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…

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…

Real Salt Lake took home their first hardware. (Getty Images)

I decided not to write a recap last night after the game finished up. Mainly I was exhausted from watching the game that went into penalties. MLS Cup 2009 wasn’t the very best game of the year but it definitely provided plenty of drama. From key injuries to key goals the game was compelling and exciting.

The PKs were kind of expected of this game after things were tied up going into overtime. Both teams were totally gassed on the field and just looked like they’d rather get it to the penalties rather than make something happen in the extra frames.

Injuries played a huge part in this game. Javier Morales’s knee injury really hurt RSL’s momentum in the first half, which the Galaxy did an excellent job of taking advantage of. The Galaxy found great space with Landon Donovan and David Beckham which lead to Mike Magee’s goal late in the half. The first half really was controlled by Bruce Arena’s squad.

But some halftime switches by Jason Kreis really turned things in RSL’s favor. Either it was the right halftime speech or the move to get the sick Will Johnson out that paid off but whatever was said or done by Kreis fueled his club. RSL came out with more energy than before and really caught the Galaxy off guard with Yura Movsisyan and Robbie Findley. Once the attack got going for RSL it was only a matter of time before Findley put away a goal. Continue Reading…

Chicago's Patrick Nyarko and Seattle's Osvaldo Alonso battle again this weekend. (Getty Images)

We steam roll into another weekend of soccer here starting with one game tonight along with a full slate of games tomorrow. Week 19 is the final week before the league’s All-Star break next week.

Plenty of good things will come out of next week during the league’s usual meetings that will go. We should more than likely hear a lot about certain things going on in the league like Beckham’s return, expansion, CBA talks and more.

But until then we have to wait it out for the news to come down the pipe with all of those goodies. Thankfully the full slate of games this weekend should keep us entertained until then. Everyone is in action this weekend except for Chivas USA, good thing too since they really need a week to regain focus here after their stumble these last two months. They pretty much are the New England of 2009, hot out of the gate then cooled off too much in the summer. At least the Revs won SuperLiga last year, Chivas can’t say the same.

Anyways, as always feel free to drop in your predictions below as well. Continue Reading…

Today we’ve learned who MLS Commissioner Don Garber will be selecting for his picks in this year’s All-Star game.  In previous years Garber has picked guys in the final years of their career or guys that were “snubbed” by the voters.

Today Garber selected two RSL players (the game is at Rio Tinto Stadium): Kyle Beckerman and Javier Morales.

Good picks, especially since I highly doubt either would have been picked by Kinnear and since they are the home town favorites.

Good to also see Garber not go with David Beckham. However I do have three other guys that I was kind of hoping to see in these two spots. (I’m picking three because I am assuming Dominic Kinnear may do one of the picks)

Those three are: Chivas USA keeper Zach Thornton, RSL midfielder Clint Mathis, and DC midfielder/forward Santino Quaranta.

I kind of see Quaranta getting picked by Kinnear but I was kind of hoping to see The Don go this way in his selections. I put Thornton up there since he is having a stellar comeback season this year. Mathis I thought is a little more deserving than both Beckerman or Morales here if he wanted to go with a RSL player.

What do you make of The Don’s picks? Good or bad?

Yeah we actually are at week 15 here. Hard to believe huh? This weekend is fairly light due to a number of other games going on like SuperLiga. Then you have that all important game on Sunday afternoon over in South Africa between the US and Brazil.

I won’t go into any big detail about the Brazil/US game and I am honestly undecided on whether or not to even do a preview of that game. I may just leave that to those who’ve been doing a good job of it lately. But we will see.

This weekend has some decent games on the menu in MLS even if it is a smaller portion than what we are use to here. Only four league games to mention, two on each day.

Feel free to leave your score predictions below. Continue Reading…

This week has already been interesting and we’ve only seen one MLS game. The DC-Seattle game on Wednesday should have been a marquee thing but as we all saw ESPN and the family of networks dropped the ball a bit on getting the MLS game shipped over to another channel to make us MLS folks happy until the college world series game was over on the deuce.

Yes it was unfortunate but there was some good out of it. SoccerAmeria just posted a great article on the 80 seconds of silence that Glenn Davis and Kyle Martino did at the start of the broadcast when the game was finally shown on ESPN2. Looking back on the tape of that game I saw and heard those 80 seconds. Boy it was pretty neat to say the least.

Aside from the ESPN fail on Wednesday this week and weekend are pretty big. We’ve already seen Toronto FC blow away Montreal last night in the final game of the Canadian Cup to advance to this year’s edition of the CONCACAF Champions League tournament. MLS will now field five teams with Toronto now to take on Puerto Rico in the preliminary rounds with a chance to be grouped in with the Columbus Crew.

We also have another competition starting up for a few clubs this weekend as well. The 2009 edition of SuperLiga comes at a good time for teams like Chivas USA and Chicago Fire. Both clubs play on Saturday in their opening matches of the tournament. Kansas City and New England will see their first games on Sunday. All SuperLiga matches can be seen live on the SuperLiga website.

But let’s get down to business as far as the MLS weekend slate goes. Plenty of decent games on the menu for us including one that I am very interested in out in Colorado between the Rapids and DC United.

As always feel free to leave your score predictions below. Continue Reading…