Birahim Diop is one of the many new players for Kansas City this year. (Getty Images)

Even with all the strike talks for Monday (or Tuesday…or whenever) I’m still going on with some 2010 season previews for Major League Soccer. Today I wanted to center my focus around the moves in and out that hav been made with the league this year.

As some of you know I’ve been doing my best to keep track of these moves with my offseason player movement page listed above. Each club has made some moves this winter, some definitely more than others. Now the question comes into mind of which moves were good, bad and which will pay off in the new season.

The United Nations comes to Kansas City

Looking at what the Wizards have done this winter makes some folks giggle. Of the newcomers eight of them are from out of the country. You have three Englishmen (Ryan Smith and Craig Rocastle, Korede Aiyegbusi), a Canadian (Teal Bunbury), a Frenchman (Stephane Auvray), a Scandinavian (Jimmy Neilsen),  a Colombian (Pablo Escobar), a Moldavian (Igor Kostrov), and a big guy from Senegal (Birahim Diop).

I guess those guys really like BBQ or something. Amazing that KC was able to get that many international players to come there. Now comes the question of whether all this change really will pay off. Last few clubs that did a massive influx of foreign talent (though Bunbury and Aiyegbusi were drafted so I kinda won’t count them in this here) didn’t fare too well from what I recall. Maybe KC is the team that bucks that trend in 2010. Continue Reading…

Every team has that one guy that will either help lead them to the MLS promise-land or be partly the reason why they are stuck at home in November instead of seeing the playoffs. These are you X-Factor players.

I have one (maybe two) guys for each MLS team that are those X-Factors for this new season. Some guys are really no brainers while others may surprise you a bit. Its safe to say that each club needs a big year out of their X-Factors.

If you think I’m way off base on someone or think I missed a sure-fire X-Factor please list it below. Continue Reading…

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…

Oh this is classic. I like nothing more than a good Office Space joke. New England’s Kevin Alston, Darius Barnes and Chris Tierney have put together a fun little video to hype the new Revs and MLS website. They sound pumped, so should you. (H/T to SF for posting this.)

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…

I saw this news earlier today and immediately though “why haven’t other expansion clubs done this before?” Well really only Seattle could do it since they were basically being “promoted” to the big show last year.

The Portland Timbers still have a year before they enter Major League Soccer but they are already making sure their roster will be MLS-ready. Today they signed veteran keeper Adin Brown. MLS fans will remember Brown from his time in New England back in 2002-04, he lead the Revs to a MLS Cup final in 2002.

I love this move for a couple reasons, not only do the Timbers get a quality veteran keeper this year but they also completely skip over the crazy MLS allocation process to get Brown. You see, Brown would normally go through the MLS allocation system to be placed with a club. Now Portland will have one of the first cracks at a player next year (along with Vancouver) meaning they still have a shot at a quality player. This is in a way almost a two-for-one deal.

Now Brown isn’t fully healthy yet but reports suggest he will be good to go by the middle of June. Even more important he should be 100% for the first MLS season in Portland.

Very smart of Portland to get this deal done if you ask me. It makes them better now for their USSF Division II season and for next year.

I posted something similar about the ChivaGirls try outs so its only fitting to do something similar for the Rev Girls. Hey, what can I say its been a long day and this seemed like a decent way to end it.