FC Barcelona
Last year, before the season started, I very cleverly predicted that LA would win the West, the Shield and the Cup. I predicted that Houston would win the East. And I came up with a few other good ones that panned out.
Unfortunately I made these predictions on Twitter, and 4000 posts later, I was no longer able to have my moment of glory. Not gonna make the same mistake this year.
Western Conference
Real Salt Lake
Eastern Conference
Houston Dynamo
Supporters' Shield
RSL
MLS Cup
Seattle Sounders
US Open Cup
Chicago Fire
MVP
Fredy Montero
Golden Boot
Chris Wondolowski
Defender of the Year
Geoff Cameron
Rookie of the Year
Luis Silva
Coach of the Year
Martin Rennie
And the most important question... will another forward come out of the blue and rack up double-digit goals? Wondolowski and Dom Oduro have done so in the last two seasons. This year's version will be... Tommy "Disco" Heinemann.
Feel free to bookmark this and throw it in my face 9 months from now.
Cheers, and enjoy the soccer.
Needless to say, Wednesday's CONCACAF Champions League games were exciting.
Perhaps even more so because of the nearly unprecedented attendance. Between the two CCL matches, 71,001 fans showed up. That's an average of 35,500.
By comparison, UEFA's four Champions League games this week averaged 49,776.25. That includes 75,632 fans who packed the Nou Camp in an attendance figure nearly as ridiculous at Barcelona's 7-1 destruction of Bayer Leverkusen.
Take what you will from it, but it's fair to say that the bar for CCL matches hosted by MLS teams has been raised.
You’ll never guess who’s on the cover of the Feb. 6 issue of Time Magazine! It’s Lionel Messi! Coming soon to newsstands near you! (NOTE: This offer not valid in the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico or anywhere you can actually buy a Time Magazine)
At least, you can’t find it if you’re reading this anywhere outside the small, outlying regions known as Europe, Asia or Southeast Asia. That’s because instead of running Bobby Ghosh’s article on Messi on the cover on the United States’ edition of the magazine, the folks at Time are going with an article about the upsides of being an introvert (that’s Myers-Briggs code for being shy) on the cover of the magazine’s US edition.
As somewhat of an introvert myself (I’m typing very lightly on my keyboard right now, as not to offend anyone in the office), I have no problems with an article that (hopefully!) skewers loudmouth dinner guests. And as a soccer fan living in the United States, I’m certainly not stunned Messi won’t get his due on this one, considering I spent the last month reading about the greatness of Tim Tebow, who has the ability to throw a pass a full 15 yards, sometimes right to his intended receiver.
Of course it’s off-putting for soccer fans to see the US left out in the cold here, but think it through. It’s no stunner that the execs at Time wouldn’t bet on a profile of an Argentinian soccer player to reel in the readers, no matter how good some guy named Ray Hudson says he is.
It’s no knock against soccer, folks. But looking at the images of Time’s covers has to remind you just how out of touch the US is with the rest of the world.
