The race for the next round of MLS expansion spots is easily the most contested to date. Twelve cities placed bids back in January. As usual, stadium designs, funding, ownership, star players, supporters groups and local government support are all chased and announced in pursuit of staying ahead of the pack. On Tuesday FC Cincinnati took the spotlight,revealing a beautiful stadium design, but we will ever get to see it?
2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup action resumes today and tomorrow with the fourth round, and I'll forgive you for not knowing that, but I'll never forget. Founded in 1914, the competition has overcome some turbulent times in American soccer, as evidenced by the fact that the tournament’s two most successful sides, Bethlehem Steel FC and Maccabi Los Angeles, no longer really exist.
With the World Cup qualifiers complete for the USMNT, the action in US Soccer turns towards the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. The 104th edition of the tournament enters the fourth round on Tuesday, as the remaining 19 sides (all from MLS) join the existing teams still alive. Here is a look at the five most intriguing matchups drawn together for this round.
Something rare came to light when the 40-man preliminary Gold Cup roster and the 21-woman friendly roster were released for the USMNT and USWNT this past week. No, it wasn’t the inclusion of NYCFC’s Tommy McNamara or the absence of Ali Krieger (although yes, those were surprises). Sydney Leroux Dwyer and Dom Dwyer, unstoppable goal-bangers for Kansas City’s NWSL and MLS teams, both got the nod.
The epic saga that is David Beckham’s Miami MLS franchise is now a decade old, but it finally appears to be clearing some of the final major hurdles. When Beckham joined MLS in 2007, part of his incentive package was that after he retired he could launch a new team with a discounted franchise fee of only $25 million.
I love soccer. I can’t get enough of it. So this is always a bittersweet time of year. Domestic leagues are coming to an end. Cup competitions are finishing up. In fact, many of Europe’s top leagues had been settled for the past few weeks and lacked final-day drama. So in order to get my fix of intense, competitive league football, I turned my attention to Mexico and the Liga MX Liguilla playoffs.
And I fell in love.
"It's a very hard league to play in. It's very physical, there's a lot of running. So there is a lot of physical work and to me, in my mind, too little play."
Andrea Pirlo probably didn't have running wind sprints in mind when he planned on winding down his career in MLS, but that's what he got. Although NYCFC play on one of the smallest fields you'll ever see at the professional level, Pirlo still chases the game more than when he played in Italy. And, of course, he's 38 now, so he's likely feeling the burn a bit more.
After a rough start to the 2017 MLS season for both Giovani dos Santos and the LA Galaxy, the club are now unbeaten in their last four matches following Sunday’s 2-1 away win over Minnesota United — a run that has seen Dos Santos register three goals and an assist.
Bastian Schweinsteiger’s comments regarding MLS the other week were less a criticism of the league than a dash of honesty — the Chicago Fire, World Cup hopefuls though they may be, are not as good as Manchester United or Bayern Munich. Dax McCarty isn’t Paul Pogba, David Accam isn’t Arjen Robben and Nemanja Nikolic isn’t Zlatan Ibrahimovic.