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…

Jack McInerney is the future face of the Union. (Kevin Kinkead for WVHooligan)

By John Parker

In this (hopefully) sixteen part series, I will look at each of MLS team and discern their “future face of the franchise.” This isn’t necessarily a query into the player with the most potential on a squad, but rather a question of how a player or personality is situated to become the most visible and/or marketable person within an organization.

In other words, it’d be much more fun if Alexi Lalas was still around…but alas, we’re stuck with personnel with talent.

To start off, we’ll look at the Philadelphia Union. Continue Reading…

Right after the deal between Philadelphia and New York it seemed like a few people immediately were emailing about the new order. The deal between the Red Bulls and Union was simple, they swapped spots, NY went down to six and Philly went to number one.

After the Union made their deal to pick up Orozco the new order now looks like this with a new leader in the clubhouse. If you are San Jose and Kansas City you have to be hoping for some more players returning home to MLS here! Let’s just hope this time around the Quakes don’t waste their allocation selection. Remember Peguero Jean-Philippe anyone?

1. San Jose Earthquakes
2. Kansas City Wizards
3. Toronto FC
4. FC Dallas
5. New York Red Bulls
6. Colorado Rapids
7. New England Revolution
8. Chivas USA
9. Seattle Sounders FC
10. Columbus Crew
11. Chicago Fire
12. Houston Dynamo
13. LA Galaxy
14. Real Salt Lake
15. DC United – Troy Perkins
16. Philadelphia Union – Michael Orozco

Michael Orozco joins the Union backline. (Getty Images)

We’ve known for a little while now that US National team defender Michael Orozco was on his way to Major League Soccer, well today that became more official. The Philadelphia Union traded allocation money to the New York Red Bulls to move up to the top spot in the allocation order to sign Orozco.

The 23-year old Orozco will be on a one-year loan (with an additional one-year option) from Mexican First Division team San Luis FC. He is yet another young gun for Piotr Nowak and company. Interesting fact is that the Union only have three guys on their current roster over 30!

This addition really helps out the Union defense going into their expansion season. With Danny Califf and Orozco it seems like Nowak is putting together a mini-National team here. Make no mistake this club should be a contender in 2010, I really believe it with these signings that they are making here.

What do you make of this signing by Philadelphia? Can you believe New York gave up their top allocation spot?

Call it a new feature here on WVH, while I’m trying to maintain focus on the MLS playoff race; this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now, a focus on the Americans abroad in other leagues. I was going to debut this last week but honestly ran out of time early in the week so I put it off until today.

Hopefully this will evolve a bit more over time but for now its just going to be a simple rundown of how everyone did this weekend in their respective leagues.

Some Yanks had the weekend off, some didn’t make it back to their respective clubs after the World Cup qualifier on Wednesday in Guatemala.

Biggest news may be out of France, Freddy Adu did make his debut for AS Monaco this weekend, playing just three minutes in place of Jeremy Menez. We could see Adu replace Menez at Monaco here real soon as from what I’ve been reading Menez is looking to transfer out. That could be a very good thing for Adu as we all want to see him get more playing time, wherever he is.

If there are players I forgot to list feel free to list them below. Or if something is incorrect, also please post it below. As much as I try to focus on everyone I know I will miss or slip up on someone, somewhere.

ENGLAND

• Tim Howard started, played 90 minutes, and made three saves in Everton’s 2-1 win against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday. Give this man an iron-man award for actually making the hustle back to England for this match, despite getting knocked in the head by Carlos Ruiz on Wednesday.
• Brad Friedel started, played 90 minutes, and made zero saves in Aston Villa’s 3-2 loss to Stoke on Saturday. Ugly game really, I caught some of it and felt kind of bad for Friedel, his defense really looked bad in this one.
• Marcus Hahnemann started, played 90 minutes and made six saves in Reading’s 4-2 loss to Charlton on Saturday. Another ugly game, lots of goals though which was fun but defensively it was not pretty.
• Bobby Convey started and played 73 minutes for Reading.
• Clint Dempsey came off the bench and played 13 minutes in Fulham’s 1-0 win vs. Arsenal on Saturday.
• Jay DeMerit started and played 90 minutes in Watford’s 3-2 loss to Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
• Eddie Johnson did not dress in Cardiff City’s 2-2 tie vs. Norwich on Saturday. Might wanna cut Eddie a break, if you’ve seen this video you will know what I am talking about. The Grown-Ass Man clearly is a bit jet-lagged right now and knows very little of why he is playing in the Coca-Cola division.

Continue Reading…