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…

Last night the San Jose city council voted unanimously 10-0 to approve rezoning the 95-acre property near Mineta San Jose International Airport to allow development of a professional soccer stadium of up to 18,000 seats for the Quakes.

This news out of San Jose is positive but it isn’t a definite meaning that a new stadium for the San Jose Earthquakes will actually be built. But as we’ve seen in Kansas City, small steps usually go a long way in getting a deal done and dirt getting moved on the ground.

This is a positive step for the club and the league, which have had so many issues in getting a stadium in the Bay Area over the years. Even if the stadium is as small and without so many bells and whistles that say Red Bull Arena has but it will be a place of their own nonetheless.

Quakes owner Lew Wolff will privately fund the stadium build and provide $60 million to help finance the project, and pay the city $7 million for the land near the airport. He is still in the hunt for a major sponsor to help him out in terms of naming rights. The council’s zoning approval will help him out in that area too, companies are more likely to buy into this project now that it has some backing on the government level.

We all know the importance for the league to get all the clubs into their own facilities. With Houston and San Jose both close to moving dirt along with Kansas City, the next couple of years could be very promising for the league in terms of being able to work out schedules in their favor, among other things that come with these stadiums. Now if we can only get that team in Washington D.C., a stadium of their own…then we’d be set.

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…

Has San Jose done enough to improve on their dismal 2009 campaign? (Getty Images)

Forgive me for a second for this coming out as late as it did. I had every intentions earlier in the week to get this one out on Wednesday but a certain clash in Holland kept me from finishing it until yesterday.

Anyways, we continue on with out look at each Major League Soccer club’s preseason happenings here. We’re in the final stretch with just San Jose, Seattle and Toronto to go. Up first today is San Jose, a club that is hoping to rebound after a dismal effort in 2009. Frank Yallop has made some moves this winter to shake things up by the Bay but will it pay off is the key question.

I thought going into the winter that Yallop and GM Frank Doyle would do a lot of work on this roster that only won seven games in 2009. Reshaping an offense that only scored 36 goals was also another issue but the biggest may be redoing a defense that gave up a league-high 50 goals.

So let us dive into the Earthquakes to see who they have going into the new campaign and where else they need to go to get back into the playoffs. 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…

San Jose Earthquakes announced today that they have signed Brazilian forward Eduardo. He most recently played for FC Basel in the Swiss Super League.

Eduardo will be placed on the Quakes roster pending the receipt of his ITC.

He registered 17 goals in his 96 appearances for Basel since joining the team on loan in 2005. He helped lead Basel to two Swiss League titles (in 2005 and 2008) and a pair of Swiss Cup championships (in 2007 and 2008).

On the surface this signing sounds very good for the Quakes who needed some more offensive help going into the new season. Eduardo is only 29-years old so he brings some good experience to the table and he isn’t just some aging forward.

Offensive fire power has been something that has really been missing in San Jose since the Quakes came back in the league. Ryan Johnson was good but lets face it they need more than Johnson at this point to compete out west. Hopefully this signing will do that for them. At the very least he will help provide quality depth with Johnson and Cornell Glen.