Tag: mls

The league schedule won’t be released until January at the earliest, but the lineup for opening weekend of the 2008 season is known. And for a few games at least, heavy jackets, thick gloves, and hot chocolate are recommended. After kicking off its season the first weekend of April for the past few seasons, MLS is moving up its start date.

[VIDEO] The Los Angeles Galaxy’s David Beckham, playing the full 90 minutes despite being obligated to go just 55 minutes in Saturday’s exhibition against Wellington Phoenix, helped set up three goals and scored from the penalty spot in a 4-1 win in front 31,853 fans in New Zealand.

Ridge Mahoney reports on MLS’s expanding frontiers
A more apropos name might be “Becks Does Honolulu” for the Pan-Pacific Championship officially announced by MLS yesterday, but marketing issues aside, this event certainly offers some allure beyond that of David Beckham. The four-team tournament will match teams from MLS (the Galaxy and Houston), J-League (Gamba Osaka) and Australia’s A-League (TBA) in Honolulu Feb. 20 and 23.

The Los Angeles Galaxy with David Beckham drew a crowd of 15,000 to its training session in Wellington, New Zealand ahead of its Saturday exhibition game against the Wellington Phoenix.

The Associated Press noted that the large crowd for a soccer practice is unprecedented in New Zealand, where the sport takes a backseat to rugby.

Ridge Mahoney explains how MLS players are keeping busy.
If the MLS 2007 campaign ended a week and a half ago with Houston winning its second straight title, why are so many players still playing?

According to a source, New York Red Bull has asked, and been refused, permission to talk to Fire head coach Juan Carlos Osorio. But that’s not the end of it, not by a long shot.

MLS teams won’t have the option of adding a second Designated Player next year unless they trade for another team’s slot. The league’s Board of Governors rejected a proposal to add a second DP slot per team next year, perhaps because only four teams used the mechanism in 2007, and also because too much of a thing that might turn out to be good is not good.

Ridge Mahoney reporting from MLS Cup ’07
[Video] Houston maintained the status quo, and so did New England. The Dynamo is still a team that can win the final and the Revs aren’t. Joseph Ngwenya and Dwayne DeRosario scored to erase a 1-0 Revs halftime lead provided by Taylor Twellman‘s third playoff goal and retain the MLS Cup, 2-1, before a crowd of nearly 40,000 at RFK Stadium.

[MLS CUP 2007 PREVIEW] New England and Houston played a spectacular 3-3 tie during the regular season. In their other match, the Revs won, 1-0. How the defenders and goalkeepers will fare in this year’s final is the topic of our third and final analysis leading up to MLS Cup 2007 (Sunday, noon, live on ABC & Telefutura).

D.C. United’s Brazilian striker Luciano Emilio was named the 2007 MLS Honda Most Valuable Player. The 28-year-old was also MLS’s scoring leader with 20 goals, helping D.C. United to the league’s best regular-season record before falling to Chicago in the playoffs. Emilio arrived in MLS this season from CD Olimpia of Honduras.

Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder David Beckham has reportedly signed a three-year $41 million endorsement deal with Giorgio Armani that will have him modeling the fashion designer’s new Emporio SS08 line of underwear. Ads with Beckham in briefs will begin running on billboards and in fashion magazines beginning in January.

[MLS CUP PREVIEW] In the second installment of our stories setting up the MLS championship game between New England and Houston at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., Soccer America’s Ridge Mahoney looks at the midfield matchup.

Big games, like cup finals and most other matches as well, are won and lost in the middle of the field. Yet mano-a-mano skirmishes are just one facet of the overall battle, so the duels of Dynamo Dwayne De Rosario and Rev Shalrie Joseph will be fascinating but not necessarily definitive as to which team wins.

The Kraft Family, investor/operators of the New England Revolution, are providing free round-trip bus transportation for Revs fans to the Sunday’s MLS final in Washington, D.C.

Former Chicago Fire general manager Peter Wilt, who had been spearheading the effort to land an MLS franchise in Milwaukee, has left his post. As chief executive officer of Milwaukee Professional Soccer LLC, Wilt negotiated a partnership with the Wisconsin Youth Soccer Association but couldn’t bring together the necessary financial and political components to facilitate a successful expansion bid.

Negotiations to play Interliga matches at the Oakland Coliseum were unsuccessful, and so additional games have been scheduled for Robertson Stadium in Houston and Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif. Interliga dates for Jan. 3 and Jan. 8 had been left open in the original schedule with the possibility they would be played in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[MLS CUP PREVIEW] In the first installment of our stories setting up the MLS championship game between New England and Houston at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., Soccer America’s Ridge Mahoney looks at the fowards.

Comedian Drew Carey, a member of the ownership group of the Seattle franchise that will field an MLS team in 2009, promised that the team will have a marching band and that he wants to allow fans to buy memberships giving them a vote on club policy, such as the fate of the general manager. “If you don’t like the job he’s doing, if he doesn’t have a winning team, if you don’t like the product, if you don’t think the hot dogs taste good when you go to the stadium, you can just vote him out,” Carey told the Seattle Post Intelligencer .

Today’s the day Chris Armas officially hangs it up. At age 35, sent to the sidelines by a troublesome hip and the wear and tear of a dozen pro seasons, the MLS prototypical holding midfielder played 264 regular season games and 37 more in the playoffs with a zeal and hunger seemingly unaffected by fatigue, weather or circumstance. He’ll walk away reluctantly, happy and sad, as well he should. Nobody ever wore the colors of his club and country more humbly yet as proudly as did Armas. He played in four MLS Cups and helped the Fire, which he joined after two seasons in Los Angeles, win a league title and four U.S. Open

No surprise here: On Friday, the MLS Board of Governors approved a Seattle franchise to start play in 2009 as the league’s 15th franchise. MLS commissioner Don Garber will be in Seattle Tuesday for a formal announcement. The new team will play at Qwest Field, home of the NFL Seattle Seahawks, and might or not be called the Sounders, the nickname used by a popular but ultimately defunct North American Soccer League franchise (1974-83) as well as a current member of United Soccer Leagues.