Daily Sweeper, 10.5: The Pain of Losing, (Some) Awards, and Week 27

If the Ricardo Clark debate weren’t swallowing so much bandwidth, what has already been a diarrhea-mouthed day would have been even runnier. Now that you’re nauseous…
- There’s a lot to love in DJ Walker’s reminiscences of last Wednesday, when he watched his much-beloved FC Dallas come in second-best in the U.S. Open Cup final. [...]

The Clark Suspension

“Clark will serve the nine-game suspension throughout the remainder of the 2007 regular season, MLS Cup playoffs and into the 2008 Regular Season until the nine MLS games are complete.”
It’s official: the Houston Dynamo’s Ricardo Clark picked up the biggest suspension/fine combo I’ve ever seen; I don’t see anything in the release, or elsewhere, on [...]

The Most Evil Team in MLS History: An Informal Poll

Apropos to a stray comment in the playoff post below, I’m taking votes for the most evil team in Major League Soccer (MLS) history.  My candidate was the MLS Cup-winning 2005 Los Angeles Galaxy, the unofficial poster-boys in most campaigns against the current playoff format.  I base that call on the frequency with which that [...]

MLS Playoffs: Lucky #8 and Merit v. Excitement

As Major League Soccer (MLS) heads into the playoffs once again, a pair of fine bloggers (Climbing the Ladder and WV Hooligan) has revived the 12-year tradition of grumblingly dissecting the upsides and errors of the standing playoff format.  And with them, I come today to bury the playoff format, not to praise it….he wrote [...]

Ha ha ha ha ha!!

Given I’m the MLS guy on this blog, you probably know what I’m laughing about.
Not to kick Red Bull fans while they’re suffering, but it’s the fact I half-saw this coming that makes me find Red Bull New York’s loss to lowly Toronto FC so funny (from yesterday’s collective rankings): “[Red Bull] didn’t suffer much [...]

EPL Daily 10.5: Kroenke to start another EPL Cold War?; ten Cate to Stamford?

Henk ten Cate – Ajax boss – looks poised to join Avram Grant at Stamford Bridge in the capacity of assistant coach. Grant has already said he wants to improve the backroom staff – bringing in one big domestic target and a foreign coach who already backs the style Chelsea likes to play. ten Cate [...]