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…

Boy, myself and a lot of others doubted RSL as they headed into a new year as defending MLS champions but today I’m at least starting to think differently about them. Today the club announced the signing of Costa Rican national team striker Alvaro Saborio.

Saborio comes in on a loan arrangement from FC Sion (Switzerland) and Deportivo Saprissa (Costa Rica) who each hold 50% of his rights.

US national team fans will remember Saborio as the Costa Rican no one wanted to go up against in Costa Rica last year in World Cup qualifying. Now he’ll be the guy no one wants to see in MLS as he teams up with Robbie Findley.

To be honest this move really sets RSL up for a good year. Saborio is a very dangerous striker and putting him up top with Findley only improves RSL’s chances of a repeat. At 28-years old he is still relatively young.

What do you make of this move by RSL? You think he’s a good replacement for Yura Movsisyan?

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…

Most of you should know by now I’m a big supporter of the Jared Montz podcast. Well today we are in for a treat as Montz interviews the youngest coach to win a MLS Cup in league history, Jason Kreis (a WVH fave btw).

You can subscribe to the Jared Montz Soccer Podcast for free in iTunes by clicking here.

Enjoy!




Kyle Beckerman and RSL have a tough road ahead in 2010. (Getty Images)

We only have a few more clubs to go in our preseason look-ins. Now we’re getting in the home stretch with RSL today and hopefully closing out the rest of the week San Jose, Seattle and Toronto.

Today we take a look in to see how the defending Major League Soccer champs are doing this winter. Jason Kreis and company have started to really get into building up a core group of players to work around. That was key to their late run and success last year in the playoffs.

Now it becomes a question of do they have the depth to deal with a bigger and tougher schedule in 2010? They lost a few key players this winter like Clint Mathis to LA, Yura Movsisyan to Europe and Chris Seitz to the expansion club in Philadelphia. They did however pick a couple guys off waivers, which has been their bread and butter these last couple years along with drafting pretty well in January’s SuperDraft.

Lets see how well RSL is doing this winter and what pieces of the puzzle that they have left to build on. (Note: I’d like to thank Randy Davis from Keepin It Real for helping me out with this preview) 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…

That was fairly quick. KC Wizards president Robb Heineman just said via Twitter that a deal couldn’t get done with Luis Gil and that he will be going to KC shortly.

unable to speak with gil…doind a deal with real salt lake

part of transfer fee, 2nd, and intl slot

We knew yesterday that an international roster slot was part of the deal. From the sounds of things probably some allocation money as well to help pave the way for a couple international players that the Wizards are reportedly looking to sign here. The Wizards also want a portion of any transfer fee that Gil gets if/when he leaves MLS to go to Europe (smart move on their part).

Give some credit to KC here folks, they’re really looking to get back in the thick of things in the east here. As for as Gil to RSL goes I do like this move, Jason Kreis will be a good coach for Gil here though I was hoping to see him in Seattle with Sigi Schmid.

Once things become more official I’ll let you all know.

Update: Here’s the official release from the league.