Category: Soccer America Confidential

Not for declaration and certainly not for vindication, here’s a rundown on the status of certain MLS players as they vie for spots in the 2010 World Cup squad of 23.

Monday is the first day David Beckham will train with the Galaxy since leaving on his self-created long-term loan deal to AC Milan, and already he’s playing the victim.

Player absences and summer heat notwithstanding, can anything be gleaned by last weekend’s results, when teams aspiring to join the top-tier clubs and playing at home couldn’t beat said members of the elite?

Nightmare though it may be for MLS coaches, the Concacaf Gold Cup is a rich vein of opportunity for players and fans.

After watching him work and sweat and dart and chase and tackle and fight and pass and score in five Confederation Cup games, I have to say Landon Donovan didn’t surprise me.

Well, this is another fine mess that Bob Bradley’s players have gotten him into.

The midpoint of the 2009 MLS season, conveniently enough, dove-tails with the start of summer, and thus a staggering load of international competitions and friendly matches. The first half of the league season won’t much resemble what follows, but for the past three months, these are the players who have been essential to their teams’ success.

Real Salt Lake operator-investor Dave Checketts isn’t happy that so many MLS games this year are ending in ties, but he, like the rest of us, is powerless to do much about it.

Contrary to popular belief, there’s a very good reason for U.S. coach Bob Bradley not to rely on every MLS player who might be playing well when it comes to assembling a squad for Hexagonal qualifiers. In many cases, they don’t measure up.

Conor Casey had nothing to say on the subject when asked a few weeks ago if he'd heard from U.S. coach Bob Bradley about a recall. "To be honest, I'm not thinking about that," said the bald, burly, bad-ass forward who ended a six-year stint in Germany last summer to sign with MLS. "I'm just […]

Are too many MLS games being decided by bizarre, or outright bad, disciplinary decisions on and off the field?

A few of my cousins played soccer, and while we were growing in Northern California and got together for holidays and other social occasions, I’d be the target of barbs and snide remarks regarding goalkeepers as a breed far inferior to those in the field.

I’m disappointed that MLS has tacked on just one match to the automatic suspension meted out to Red Bulls midfielder Jorge Rojas for deliberately slamming his elbow into Brian Mullan‘s face in a league match last week.

No quite one-third of the way through the season, yet with a busy summer of international competitions and callups on the horizon, these are a few of the impressions taken of what has transpired so far in MLS:

For every player who heads over to Europe from MLS and makes it, a la Carlos Bocanegra or Clint Dempsey, another dozen or so come back, some to great fanfare, some to barely a murmur.

How can a team that has missed the playoffs the past three years and won just one of eight games this season be construed as on the right track, more or less?

So virulent is the friction between competing political parties during the past decade or so that “compromise,” the process once heralded as vital to the democratic process, is practically an epithet these days.

At some point, the MLS coaching career of John Carver careened off-course, and whether anyone might have foreseen it happening is no longer an issue.

I loathe announcers, be they soccer or otherwise, whose top-shelf method of conveying excitement or drama or surprise is to loudly wail the latest and lamest buzz-bellow, as in, “ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE!?”

You’ve got to give MLS commissioner Don Garber some props: not many executives of a niche league can rankle or stand up to uber-organizations like AC Milan and the New York Yankees.

If the caliber of officiating in MLS hasn’t kept pace with a quicker yet physical style of play, at least referees have toughened up their evaluations of fouls or offenses committed by players already cautioned, and applying stricter standards when deciding whether to hand out a straight red.

You can’t blame Coach Bruce Arena, the Galaxy players, and the rest of the organization if they’d rather not talk about David Beckham