Whitecaps have a presser tomorrow to announce a major signing. some talk that it will be Owen Hargreaves, who has supposedly been in town, and is apparently a friend of Whitecaps part-owner Steve Nash. other reports from a Nigerian writer suggesting that it will an unnamed player who will become the 1st African DP in MLS history. so who knows really.

and Man City are in town 7 days from now for a friendly:

Among the players included on Manchester City's provisional travel roster are English internationals midfielders Gareth Barry, Shaun Wright-Phillips and James Milner. Other players include Bosnian striker Edin Dzeko; Italian striker Mario Balotelli; Spanish midfielder David Silva; Dutch midfielder Nigel De Jong; and German defender Jerome Boateng

no Tevez, Adebayor, or Bellamy, ldo.

http://www.tsn.ca/soccer/story/?id=371554

In typical Whitecap fashion, the player will no doubt be Benjani, who will do precisely dick for the next 4 months.

Tomorrow night is USOC quarterfinal night

Main website with previews and lots of USOC stuff: http://thecup.us/

Stream for Chicago Fire starters hosting NYRB reserves: www.chicago-fire.com

close? idk, obviously have no clue about this guy:

The Vancouver Whitecaps have signed Gambian international striker Mustapha Jarju as the club's second designated player. The 24-year-old joins the Major League Soccer team from RAEC Mons in Belgium

Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi called Jarju "a proven goal-scorer at the club level in Europe." During his three years with RAEC Mons, the six-foot, 160-pounder scored 43 goals in 118 appearances.

"I had a lot of options," the Gambian told a news conference Tuesday. "I decided to come to Vancouver .. Vancouver was a team that took time to talk to me about what the team wanted to do. I was really pleased and made my choice to come here. "It's physical play like Belgium. I have scored a lot of goals in the past season. I hope when I start here I can start scoring."

Coach Tom Soehn said Jarju is a provider as well as a scorer. "He's young enough we think we can develop some of his qualities. The things you can't teach is his nose for the goals. The side most people don't know about him is his ability to set up guys as well."

He joins French striker Eric Hassli as the Whitecaps' second designated player. The 2-10-8 Whitecaps have scored 19 goals this season, third worst in the 18-team league. They have scored more than one goal in just one of their last 21 matches.

http://www.tsn.ca/soccer/story/?id=371582

so yeah we need goals, but i'm kind of surprised we now have two DP strikers, as CM seems like a bigger need to me. i mean Atiba Harris was great before he got hurt, not sure when he's coming back. Hassli has gotten better as the season has gone on, and as he figured out how to stay on the pitch. then there's Omar Salgado, who has been ok for a youngster, but hasn't really produced goals either (but that might be more about service than him). then there's also Long Tan who has seemed ok in limited playing time, was a big part of the lone goal @ Colorado last time out. and also Camilo, who is supposed to be a forward linking the striker and midfield, but has mostly been used as a wide left attacking player.

so now we're going to play 4-4-2 again, or what? that means Camilo wide left, and Chiumiento wide right (even though they recently made a big point of moving him into the middle, more into the play, in an attempt to get him the ball and have him more involved in the offense, and link up with Hassli), and marginalize Teibert & Salinas. and then our crappy CM's will probably just [censored] the whole thing up anyway. plus our backline is never healthy, our RB sucks, and we seem weak at GK too.

1st year growing pains i hope...

I don't know much about him either, but I like him a lot more than I would've Benjani.

He's 24, has a history of scoring, and some size.

I guess I'm ready to post a trip report. Obviously the result sucked and I'm still pretty unhappy about.

Pregame the atmosphere was pretty solid. I got in about an hour before kickoff and we could hear the fans in the stadium from the outside.

Somebody, I assume in line to get into the Timbers Army section (I guess people were there from very early in the morning to get the seats in the front) did this outside with chalk:



I've posted before that it's been really hit-or-miss because for a few matches obstructed-view seats were all that were left when individual-game tickets went on sale. This time we got lucky, we just had the cameramen in front of us (that we stood all game helped) and the seats would otherwise have been about the best in the house.



There were a lot of Sounders fans there. Here's a shot of their fan section:



I have to say, they were really loud. Part of it was the acoustics - we were both a lot closer to them than the TA and under the same roof - but they were impressive.

The TA tifo was pretty great:



The atmosphere was unbelievable. It made the season opener seem like a normal match. The way it played out helped.

As for the match itself, ugh. We just can't defend at all. Their first goal was a free kick, so whatever. The other two were just atrocious defending and we got lucky and made some desperate plays to stop a few more good chances as well. Perkins did well otherwise, but I thought he could have come off his line and cut off the through ball on the play that led to the penalty. Getting the lead twice, losing it each time to a goal by the rapist and finally giving up a penalty to lose was about as tough as possible. I still feel like



Rose City 'til I die
Rose City 'til I die
I know I am, I'm sure I am
Rose City 'til I die

Chicago just roasted a reserve NYRB squad 4-0 in the US Open Cup quarterfinals, and NY fans are none too happy about the lineup, effort, or result.

http://twitter.com/#!/soccerbyives

http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...30831622803456
What an embarrassing handling of a U.S. Open Cup quarterfinal berth by the NY Red Bulls, a club w/ no trophies and leadership with no clue

http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...31853728563200
To sum up, RBNY sent 14 players (NO starters or senior coaches) AND had team fly to Chicago the DAY of the GAME. #BushLeague

http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...35115156422656
RBNY were 3 wins from potential trophy + CONCACAF Champions League berth (& road wasn't THAT tough). I get first team is tired, but COME ON

http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...39513261662209
Anyone notice a theme among MLS Open Cup quarterfinalists not named the Red Bulls? If anything, that's a great sign for the Open Cup.

http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...43401637318656
Wow, even MORE MLS people who care about the Open Cup. RT @KyleLRogers: Crowd @Livestrongpark for tonight's game. http://twitpic.com/5paa3p


http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...46959812214784
If this pic from 2nite IN CHICAGO doesnt make folks @RBNY HQ embarrassed they're in the WRONG business. RT @DavidGubala: http://t.co/sb1Yeyi


http://twitter.com/#!/SoccerByIves/s...52690791759873
FC Dallas-RSL showing live on www.fcdallas.com. Funny how a "small budget" club can win bid to host USOC quarter, livestream & play starters

INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!

My life is much improved, and to celebrate that here is a good old fashioned week in review post again for the first time in almost a month.

Also, since there are no midweek games coming up, I'm going to dive into the attendance numbers for this season and see if there's anything interesting going on there.

Results

New York Red Bulls 5 - 0 Toronto FC
Red Bulls just schooled the **** out of TFC this game. It was about as clear an outclassing as I can remember seeing in an MLS game not involving an expansion squad. Joel Lindpere gets man-of-the-match with great runs forward now that they have two holding mids, a nice goal (plus another called back) and two assists on Agudelo's brace, but Luke Rodgers's gorgeous volley is going to be what people talk about. One bright spot for TFC is that Plata may have been the most dangerous player on the pitch. They just need like 9 other field players that are MLS-starter quality.

Sporting Kansas City 1 - 1 Colorado Rapids
SKC continued on their unbeaten streak and Colorado Rapids continued in unimpressive fashion as the reigning MLS Cup Champions. Teal Bunbury almost had his breakthrough goal (please come back in form Teal!) but was denied by the post in the 13th minute. Conor Casey and Graham Zusi traded goals to get us to the 1-1 result. His goal was nothing to write home about, but I'm growing to like this Zusi kid a lot. Also, Sporting's rookie CJ Sapong looks like he has the ability to wreak havoc on defenders and just make things happen.

Vancouver Whitecaps 0 - 1 Columbus Crew
Congratulations to Jeff Cunningham on getting his 133rd MLS goal, tying him with Jaime Moreno for the all-time lead. Everyone who watches MLS knows his name, but he's always been under-appreciated. If he was a foreign DP putting up his goal-scoring totals, he would be considered a star. 7 double-digit goal seasons out of 13; 12, 16, 6, 8, 17, 11 in his last 6. But instead he's kind of a journeyman American pro who bounced around MLS teams and never seemed to truly belong anywhere. He was capped 14 times for the USMNT, scoring once against Denmark in 2009, and was capped once with Jamaica before receiving his US citizenship in 2001. Not sure what his legacy will be long-term, but he'll at least get to be the MLS all-time leading goal scorer for a couple years (Landon's already at 111) after he bangs another one home.

Chivas USA 2 - 0 San Jose Earthquakes
Wondo is not doing a very good job of rebounding from a poor Gold Cup. He seems like he's pressing to try and get back on the scoreboard and it's not doing his team any favors. San Jose only have 2 goals in their last 5 games, making me think maybe they should spend some of that Brandon McDonald allocation money on some attacker to help Wondo out up top.

Sporting Kansas City 1 - 1 Chivas USA
Chivas USA was feeling pretty good, thinking they were going to get 6 points in a week. Kansas City fans were feeling pretty bad, afraid they were about to see the first defeat in the new stadium. And then, in the 93rd minute, Omar Bravo happened.

New York Red Bulls 0 - 1 DC United
Got a little bit ahead of yourselves there, huh New York? A very disappointing result for Red Bulls coming off a 5-0 drubbing of TFC, and a great 3 points for a DC United side that is still in the playoff race. In a little bit of poetic justice De Ro put home the only goal of the match after blowing past Dax McCarty, the player he was traded for.

Houston Dynamo 2 - 0 Toronto FC
Toronto FC completely outmatched by another opponent. Same story, different day. Thankfully their next game isn't til July 20th, so they will have Frings and Koevermans available for their home match against FC Dallas.

Real Salt Lake 2 - 0 FC Dallas
Speaking of FC Dallas, their rapid ascension to the top of the table hit a little snag as Real Salt Lake went out to prove a point that they are still the team to beat in MLS. lolHartman started it. Chris Wingert saved it. And Espindola sealed it.

Also, pretty excited to see Luis Gil get another start, his third straight. This kid's still just 17 and was offered a youth contract at Arsenal last year before he decided to go pro in America instead, so file the name away.

Colorado Rapids 2 - 1 Vancouver Whitecaps
Goals from Conor Casey and Scott Palguta led Colorado to their first win at home April 3rd. No, really, the reigning MLS Cup Champions went 3 months without a home victory. Vancouver tried to make a run at it with a late goal from Camilo, his 6th on the season, but they just don't have the attack yet to come back from a 2 goal deficit.

Los Angeles Galaxy 2 - 1 Chicago Fire
Well, at least Chicago didn't tie this time. And the LA faithful got everything they could ask for with Beckham and Donovan combining for the first goal and then Beckham taking care of the second all on his own on a ridiculous corner kick. On the Chicago side of things, the extremely frightening Cristian Nazarit scored his second goal of the season with Patrick Nyarko (who is balling out of control lately, like, for real) registering the assist.

San Jose Earthquakes 0 - 0 Philadelphia Union
Philly outplayed San Jose but couldn't find the net. That's gonna be a disappointing result for them given their level of play, but a draw 3 time zones over is nothing to be too upset about. The extreme-roster-shuffle continued with Le Toux and Mwanga getting the start, with Torres and McInerney both seeing some time off the bench. Mwanga didn't score, but he took some great shots. I need someone with a government hookup to do a little more research and find out the status of his citizenship application. Make that **** happen!

Portland Timbers 2 - 3 Seattle Sounders
Just a great game to watch: amazing crowd and atmosphere, beautiful weather, coming off the high of the US/Brazil game earlier, and tons of suspense as the result was going back and forth. No idea what Eric Brunner was thinking with that challenge late in the game, but that's the kind of lack of composure that really makes a huge difference over the course of a season. I can only hope we get more games like that over the rest of the season.

Random Thoughts
There were only 3 draws this week across 12 games, which is kind of surprising actually. To date there have been 67 draws in 169 league matches, or about 39.6%. I don't have a bunch of hard numbers on this calculated just yet across leagues, but I'm pretty sure this is quite high.

2010 had 58 ties over 240 games (24.2%)
2009 had 69 ties over 225 games (30.7%)
2008 had 57 ties over 210 games (27.1%)
2007 had 50 ties over 195 games (25.6%)

I'm sure we could come up with a lot of interesting reasons why this is (playoff setup makes any points much better than no points, expansion drafts evening out talent, better coaching) but there are the numbers.

Women's World Cup miracle followed by Portland crowd on national TV? Great day for soccer in America.

So I kind of nerded out thinking about Patrick Nyarko. Clearly the Fire are going nowhere fast and he's probably one of, if not the most valuable trade option out there for teams that are in the playoff hunt but not locked in quite yet. He would make any team better but we need to think about fit too. So let's look at some of those teams:

Columbus Crew: They're rebuilding around youth so probably not interested, but if Rogers really wants out then there may be a match there.
DC United: With Pontius and Najar already on the wings and DeRo just in behind the strikers I'm not sure where he'd fit. DC wouldn't want to part with any of those 3 to bring Nyarko in. I guess he could pair up top with Davies, but that would basically turn them in to the Arsenal of MLS (without the excess talent); lots of passing and no one able to muscle up and get a goal when they really need it.
Houston Dynamo: This is probably the worst possible fit for Nyarko given how Houston likes to play into their big forwards. His speed and ball skills would be neutralized in this squad.
San Jose Earthquakes: I would love to see this. Wondo is basically given free reign to roam all over the field and score goals from wherever he ends up. Putting Nyarko into that environment with his ability to go at the defense and find people making runs could be very exciting.
Sporting Kansas City: This is the money shot right here. Nyarko loves to play on the ground, has loads of pace, could step in immediately to the outside of SKC's 4-3-3. Yeah, Sporting has a glut of forward talent, but that actually works in their advantage here. Would Chicago consider letting Nyarko go if they could get something like rookie CJ Sapong and recent MLS signing, and reiging Big 10 scoring champ, Soony Saad? That's two highly regarded attacking talents, 22 and 18 years old respectively, making probably $100k combined (against the salary cap) for $190k of Nyarko. Do they take that risk and save some money in the process?

Rankings

MLS Elo Ratings
1576.9142 - Los Angeles Galaxy
1566.3307 - Real Salt Lake
1545.9992 - FC Dallas
1542.5093 - Seattle Sounders
1526.2454 - New York Red Bulls
1523.1575 - Columbus Crew
1517.7988 - Colorado Rapids
1506.8725 - Philadelphia Union
1504.0253 - Sporting Kansas City
1496.3570 - San Jose Earthquakes
1485.4600 - Houston Dynamo
1484.8921 - Chicago Fire
1475.1190 - Chivas USA
1464.3016 - Portland Timbers
1459.2355 - DC United
1448.9200 - Vancouver Whitecaps
1445.7274 - New England Revolution
1430.1348 - Toronto FC

MLS Single Table

FU. Nyarko is only 24 himself, so he's not going anywhere on a rebuilding Fire team.

Also:

I understand, but I just don't think they have much else to put out there and I can't see them building organically. They only have 2 players under 22 years old (Nazarit and home grown signing Victor Pineda) and, while there are certainly plenty of players in their mid-20's, Nyarko and Pappa are really the only ones who have proven themselves to be worth a damn.

I just think building around Pappa, who can make plays and score, is easier than Nyarko, who makes plays for other people to finish.

Yea, as a Red Bulls fan I was much more disappointed in the showing than the result. Glad they moved the game back to 6 PM EST since it saved me the embarassment of watching it.

I get that they have a ridiculous schedule this month, and they have to travel to England, bla bla bla. Still a pretty poor way to go about it. Showing up hours before the match with an all reserve team, knowing the other team is gonna have their starters out, cause, you know, this is to get to the semi-finals.

I was already pretty disappointed when I went to the previous match against the USL NY team and the only players I recognized were Ream and Rooney. Now, in an even more important match, they show up with no starters. Should have just withdrew from the competition.

Toubabo hasn't played a game since the end of May, so immediate expectations of stamina should probably be tempered.

Tuesday's practice included the dreaded beep test, which involves shuttle runs in progressively shortened intervals and generally ends in a wasteland of weariness. Toubabo was one of the first to drop out.

"I hope [Wednesday], not the beep test again," he said.

http://www.theprovince.com/sports/To...099/story.html

wtf, seriously? this new DP striker is so out of shape from not playing since May that he bombed the beep test? do these guys not train in the off-season or what? holy hell, so now we have to wait for him to get into shape or something too? of course he'll probably want to play vs Man City on Monday anyway. not a great first impression, iyam.

[rant]I hate soccer in this country. The guy announcing with Harkes was such a casualsportsfan.jpg it hurt me so much. He so badly wanted to fellate Nani's fast feet.

I wasn't even as excited for this game as I am for normal league play, and I hate that 50,000 fans showed up, when we can't get a few thousand for normal home games.

I hate how many idiots in the Boston area are Man U fans who scoff at MLS play and probably call it football while drinking their artisinal beer and "supporting" their team. [/rant]

As for the game itself, I'm proud of how our starting XI played in the first half, holding them to 0-0 before we brought our bench on in the second half. Shalrie Joseph really showed that he belongs at the highest level. I'm really getting excited about AJ Soares being a legitimate centerback for us and also possibly the US national team going forward.

Very on point rant

Yeah United fans are the worst.

I can't believe the announcers kept saying Anderson was playing great and that Mansally was a spark for New England.

Anderson was getting spun around by MLS players, and Mansally was doing everything he could to try and make himself the star, giving away the ball nearly every time in the process.

Jospeh and Feilhaber (surprisingly) looked good, and Reis did what he could but that's about all you could really expect from the Revs. Maybe Benny just needs to play against better teams to feel like he has to try.

I support this rant.

Agree with this completely. Joseph was easily the better CMF than Anderson, and I think that might be the rule rather than the exception. I also wanted to mention that last night was the first time that Feilhaber was even above average, but he was great. I especially appreciated his two-way work rate. That's really the most appealing thing about this team. You have guys like Shalrie, Phelan, Soares and Alston who are the best players and also happen to cover the most grouna and win so many balls during games. It's frustrating to get these newer imports like Dabo, Lekic and Feilhaber and watch them lose the ball and not fight to get it back. At least Benny showed he can play hard last night, but I want to see him do it against MLS action.

outside of like two instances in a 5 minute period, when was this happening? He was passing the revs to death and would usually have two guys on him. He was retaining possesion and also picked up several interceptions in the defense. His passing with carrick opened up the first goal.



this just isn't possible at all. Everything I wrote above is still true

Hey Jared, the Fire's latest signing started out with Sevilla's reserves: http://www.chicago-fire.com/news/201...stian-grazzini

Also, the Fire will be hosting Chivas Guadalajara in September and Portland Saturday.

If by "passing the Revs to death" you mean "passed the ball to the left" then sure. Most of what he did all night was feed Young with simple passes on the wing, who then went at the NE defense, usually carving them to shreds. I'm not saying he was bad in distribution (he was nothing special on defense and way too slow to recover), just that I didn't find him deserving of all the praise he was getting.

So a little bit of an "oops!" from me here. During my attendance research I realized that I was missing a game from the Elo Ratings (Chivas 1 - 1 Vancouver on June 1). Here's how it's changed.

Rankings

Old MLS Elo Ratings
1576.9142 - Los Angeles Galaxy
1566.3307 - Real Salt Lake
1545.9992 - FC Dallas
1542.5093 - Seattle Sounders
1526.2454 - New York Red Bulls
1523.1575 - Columbus Crew
1517.7988 - Colorado Rapids
1506.8725 - Philadelphia Union
1504.0253 - Sporting Kansas City
1496.3570 - San Jose Earthquakes
1485.4600 - Houston Dynamo
1484.8921 - Chicago Fire
1475.1190 - Chivas USA
1464.3016 - Portland Timbers
1459.2355 - DC United
1448.9200 - Vancouver Whitecaps
1445.7274 - New England Revolution
1430.1348 - Toronto FC

New MLS Elo Ratings
1576.9021 - Los Angeles Galaxy
1566.3378 - Real Salt Lake
1545.9969 - FC Dallas
1542.5213 - Seattle Sounders
1526.2470 - New York Red Bulls
1523.1592 - Columbus Crew
1517.7988 - Colorado Rapids
1506.8846 - Philadelphia Union
1504.0249 - Sporting Kansas City
1496.3368 - San Jose Earthquakes
1485.4636 - Houston Dynamo
1484.8893 - Chicago Fire
1473.6083 - Chivas USA
1464.2880 - Portland Timbers
1459.2357 - DC United
1450.4216 - Vancouver Whitecaps
1445.7308 - New England Revolution
1430.1535 - Toronto FC

his function is to pass a ****load and start attacks in the midfield. He's not a classic ten that will give that killer pass in the last third. His function is to do what scholes did.

Almost everything went through him and was started by him. He certainly wasn't getting twisted around by the revs defense as you said. The guy had a 90% passing rate with the majority of his passes and action being from the LCM. 90% certainly looks like passing the revs to death if you ask me

what is your expectation of him?

what would you expect from him in defense at this point? he's been on vacation for the past month-6 weeks. Everyone for united was slow in defense. But, anderson still had 1 interception and 9 recoveries. Not bad work for being that out of shape

In that case, Shalrie wasn't far behind in passing rate despite having much less to work with and was spraying the ball all over the field rather than funneling it to one side.

Again, not saying Anderson was bad, just that he wasn't deserving of being talked about like the best player on ManU.

Anderson's stats from that game:

http://www.mlssoccer.com/sites/all/m...w0Miw0Myw0NA==
.
He was in fact careful with the ball, but he didn't have any touches in the defensive third