linked to a while ago:
And this where Shirkly's article bugs me: while he's right in seeing present
circumstances for what they are, he ends the article the way many of these articles tend to, with
the realization that the medium for journalists has to be replaced and "who knows what will replace
it, only time and innovation will tell!
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For not including Jeremiah White in the roster for the Denmark friendly:
This, my friends, is a bush league maneuver.
Now, nobody is suggesting White should be thrust into the World Cup frame suddenly - but to not
even call the guy into camp for a game at his club's home park is an overt slap in the
face.
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