Boca Juniors hero Guillermo Barros Schelotto spent four illustrious seasons in Major League Soccer with the Columbus Crew. Now he’s coming back to MLS — as the new LA Galaxy coach.
Just looking at the USMNT rosters from the past year, it’s clear Gregg Berhalter needs to find a consistent striker. With the retirements of Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan — joint-top goal scorers all time for the U.S. — in the last four years and Jozy Altidore’s inconsistency, the team lacks that out-and-out goal threat. But looking at the recent Josh Sargent stats, the 18-year-old redhead might be the No. 9 of the future.
A month ago Sargent couldn’t even get into a Bundesliga match with Werder Bremen. Now he can’t stop scoring.
Gregg Berhalter has made his first public decisions as U.S. men’s national team coach, picking the 2019 USMNT roster for the January camp. Berhalter, hired on Dec. 2, named 27 players based entirely in MLS for the annual three-week January training camp, which will culminate in friendlies against Panama and Costa Rica.
America took over the Bundesliga for a brief moment during the Schalke-Bayer Leverkusen match on Wednesday in Gelsenkirchen. Weston McKennie, 20, soared above everyone on the pitch to get his head to a corner kick, which was then turned in for a Haji Wright goal, the 20-year-old’s first in the Bundesliga.
While most of Texas was focused on national signing day for college football, another sport made big news in Austin, the largest U.S. city without a top-level professional sports team. The city of Austin and Precourt Sports Ventures announced a landmark $225 million Austin FC stadium deal on Wednesday morning.
Beginning next season, Major League Soccer will introduce a new playoff format that addresses a number of key criticisms of the previous renditions. In 2019, the number of teams that qualify for the MLS Cup playoffs will increase from 12 to 14. With the addition of FC Cincinnati, there will be 24 clubs in MLS next year.
It’s official: Zlatan Ibrahimovic will not be joining AC Milan or some other European power come January — instead, the Swedish striker will focus entirely on the 2019 MLS season with the Los Angeles Galaxy.
“MLZ (Major League Zlatan) Im not done with you yet,” said Ibrahimovic on Twitter, putting to bed some rumors that the striker himself has continuously distanced himself from since the close of the regular season.
FC Cincinnati will make its Major League Soccer debut in 2019. While reasonably successful in the United Soccer League the last three years, MLS will present a far greater challenge for the Orange and Blue. Fortunately for fans in the 66th largest city in the U.S., a number of recent FC Cincinnati signings this week have the club trending in the right direction.
After being officially unveiled as the next manager of the USMNT on Dec. 2, Gregg Berhalter went on a whirlwind media tour where he was asked how he’d fix U.S. Soccer and deliver the 2022 World Cup by recreating the style of play American fans have come to expect when watching Manchester City play from their couch on Saturday mornings.
Berhalter handled himself in a refreshing manner after the fool’s paradise of Jurgen Klinsmann and warbling smugness of Bruce Arena, although that obviously won’t placate exceptionalists who demand he be named Zinedine Zidane.