Sporting KC got their first preseason game under their belts today when they took on the San Jose Earthquakes today down in Arizona. The two teams started the game with what would likely be considered their first team lineup. Both teams got things started quickly in the game. The Quakes grabbed the lead inside the first 5 minutes, as Chris Wondolowski finished off a cross from Marvin Chavez.

AT T Park Doubleheader (http://www.sjearthquakes.com/news/2012/01/quakes-play-dynamo-att-park-march-17) Quakes, Mexican Olympic hopefuls to play doubleheader at AT T Park on March 17 (http://www.sjearthquakes.com/news/2012/01/quakes-play-dynamo-att-park-march-17) Read: Busch...

The Quakes had 3 picks in the 2012 SuperDraft. In their first pick they selected a Generation Adidas forward from UC Santa Barbara, Sam Garza (seen above), with the No. 6 overall pick. The team picked up Jacob Hustedt, midfielder, from the University of Washington with the 25th pick (6th in round 2) and Chris Blais, goalkeeper, from the University of South Florida with the 33rd pick (14th in round 2).

Kermit the Frog didn't give us the entire truth. While it might not be easy being green it seems even a touch more difficult being Forever Orange. Houston might be one of the more unlovable clubs in the league stretching back to 2006 with their origins birthed to the detriment of the city of San Jose and its an original MLS franchise.

Sporting Kansas City continued their busy start to the offseason, making another trade. This time, the team brought in left sided midfielder/back, Bobby Convey from the San Jose Earthquakes. In return, Sporting KC is sending an international roster spot to the Quakes. A bit of a surprising move for KC sending the international spot to San Jose, as KC will now go from 9 international spots to 7, the other spot KC is losing is because it's expiring from the Adam Cristman trade with DC.

Hey look, it's Krazy George! Cracked.com ran an article titled "5 Sports Fans Who Ruined Sports" and coming in at number 4 was Krazy George. What did Krazy George ruin? Apparently the sanity of head coaches of most sporting teams.
According to the article Krazy George invented "The Wave" at a 1981 American League championship game between the New York Yankees and Oakland A's.

The Montreal Impact selected Bobby Burling in the expansion draft yesterday. Head coach Jesse Marsch played with Burling on Chivas USA from 2007 to 2009. Marsch played as a defensive midfielder and Burling played as a defender while on Chivas USA. As such, Marsch was happy to select Burling during the expansion draft.

When the Montreal Impact select 10 players at Noon Pacific a couple may never set foot in Quebec as they will be used in swaps to get protected talents, allocation or draft picks. Considering the Seattle Sounders needs - veteran leadership, fullback, target forward - there are a few players that make a bit of sense.

Whaaaaaaat?! 2 posts in 2 days? What's going on?

Yeah, as soon as I make my triumphant return to blogging, some big news drops 2 hours after I update and post. Oh well. The Quakes released their protected list last night and some interesting names are on the list and off the list. We'll look at the lists after the jump.

A massive crowd of 64,140, the third largest standalone crowd in MLS history, came to pay tribute to the Sounders' retiring goalkeeper Kasey Keller on Saturday and they were treated to a dramatic come-from-behind 2-1 victory for the Sounders over the San Jose Earthquakes.

Seattle overcame a plucky San Jose side and a 24th-minute strike from Chris Wondolowski, getting goals Sammy Ochoa and Fredy Montero in the 82nd minute and 87th minute, respectively.

Seattle bids an MLS regular season adieu to Kasey Keller tonight in front of 60,000 plus at Century Link Field while the Quakes and Chris Wondolowski hope to spoil Keller's regular season swan song tonight. Seattle has locked up a playoff spot in the Western Conference and San Jose has locked up a showing in MLS 2012, since there's no relegation you see.

Dead weekend in the MLS. Really dead.

What did we have to choose from? A Flounders game and a match between two non-contenders, played on what looked an awful lot like the converted American football field of some New England high school, whose mascot appeared to be the Patriots. Pawtucket HS, perhaps?

The New England Revolution hosted the San Jose Earthquakes Saturday night in a make up game from early August. New England was eliminated from the playoffs a few weeks ago, and in a strange circumstance, the Quakes needed Los Angeles to secure a win or at least draw against New York during the week to keep their playoffs hopes alive.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. San Jose Earthquakes live game thread! Pride and roster spots are on the line tonight as both teams are out of playoff contention. San Jose are coming off a 1-1 home draw with Sporting KC, while the Revs are looking to wash the taste of a 2-1 home loss to Seattle out of their mouths.

The New England Revolution are all set to take on the San Jose Earthquakes this Saturday at Gillette Stadium. It will be a battle to see who is more irrelevant in the current MLS conversation; both teams have been officially eliminated from playoff contention and are now playing for naught but pride and job security.

Sporting KC had a chance to really move away from some of the teams in the Eastern Conference, but some poor finishing on the few chances created against the San Jose Earthquakes kept them from taking all 3 points. In a game that was fairly unexciting for much of the game turned wild in the 85th minute as San Jose grabbed the lead only for Teal Bunbury to equalize 30 seconds later to give the teams a share of the points.

Kansas City gets back to action again tomorrow night on the West Coast when they'll take on the Earthquakes in San Jose. While KC has a chance to qualify for the playoffs tomorrow with help, they need to take care of business themselves and win to even have a chance for that to happen. San Jose isn't going to be a push over, they aren't eliminated from the playoffs themselves and will be fighting for their playoff lives, and jobs next year as well.

It's been a while since I've posted and I'm sorry for that. I've started a new school year and it's pretty demanding so most nights I've been studying with little time to sit down and write up a post. Up next for the Quakes is a home game against Sporting KC. Sporting is on top of the Eastern Conference at this point in the season while the Quakes are still fighting for the 10th and last playoff spot.

Yup, last week was a bad week.

The Portland Timbers squandered another lead against the San Jose Earthquakes, suddenly unable to keep possession and put any pressure at all on the Quakes' defense. They followed up the draw with a better quality performance on the weekend that ended in a bizarre and heartbreaking loss to the New York Red Bulls.

One of the things to do when reviewing the release of the USSDA/USSF Academy ratings is figure out how the MLS teams rate compared to each other. The Philadelphia Union are hard to rate as their structure is unique at the Academy level. One of the ratings (Player Development) seems to favor teams on the East as they are more likely to get picked for national team games due to a proximity bias and it also rewards teams that sign players that they don't intend to play.

Hey, hey, hey. Another Major League Soccer club is close to putting shovels in the ground and building a brand new facility to call their own. CenterLineSoccer is reporting that the San Jose Earthquakes' proposed new stadium has gone through the neighborhood scrutiny and could be on their way to getting this facility built.

Sigh. Another game, another lack of attack until its too late, another failure to win. The Rapids spent a good 60 minutes doing essentially nothing in the offensive third, and by then they were down 1-0. They showed some life in the last 30 minutes and were somewhat unlucky not to find two goals, but at the same time they were lucky to get one.

Not to be outdone by other club's season ticket renewals, the San Jose Earthquakes are doing something that I really hope catches on from other MLS clubs. Renew your season tickets today and you get a free NASL throwback kit.

That my friends is bad ass.

I've been hoping for a long time now that several MLS clubs do the old NASL throwback day here soon.

By JOSE M. ROMERO

Winning was what they wanted. Losing was what they absolutely could not do. But a draw was what happened for the Portland Timbers Wednesday night at Jeld-Wen Field, a difficult result to take since Portland let its lead in the game slip away.

It's catch-up time. In both games in hand and playoff positioning. In the shadow of the CONCACAF Champions League matches six MLS clubs will take the pitch tonight in critical games for playoff positioning. One of the matches is a ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com for the rest of the story.

The Dynamo got what they desperately needed on Saturday night against the San Jose Earthquakes...three points.

It wasn't a foregone conclusion until late and after a first half that saw the Dynamo dominate possession and still trail going in to the locker room, the team's playoff hopes were all but flat lined.

By JOSE M. ROMERO

The Houston Dynamo changed their fortunes for the better in the span of a week, capping off seven days that began with a loss to Sporting Kansas City and progressed with a draw at Columbus with a 2-1, come-from-behind win over the San Jose Earthquakes Saturday night at Robertson Stadium.

By JOSE M. ROMERO

The Houston Dynamo changed their fortunes for the better in the span of a week, capping off seven days that began with a loss to Sporting Kansas City and progressed with a draw at Columbus with a 2-1, come-from-behind win over the San Jose Earthquakes Saturday night at Robertson Stadium.

At this point, what more can you really say?

The Houston Dynamo host the San Jose Earthquakes tomorrow night at Robertson Stadium desperately needing points to stay ahead of the trip of teams with games in hand who sit right on their tails in the standings. The Dynamo are holding on to a playoff spot by the slimmest of margins and anything less than the full three points against the Quakes really won't cut it.

Mike Woitalla of Soccer America writes of the record season for Major League Soccer attendance-
Ten Week 26 games averaged 17,646 fans as MLS, with just more than a month left in the regular season, is on pace to break its season attendance record.
* Seattle drew the biggest crowd of the week when 35,940 watched it fall to Real Salt Lake.

At a sold out Buck Shaw Stadium, the Quakes were finally able to end their 13 game winless streak last night against the Chicago Fire. In the third match against Chicago this season the Quakes triumphed where they had previously fallen short. The Fire beat the Quakes on penalty kicks in a US Open Cup game in June at home and in their first MLS meeting 4 days after the USOC match, the teams drew 2-2.

Source: Getty Images

By JOSE M. ROMERO

For three months, the San Jose Earthquakes either lost or drew in 13 consecutive MLS matches.

The cherished three points were not to be had, time after time.

The Quakes managed to secure another point on the road last Saturday against Toronto FC in Toronto. The result marked the 13th game since the Quakes recorded a win in MLS, but the Quakes were lucky to come out of Toronto with the draw they managed. João Plata managed to slip the offside trap in the second, half thanks to a nice through ball by Ryan Johnson, and beat Jon Busch to finish, but the linesman ruled Plata to be offside.

With the Timbers solidly in the playoff race and the results of other matches around the league increasing in importance, we thought we'd keep you all abreast of the MLS's weekend matchups. We had a light load this week due to Hurricane Irene, but there were still plenty of matches held this weekend, some more important than others.

San Jose are in a "win or go home" mentality at this point in the season in regards to the playoffs. As most people know the Quakes are on a 12 game winless streak, a new club record. Toronto FC are facing their own troubles. Head coach Aron Winter has gutted his roster this season in an attempt to get an effective offensive system running.

With the new SBN MLS Power Rankings out you can clearly see that Seattle is on a bit of a run lately. Now a unanimous top tier team the Seattle Sounders are thought of by voters as being a favorite to win a trophy this year. There's only that little issue of the Los Angeles Galaxy, FC Dallas and Saturday's opponent the Columbus Crew sitting in the way.

Well, the Quakes' 11 game winless streak continued after last night's 2-0 loss to the Galaxy. The Quakes have now not won in the last 12 games, since their 4-2 win against DC United on June 24. Los Angeles' newest signing, Robbie Keane, opened the scoring in the 21st minute and Mike Magee, who stymied the Quakes in July while in goal, put the nail in the coffin in the 90th minute.

Not a bad way to start things off for Robbie Keane in Los Angeles.

A new chapter was written into the storied and intense California Clasico rivalry. A first half strike from the latest big-name acquisition into MLS that was set up by the man that started the whole conecpt of big-name stars coming to America.

Not a bad way to start things off for Robbie Keane in Los Angeles.

A new chapter was written into the storied and intense California Clasico rivalry. A first half strike from the latest big-name acquisition into MLS that was set up by the man that started this whole Designated Player thing.

Robbie Keane showed his class and goal scoring abilities Saturday as the La Galaxy beat the San Jose Earthquakes 2-0.

It took Keene only 21 minutes to announce his arrival in MLS when he was sent through by a pass from Beckham. Keane waited out Quakes goalie Jon Busch, fired home a left-footed shot.