You probably didn’t notice, but the MLS Rankings of Power went on a long hiatus. It went off into the woods, swallowed a cocktail of hallucinogenics, found a small passage in a dense thicket and wormed its way into a little clearing in the shrubbery. There, it pondered the value of power, the capacity for channeling such robust faculties and the question of how to then present it to the people in a safe for consumption listicle format.
The Champions League and Europa League have used end-line assistants for a few years now. The Confederations Cup used VAR this summer, and Major League Soccer will start using video review on Saturday. The English Premier League has popularized goal-line technology and this year will have a panel to suspend those who dive or feign injury.
It’s taken a while, but soccer is finally getting its shit together when it comes to officiating the game.
The MLS All-Star Game could have been so much better. Not that it wasn't great. Well, it actually wasn't great, now that we mention it. It was mostly forgettable soccer, various Real Madrid 19-year-olds dinking around old and slow MLS All-Stars, shooting from distance and missing.
But it could have been so much better.
For one, Cristiano Ronaldo should have been there. He wasn't there, because he is so famous he takes personal pre-season publicity tours while his teammates have to share one among themselves. Cristiano's pre-season tour was in southeast Asia.
Back in 2010, MLS signed an eight-year deal with Adidas worth $200 million. It was seen as a watershed moment for the league, signed just years after an eight-year contract with ESPN.
In 2014, the broadcast deal for MLS changed dramatically when ESPN, Fox Sports and Univision signed new agreements totaling around $90 million per-season, five times more than the previous deal.
Last night’s match between Chivas U-20s and MLS Homegrowns was a stage for young players to strut their stuff. This Chivas defender certainly understood that. Watch him lay it all out in style with an incredible scorpion goal line save.
| The scorpion clearance from a Chivas u20 defender v the MLS homegrown team. pic.twitter.com/AK7qGyuTsI
— Footy Scouted (@FootyScouted) August 2, 2017
A Sebastian Giovinco double helped Toronto FC to a 4-0 victory over Eastern Conference rivals New York City FC on Sunday. Giovinco skipped around an attempted tackle from Andrea Pirlo like he wasn’t even there (which is close to the truth) and curled in his first goal from distance.