Hate to say it but no evening links and thoughts tonight. Just too busy with work and the Dallas game tonight to put in a real effort for this. I should be back tomorrow with another ELT.

Enjoy the soccer night of MLS and CCL games!

Its kind of weird to see the Cotton Bowl hosting MLS once again but tonight it happens. The New England Revolution travel to Dallas to play part of a double header that will pretty much only boost Dallas’ dreadful season attendance figures.

New England comes into town on a fairly hot streak despite the fact they just lost one of their key players Steve Ralston for the rest of the year to a knee injury. The loss of Ralston shakes up their midfield a bit and could put a damper into their offense. Thankfully for Steve Nicol, his club has done well recently defensive wise in slowing down teams like Seattle.

Dallas however will pose a bigger threat offensively that New England hasn’t faced in a few weeks. The hot streak of Jeff Cunningham and company leads many to wonder if Dallas is on the way up even though their playoff hopes henge on going undefeated from here out.

Look for Dallas to press hard in this one early as they cannot afford to even drop points with a draw in this one. New England will have to rely on a swift counter with MVP candidate Shalrie Joseph leading the way.

I think this one ends in a draw tonight with the way New England plays defense and the fact that they always seem to find success against Dallas in Dallas. I don’t know if the Cotton Bowl site will really have any affect on the game but it will be a nice turn back the clock kind of night for the boys in the red stripes.

WVH Prediction: Dallas 1, New England 1

Finally. Toronto FC will no longer be regarded as that club with the terrible FieldTurf. The Toronto city council voted unanimously to approve the placement of grass at BMO Field in a vote held on earlier today.

The decision means there will be one less MLS team playing on artificial turf in 2010. New York was one of the few clubs on turf in 2009 but they will be playing on grass at Red Bull Arena when it opens up next season.

Happy to finally see BMO with grass? Think it will affect the way TFC plays at home now?

Chester Stadium currently under construction. (Photo via Philadelphia Union)

Editor’s Note: Geoff Reid appears on WVHooligan each week. Today he is back to discuss something that is very close to home, the soon to be expansion Philadelphia Union. Geoff lives just 15 minutes away from the new club. Feel free to leave Geoff your thoughts below.

With just under six months before Major League Soccer’s newest club takes the field in Seattle in the 2010 opener, I thought it be good to give an update on where my local club are in preparation. It doesn’t seem like that long ago, we had the official announcement on February 28th, 2008 in Chester, Pennsylvania. While I haven’t been down in the area all that long, I always had concerns about MLS putting a team in the Delaware Valley. At the time, I thought St. Louis would have been a much more viable option, however, since that point I can safely say I’ve jumped on the bandwagon.

The club’s owners right from the start seemed like they were up against it: economic downturn, trying to sell the idea of re-building a historic, but rundown city by having a team and stadium as it’s crown jewel in a complete redevelopment of the area to the local government and promising to be a success all at the same time. Needless to say they accomplished that first part.

The ownership also had to field questions regarding if they still had enough cash to pull everything off with one of them losing a big chunk of money a year ago when the stock market dropped. The rumors of FC Barcelona even coming in and taking a stake was discussed but nothing came about after the Catalans decided to pull out of the Miami bid. There was also talk of the Montreal Impact coming in 2010 and pushing Philadelphia back to 2011. The panic button could have easily been pushed, but the ownership has stuck to their guns and currently the only news coming out of the club is good news. Sure there has been hurdles to jump over since the planning officially began on February 28, 2008, but careful brainstorming in all aspects while making small tweaks to the big overall picture has shown the group knows exactly what they are doing.
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In case you missed the 4-1 beating of Cameroon put on yesterday by our young U-20 squad, here are some highlights. How about that goal from Dilly Duka. Man if he doesn’t end up with a professional contract after this tournament then I don’t know what to say.

First of all, let me say sorry for the lack of updates this week. I’ve gone into full site design mode here for this place and for another couple project that I am working on for other folks.

And on that note I will also be heading out of town early this weekend for a long weekend in Austin for the Austin City Limits music festival. Fear not the weekend picks will still go on but expect nothing more on Friday. Monday will also be a light day for me too as I will probably be traveling back from Austin. If you plan on being in Austin and at the festival be sure to send me a message on Twitter.

Now back to today’s program. I wanted to discuss a couple items that caught my attention today while I was working on things. First of which comes out of Vancouver and has similar lines from yesterday’s links and thoughts about youth systems here around the country and in Canada.

Vancouver Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi talked with L.E. Eisenmenger about the Whitecaps youth development system. From the looks of things and how Lenarduzzi talked this system could end up being the best in MLS when the Whitecaps join the league in 2011.

For those who do not know the Whitecaps have a residency program that is unlike any others in the league right now. I know this is probably close to what every club in MLS is trying to get to and will more than likely be at soon enough.

The Whitecaps residency program was funded by owner Greg Kerfoot. It houses, trains, and educates 15, 16, and 17 year-old players from as far away as Jamaica and Eastern Canada. Unlike the MLS academies, the players in the residency program won’t be able to go to a NCAA program as it forfeits their amateur status. But on the flip side Eisenmenger says the club has already sold one of it’s youth players to a German side for a transfer fee.

From the sound of things Vancouver is already got a leg up on the rest of the teams in MLS when it comes to things like this.

Vancouver is already prepping for their move from USL-1 to MLS. The player end of things won’t really get any attention until towards the end of next year but look for them to be just like Seattle in bringing a few USL players along when they join MLS.

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One country just couldn’t stand the heat I suppose. Mexico announced today that they will not be placing a bid for two future World Cups, 2018 and 2022. Mexican federation President Decio de Maria basically said the money wasn’t there for the country to do a good enough bid right now.

First of all the stadium situation in Mexico isn’t that great to go head-to-head with countries like the US for a World Cup bid. Sure Mexico is soccer-hungry but the cost right now to redo a good chunk of their stadiums or even build new ones would be pretty high for a country with a fairly weak economy.

The US is now the only CONCACAF country bidding for the two Cups. The US is now in competition with Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands (joint bid), England, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Portugal (joint bid), Qatar, and Russia for one of the two World Cups up for grabs.

Strong bids from England and the two joint bids are what is standing in the way of the 2018 World Cup for the US. More than likely as we’ve discussed before here the World Cup will likely go to a European country in 2018 while the US likely stands to be the best bid for the 2022 Cup.

What do you make of Mexico dropping out of the running here? Surprised at all?