Steve Davis

No, the soccer sky isn’t falling, even if it felt that way for some U.S. soccer supporters watching events unfold Tuesday night in Boston. This wasn’t Belize, after all, that was running circles around Jurgen Klinsmann’s experimental crew of miscasts and positional applicants. This was Brazil, where good players practically fall out of first-floor windows, […]

It certainly is nice that we have some U.S. national team matches that mean something. Well, check that. They feel like they mean something. This short camp and two-match set – Friday’s win over Peru and Tuesday’s contest outside Boston against Brazil – is all preparation for the big skirmish coming over the hill. That’s […]

LA Galaxy star Robbie Keane, truly as good a forward as has ever stalked for goals in Major League Soccer, tops a lot of lists for me. Before anyone gets too excited, or wonders if there’s some kind of cash prize for that, let me explain that this is not necessarily a good thing. The […]

Maybe Jurgen Klinsmann is right about John Brooks, Timothy Chandler and Ventura Alvarado, all of whom have labored lately in locking down consistent, starting spots at their clubs in Germany and Mexico. Maybe they got entangled in unfortunate circumstances as they merged back into club soccer a few weeks ago, fresh off United States men's […]

Capt. Obvious would say this after watching the LA Galaxy clobber New York City FC in 2015's highest profile MLS match to date: The Galaxy engine is revving fast once again, the game-changers doing their thing to nourish thoughts of a fourth championship in five years. But a clever first mate might then quietly add this, almost […]

I’m not sure we are in MLS 3.0 just yet, but the contours of it are becoming easier to define. MLS 1.0 was, well, that’s pretty much self-explanatory, eh? It wasn’t always pretty – heavens, some of the early grounds could only have been more ill-fitting if they were ice rinks – but things must […]

For the United States national team, left back is the problem child that just cannot be tamed. Surely you’ve heard that before; this is hardly a recent thing. Going way, way back, left back was a mostly unsettled spot for Steve Sampson, then for Bruce Arena, then for Bob Bradley and now, generally, for Jurgen […]

For those you who wanted Major League Soccer to be more of a free-spending, big-money, champagne room kind of league, congratulations! Some of you have long coveted big names. The bigger the better – and more them! Another ballyhooed Euro wants his swipe at the suddenly flush MLS ATM? Sign ‘em up! For those of […]

Major League Soccer, still relatively young, just past its awkward teenage years, is occasionally a strange place. Sometimes it performs like a talented young prodigy undone temporarily by a growth spurt – which means between the posh passes and savvy feints, he sometimes stumbles over his own fast-growing feet. Consider the past few days of […]

American soccer fans, we need to talk. We have issues … with our stadiums. We need to sort this out. At very least, we need to our feelings on the table: American soccer must find some peace in its conflicted relationship with the stadiums where our matches play out. It’s working for now … but […]

After every press conference to introduce a new manager through the years – and I’ve been to a bunch, mostly in soccer, but in other sports also – some fan or supporter, thrilled about the new program savior, would approach me afterward to ask eagerly: “Well, what do you think about the new guy?” And […]

The ability of splashy stars to drive attendance in Major League Soccer has long been overstated. The evidence over 20 years just doesn’t support the narrative that adding one big star from Europe or Mexico will significantly move the attendance needle. Of course, a figure as massive as David Beckham could be a game-changer in […]

Major League Soccer All-Star team selection is always a tricky mix of fan popularity and entertainment value, held tenuously together with a blessed twine of pragmatism. On the popularity and entertainment front, MLS’s mid-summer event is no different than other domestic All-Star events; there will always be tension and debate when fans have their say, […]

FRISCO, Texas – We probably make too big of a deal about captains in soccer. Maybe back in the day, on the muddy pitches of old Maine Road or wherever, when only the captain was technically permitted to address the referee, the position carried more than honorary weight. Maybe it had some functional benefit then. […]

The media got it wrong about the United States women’s soccer team. Not all wrong … and not all of us. But too many of us missed the real story as Jill Ellis’ team has driven into another Women’s World Cup final. While we grumbled about Ellis’ vanilla tactics, her inflexibility and about a dependence […]