I had never written a fairytale before.

But the literary device seemed apt for today's column.

Of course, Red Bull New York is a bit of a Cinderella story, too, so come Sunday we'll see who lives happily ever after.

Columbus management gave Sigi the time and perhaps most importantly, didn't interfere in the playing side of things, and are now reaping the reward.

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We all know the usual awards after a big game, right? MVP, Best Goal, blah blah blah. Those are so boring. So, instead, we bring you The Offside's Awards for the Eastern Conference Final: The Ones They Really Deserved. The "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?" Award to: [...] Click to continue reading...

MLS today named Cal State Northridge product and Galaxy defender Sean Franklin as its Rookie of the Year. Franklin is scheduled to talk to reporters later today from the U.S. Men's National Team training camp in Colorado.

How big of an accomplishment is this?

Franklin played all year in the center of a bad Galaxy defense, yet according to Coach Bruce Arena he's not a central defender.

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In light of the recent incidents now widely reported at BMO Field during a match two weeks ago between the Crew and TFC, I have a simple question: Does trouble now follow the Crew around? The incidents are chronicled here. This post is not meant to minimize the Crew's accomplishment. Sigi Schmid has built his [. Click to continue reading...

Crew 4, Revs 0 Schelotto(unassisted) 40, Iro(Schelotto) 45, Garey(Schelotto) 67, Garey(Noonan) 90 This was the Revolution's second 4-0 pasting in one week, having lost to Trinidad's Joe Public in CONCACAF Champions' League play on Tuesday. New England was missing several starters and fielded a makeshift side. Click to continue reading...

With the finish line in sight, the coach of the year award in MLS seems to be headed down towards two candidates. Many coaches have done well this year and there is still a huge portion of the season remaining, so perhaps someone else will distinguish themselves.

For now, though, we've narrowed it down to Sigi Schmid and Frank Yallop. Click to continue reading...

Membership in the Crew Soccer Nation has its privileges. As a season ticket holder I was invited to a Chalk Talk with Sigi, Mark McCullers, and Brian Bliss before the FC Dallas game. Sigi took questions from a group of around 50 fans. There were a few questions about Pat Noonan and some talk about [. Click to continue reading...

The 3rd and final Super Classico of the season is tonight - I will be at the Sweetwater in St Paul watching all the action!


MLS Scoreboard

Week 21
Matches & Scores:
-Thu Aug 14
Chivas USA v Los Angeles - 10pm on ESPN2
Venue: Home Depot Center, Carson CA
Match preview by Andrea Canales at Soccernet. Click to continue reading...

This will sort of go down like the Dallas coaching search from earlier in the year. Only difference will be the owners of the LA Galaxy are probably a bit clueless about who exactly they want to bring in to coach their club, and FC Dallas knew who they wanted from day one (or five [...] Click to continue reading...

Back before the season began, WV Hooligan put out Fernando Clavijo, Sigi Schmid and Juan Carlos Osario as his top 3 for being in the coaching hot seat in the MLS. Sigi Schmid doesn't appear to be close with the Crew, along with head coaching rookie Dennis Hamlett's Chicago Fire, still in contention with New England for the Supporters Shield. Click to continue reading...

This is pretty funny. Andy Iro makes the cut for the starting eleven for the MLS' fattest. Of course, Sigi Schmid is uncontested in the battle to coach the squad.  Click to continue reading...

Top XI
G: Nick Rimando
D: Bobby Burling
D: Michael Parkhurst
D: Facundo Erpen
D: Chris Wingert
M: Colin Clark
M: Emmanuel Ekpe
M: Guillermo Barros Schelotto
F: Chris Rolfe
F: Ante Razov
F: Adam Cristman

Coach: Sigi Schmid and Schellas Hyndman each went to the right player off the bench as Steven Lenhart and Abe Thompson rewarded their respective coaches' faith with late equalizers as Columbus and FC Dallas rescued home points. Click to continue reading...

The Columbus Crew want to improve their team by bringing in a quality player from Norway's first division. So what's the problem? The player is Pat Noonan.

Noonan left the New England Revolution after the team decided not to offer him a respectable contract extension at the end of last season (they offered him less money then he made in 2007). Click to continue reading...

In further confirmation that the MLS Summer Silly Season is firmly upon us, we received the following email below yesterday afternoon and sat on it while we did what we could to confirm at least parts of this story. That confirmation has now come in the form of this article in the Columbus Dispatch. Click to continue reading...

More on the unusual classified ad at the bottom of the post.

But first, a couple of other odds and ends.

Columbus Crew Coach Sigi Schmid, one of the South Bay's favorite soccer sons, talks about the long-distance relationship he has with his wife while he labors in Ohio.

The influence of Cal State Long Beach women's soccer Coach Mauricio Ingrassia, a native of Argentina, on the program is recounted here.

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Germany opens Euro 2008 play against rivals Poland Sunday and after last week's Crew game at Home Depot Center I asked German native Sigi Schmid about the competition in general and Germany's chances specifically.

Long time South Bay resident Schmid, a former coach with UCLA and the Galaxy and a scholar of the game, had this to say:

Q: Who's your pick to win Euro 2008?

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I caught up with former Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid in today's column.

Is a Crew-Galaxy MLS final in Carson possible, perhaps?

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I caught up with former Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid in today's column.

Is a Crew-Galaxy MLS final in Carson possible, perhaps?

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Former Galaxy Coach and South Bay boy Sigi Schmid continued his undefeated streak at the helm of the Columbus Crew today, drawing 0-0 against fast-improving Toronto FC

The league-leading Crew are now undefeated in six games, while Toronto's five-game unbeaten stretch establishes a new club record.

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Former Galaxy Coach and South Bay boy Sigi Schmid continued his undefeated streak at the helm of the Columbus Crew today, drawing 0-0 against fast-improving Toronto FC

The league-leading Crew are now undefeated in six games, while Toronto's five-game unbeaten stretch establishes a new club record.

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David Beckham scored a brace and Landon Donovan nabbed an assist to pace the Galaxy to a 2-2 road tie with Real Salt Lake Saturday (who was that prescient columnist who talked about the Becks and Donovan Road Show earlier this week?).

Game details here.

Chivas USA (1-3-2), meanwhile, snapped a three-game losing streak by grinding out a scoreless draw Saturday at Houston, remaining tied with the Galaxy's opponents on the evening for fourth in the Western Conference.

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Virtually no local reporters bothered to show up for Thursday's presser advancing Saturday's Chivas USA-Galaxy derby, so we leave it to this scribe to do the job for us.

Meanwhile, the legacy of David Beckham's visit to Hawaii continues with this pathetic little tale.

On a happier note, former Galaxy coach and longtime South bay resident Sigi Schmid, currently in exile in Ohio, is nearing a milestone.

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(* This project really needs a name - suggestions are 105% welcome. A five-minute brainstorm yielded "Project Crewpid," but I think something better is possible.) I scanned this great sketch of Alejandro Moreno (well...I liked it) and was prepared to post that over a report on the Columbus Crew's opening day win over Toronto FC. Click to continue reading...

WVHoolign sticks his neck out a bit with a post in today's blog. He lists the 3 coaches that he feels are in the hot seat from day one of the season. Can you guess who they are?

1. Fernando Clavijo - Colorado Rapids
2. Sigi Schmid - Columbus Crew
3. Juan Carlos Osorio - New York Red Bulls

I can't say I disagree.

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The Crew have talked a lot about adding a threat up top this off-season, but so far, nothing has appeared. To prove this theory of need, look no further then their 1-0 defeat by the Premier Development League's Ventura County Fusion. For those who do not know, the PDL is the fourth-level in American soccer. Click to continue reading...

Light and late blogging today.

Briefly: Former Creighton goalkeeper Matt Allen, picked by the Galaxy in the third round of the MLS draft, has become the latest young American to spurn the generally low salaries on offer from the league in favor of trying his luck in Europe.

Former Galaxy Coach and longtime South Bay resident Sigi Schmid has acknowledged he is on the hotseat in Columbus after two lackluster seasons with the Crew.

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Soccer America's Ridge Mahoney turned his pre-season maneuver series to the Columbus Crew this morning. While the piece focused on Guillermo Barros Schelotto - who seems both a wily one and happy to be in Columbus - some of what happened with the Argentine legend impacts the Crew's surprisingly tricky pursuit of Celtic FC's [. Click to continue reading...

With the calendar turning from January to February tomorrow - which, if you adopt a really broad definition of time, puts the kickoff to the 2008 Major League Soccer (MLS) season just one month away - now seems the time to organize myself for what's ahead. And this all needs to fit within the [...] Click to continue reading...

OK, I think I've settled on my two teams for 2008 as well as a proper theme to unite them...beyond the fact they both hail from places that start with the letter "C". The teams will be the Columbus Crew and the Colorado Rapids. While this will mostly involve watching them at every chance I [...] Click to continue reading...

Interesting chat with Columbus Crew coach Sigi Schmid. While I am frequently critical of MLS, there is nothing like the Crew fan base. Crew Stadium will someday be remembered as the Plymouth Rock of a real soccer culture in this country. Walking to a game, you watch the fans tailgate and juggle in loose circles all around the stadium. Click to continue reading...

Columbus Crew Record (W-L-T): 9-11-10; 39 GF; 44 GA Source Material: Schedule/match reports; roster Overview Streaks are part of the game. They happen for a lot of reasons - a missing player, bad vibes begetting more bad vibes, etc. And it's worth suggesting upfront that "bad vibes" seem to have a special attachment to the Columbus Crew, [. Click to continue reading...

MLS Cup is the culmination of a long season.

Some rambling thoughts come to mind:

1. The winner of MLS Cup is very rarely the best team in the league.

It is a Cup; not a league championship.

An old coaching friend of mine said to me long ago that during a season the cream rises to the top; in a cup competition it is like Fantasy Island - everyone's dream can come true.

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First of all, Happy Halloween. From what my wife tells me, I'm taking the kids trick-or-treating as a nun, so, yeah, I kinda have to get drunk. Dang it. Oh, and I think I've got to get over shoving every subject under discussion into the title; that's what tags are for, right? This [...] Click to continue reading...

- Tomorrow's friendly against Switzerland sucks up ever more copy and ether as we get closer to it. Among the highlights: Jeff Carlisle's preview for ESPN, because it contains good stuff on the Swiss...of whom I'm more or less ignorant; USSoccerplayers.com answers the inevitable "Who's that now?" about four new faces on the U.S. [...] Click to continue reading...

By way of continuing my tradition of burying the lead, I think I'll lead with something outside the title... - The Columbus Dispatch, in the course of dissecting the corpse of the Columbus Crew's season, gets some inside dish that suggests Sigi Schmid and his belly will stick around for another year. So, Crew fans [...] Click to continue reading...