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…

One of the final weeks of the regular season has come and gone but the goals were definitely spot on for week 31 in Major League Soccer. Below are some of the best.

Order: George John, Maykel Galindo, Brandon McDonald, Justin Braun, Josh Wolff, Nate Jaqua, Luciano Emilio, Jim Brennen, and Fabian Espindola.

Not too many goals to pick from this week with all the 1-0 games we saw. So this week all the goals are included in the list.

My favorites were Beckham’s and Richards. What did you all like?

Order of goals: Dane Richards, Julien Baudet, David Beckham, Pablo Campos, Bryan Namoff, Steve Ralston, Wells Thompson, Ramon Sanchez, Pablo Campos (Chivas game), Fabian Espindola, and Robbie Findley (1 and 2).

Conor Casey and Colin Clark lead Colorado over NY. (Getty Images)

I guess one could say things are getting a little more interesting here. Summer is here which means clubs either distance themselves from others or some start to figure things out and turn things around for their season. I think after week 11 we saw some of that with some clubs flipping a switch and making things even tigher in the standings.

Honestly it was an interesting week as a whole. The midweek games gave us a preview that it would be an interesting weekend. Loads of goals and loads of cards too carried over from the midweek to the weekend. And of course some more draws happened along the way but not as in other previous weeks. I think the gulf in class is starting to show between some clubs and we are seeing that it is a very long season.

While some clubs near the bottom of the standings got wins this weekend for the first time in months, I’m not about to jump on board and say they’ve all gotten things figured out here. Some may be getting close but others are still a good bit away from being where most thought they’d be. One thing is certain though I believe we will see a very tight race for those final playoff spots this season. Sure a couple clubs will see themselves out of contention by the All-Star break but I do believe the competition for those final spots is where the league wants and needs them to be here.

As for the games this weekend, I did write down a few notes from each. Continue Reading…

Hard to believe we are nearly a third of the way through things here already this season. For some clubs this will be the one-thirds mark of the season. Others are still catching up in the played games department, that’s what you get when you have an unbalanced schedule.

Anyways, another load of games this weekend all mostly on Saturday with the usual lone Sunday game. San Jose gets the lovely task of having the week off, a good time for them too since they are in need of a break to find their form here this season.

Plenty of good games to talk about here this weekend. Chicago at Toronto is an interesting clash in the east but the game of the week has to be Chivas hosting DC, a meeting of the two conference leaders.

As always feel free to post your game predictions below. Continue Reading…

Lots of action in week 23 to count and figure out who shined brighter than who. To make this quick and simple I went with a two goal effort this week over a couple solid one goal efforts and a two assists effort out of a couple others.

I went with Real Salt Lake’s Fabian Espindola’s two goal effort against Colorado on Friday night because not only was it the games two goals but watching Espindola perform on Friday night was fun to watch. He’s back from an injury and looks great. Plus he got some help from some sloppy defending from Colorado.

Again, to be quick, week 23’s Player of the Week goes to RSL’s Fabian Espindola.

Continue Reading…