Toronto's O'Brian White looks to break out in 2010.

Normally in my season previews I go team-by-team but this year as I mentioned earlier in the week I am doing something a little different. Instead of the old way I’m trying something new to break up the content and give folks a little more room for discussion.

Today’s topic is all about who is the next guy to be a big impact player in this league. Or for someone to finally come out of their shell and help lead their club to the playoffs or even better a MLS Cup. I know a lot of these previews depend on the league and the player’s coming together on a new CBA but for the sake of things we’ll be optimistic here and say they do come to terms on something soon.

So I went club to club and asked a few folks who they thought would be the next big thing for their clubs. Some clubs will have just one guy to watch out for and some will have two. If a guy you think is going to break out this season isn’t on this list, hit the comments below with your reasoning behind it.

Now some are rookies and others are guys that have been around the league for a little while. I tried to balance it out between those two groups. Continue Reading…

Wow, I must say I’ve kept this post in the icebox for too long. I originally started writing this back in January when the adidas catalog came out with all the 2010 MLS kits. Somehow this got pushed back to the start of March. I’ll go ahead and blame couple things, my laziness for finishing it, the SuperDraft taking up a lot of my time in January and the whole CBA mess that is still going on.

Anyways, I wanted to talk about each kit and how the league is doing as far as their branding is concerned. Some clubs are hitting it out of the park with their branding while others aren’t doing too well with the kits that are being made. Some blame can be set on adidas for bad templates while others can be pointed to the club themselves.

The league as a whole hasn’t done great in the jersey department over the years. Who doesn’t remember when the league unveiled their first kits back in the day? Some were better than others at the time and we probably should blame Nike in a way for the train wreck in the naming of some clubs as well. But now that the league is strictly adidas it seems as though things are turning around for the better.

As FanHouse soccer writer Brian Straus points out back in January (he definitely beat me to this punch btw) there are still too many white jerseys. Straus did a similar look a while back, and he pointed out that some clubs are slowly getting things right with a few still picking up the slack. I agree with that, still too many white kits on the menu this year but it seems like as we add clubs to this league the new ones continue to brand themselves very nicely while the originals continue to catch up.

Anyways, here’s my look at the new jerseys for the year. Feel free to comment below on what  you like/dislike about the new kits. Continue Reading…

Something for at least those Columbus fans to start the day out with. (H/T to SF over at The Offside Rules). I’ll have more today on the lovely CBA issue and maybe some other items that will make this feel like a normal preseason day.

Is Blanco the best DP MLS has seen so far? (Getty Images)

I’ve had this thought for a little while, on the surface the Designated Player rule is good as it brings quality players into Major League Soccer that do help in more areas than just on the field itself. We know the cons against it like teams spending so much money on one player but I started looking at all the past and present DPs and started wondering if this rule really is worth it.

Now first of all I’m not going to advocate for or against this rule today. I just merely want to point out who’s done well with it and who’s not. We’ve seen this rule in place for a couple seasons now and so far only a few clubs have ventured out with this rule. Now it seems like most clubs are going away from the rule, currently only five clubs have a DP (Toronto, New York, LA, Seattle and Houston).

Also, so far five clubs (or six if you count Philly too) have yet to use their DP slot. RSL won MLS Cup 2009 without one so maybe they aren’t worth the money.

So let’s take a deeper look into each DP. What worked about it and what didn’t work on and off the field. We’ll go from worst to best in this instance. I’d also like to note that two fo the DPs on this list have only played a little under a half season with their clubs so grading and discussing them at length seemed unfair at this time. If you are wondering about who I am talking about here those two are Houston’s Luis Angel Landin and Toronto’s Julian De Guzman. (For the record I like De Guzman but don’t care of Landin…but saying that I am very curious about their upcoming seasons.) Continue Reading…

The 2010 Crew look a lot like the 2009 Crew, does that mean another Supporter's Shield is on the way? (Getty Images)

I had hoped to get this post out of the way earlier in the day but some issues on the back end of my site kept me busy all day (some PHP bug!). But I felt like it was still alright to move on with out look at each Major League Soccer club and how they are doing this offseason.

Today we go back east and look at the two time defending Supporter’s Shield champion Columbus Crew.

The offseason hasn’t been too busy for the Crew but they were able to make some big noise at the SuperDraft with a couple of their selections. Continue Reading…

Right after the deal between Philadelphia and New York it seemed like a few people immediately were emailing about the new order. The deal between the Red Bulls and Union was simple, they swapped spots, NY went down to six and Philly went to number one.

After the Union made their deal to pick up Orozco the new order now looks like this with a new leader in the clubhouse. If you are San Jose and Kansas City you have to be hoping for some more players returning home to MLS here! Let’s just hope this time around the Quakes don’t waste their allocation selection. Remember Peguero Jean-Philippe anyone?

1. San Jose Earthquakes
2. Kansas City Wizards
3. Toronto FC
4. FC Dallas
5. New York Red Bulls
6. Colorado Rapids
7. New England Revolution
8. Chivas USA
9. Seattle Sounders FC
10. Columbus Crew
11. Chicago Fire
12. Houston Dynamo
13. LA Galaxy
14. Real Salt Lake
15. DC United – Troy Perkins
16. Philadelphia Union – Michael Orozco

Guillermo Barros Schelotto has been a fan favorite since joining the Crew. (Getty Images)

A move that definitely keeps the Columbus Crew contenders finally became official today. The club announced the re-signing of midfielder/striker Guillermo Barros Schelotto to his forth season with the Black-and-Gold.

Schelotto will not occupy a Designated Player slot in 2010, thus meaning his new contract is a lot cheaper than what he was making last season.

The Crew really needed the veteran back for another year due to his high production he’s done over the last three years since joining the Crew. So far he has scored 26 goals and tallied 39 assists in 78 regular-season and playoff games. Not a bad stat-line for any player.

While the Crew didn’t have the greatest Draft last week I think this re-signing still keeps them in the top half of teams in the league going into this year. No doubt with his leadership on board this club will be a contender yet again in 2010.