Take Me Out to the Ballgame – The Prequel

Moving forward, this season will see a balanced scheduled, i.e.; each team will play each other twice, home and away with the addition of the 16th club, the Philadelphia Union. With the extra club, there will be 240 matches this season.

We should expect San Jose and Kansas City to bring up the rear in average attendance, given that each of their home fields seat less than 11,000. The question is whether FC Dallas, Colorado and New England improve their miserable 2009 gate numbers. And with RBNY moving into their new digs, it would be a major shock, and a big blow to Red Bull, if we didn’t see a major boost in their numbers.

Wondering how the Union are throwing around allocation money? If the rules haven’t changed, expansion clubs get an extra $1,000,000 to use by May 15(see the 10th paragraph).

Like it or not, it appears that there will be a 2010 version of the North American SuperLiga. A nice little money grab by Soccer United Marketing(SUM) and the FMF. And you know what, that’s fine with me. Any international exposure MLS clubs get is important, even if it’s Mexican ‘B’ teams in preseason. This year’s MLS clubs are Houston, Chicago(finalist last year), Chivas USA and New England(2008 winner).

MLS In CONCACAF Champions League

Another poor showing by MLS in the CCL. Houston was the biggest disappointment. Needing a victory in its final group play match, they travelled to Metapan(SLV), which had been winless with a -17 goal differential only to lose and be eliminated. DC United put up a good showing on the road at Toluca(MEX), earning a draw, albeit against a ‘B’ team, but were also eliminated. They just couldn’t recover from their poor start. Columbus barely got into the knockout phase as Saprissa(CRC) lost at home to Cruz Azul(MEX) while the Crew were tied by Puerto Rico who failed to win any of its 6 group play matches.

Howard Hamilton of the HexagonalBlog has updated his CONCACAF coefficients which reflect Mexican club dominance in the region.

The Crew’s quarterfinal home and home matches will be played on March 9 and 16, 2010.

MLS clubs Real Salt Lake(MLS Cup winner), LA Galaxy(MLS Cup finalist), Seattle Sounders(Lamar Hunt US Open Cup winner) and Columbus Crew(Supporters’ Shield winner) will participate in the 2010-11 tourney

World Cup Notes

Any MLS players that make it onto Bob Bradley’s World Cup bound team will leave for pre tournament preparations around mid to late May and will not return before the last US group play match on June 23.

US Soccer will earn a minimum of $9 million with $1 million paid up front to cover preparation expenses. Additionally, clubs will be compensated for the use of their players during the World Cup to the tune of $1,600 per player per day beginning 15 days before the start of the tourney until one day after the player’s participation ends. The overall prize money is 61% higher than for the 2006 World Cup.

Speaking of the World Cup, MLS has not scheduled any matches during the group play phase of the tourney, June 11-25, which includes 2 weekends. None of the remaining matches kick off later than 2:30pm EDT. So with extra time and PK’s no match would end later than 5:30pm EDT(I’m being generous here). Amazingly, MLS earns brownie points with US soccer fans as only one league match begins before 5:30pm EDT during the knockout phase. And what match would that be? Seattle visiting Philadelphia for a 5pm EDT start in its inaugural of PPL Park! How’s this for an idea … teams that have jumbo screens open the gates early and show World Cup matches prior to the start of MLS matches. Whaddaya think?