Weighted Lottery System In Question

First up is Kyle McCarthy’s Musings for the day. His big point is about the league’s weighted lottery system and how it needs to go. Honestly I couldn’t agree with his main points any more.

This all stems from last week’s lottery winner RSL who had a 5% chance to win U.S. U-20 captain and former Southampton defender  Kyle Davis. While the club won this lottery fair and square it does seem like it is time to do away with a system that isn’t all that good to begin with.

I think McCarthy hit this one on the head saying that if the player in question is allocation worthy let them go through that process (though even that needs an update to a degree). If the player doesn’t worthy an allocation he should just go through a normal waiver process.

Philly Coaching Search

Funny that the club that will come to be next year is already searching for a coach before it has a name or even team colors. Saying that though the club hasn’t officially said they are looking for a coach just yet here, it’s just a writer in that area putting put a list of coaches that could be a good fit.

Mark Chajkowsky wrote for the Examiner.com about the possibly list of coaches for the Philly club. Chajkowsky made some good points that the club needs to find a guy like Bob Bradley type of coach, one that leads the club to a rare MLS Cup visit in their first year and not the extreme opposite in RSL’s old coach John Ellinger.

The list gives some usual suspects but a couple names pop out to me that I think could be good fits in the end. Dave Sarachan is the top choice here on the list. For one I totally agree with though I think his current boss Bruce Arena could also be under consideration for this position in Philly (espeically if things continue to go sour in LA this season).

Arena going to an expansion team just makes sense at this point to me. Though Sarachan would also make a great candidate.

Two other names worth looking into. The usual coaching candidate Paul Mariner from New England and Mike Sorber, the current second-in-command to Bob Bradley with the National team.

I honestly love the idea of Sorber for this position if he’d take it.

Ottawa Likely Out

It is not looking good up in Ottawa for when it comes to getting a MLS club. Some would say their hopes were already dead a month ago but now it appears things are going cold. Apparently the CFL group won the cities vote over Eugene Melynk and his MLS effort.

Melynk doesn’t appear to want to work with the CFL group so the MLS bid has taken a definite turn for the worst.

I agree with others out there that hope this means Montreal will get back into the fold here.

Carver Fined

That didn’t take long. A few weeks in and John Carver has been fined by the league for his comments regarding Tim Weyland after a 3-2 loss to FC Dallas on Sunday on a penalty in the 84th minute.

Well he was commenting on one of the worst refs so far this year in Weyland. I kind of don’t blame him for it.

Joan LaPorta, president of FC Barcelona, visited Philadelphia on Feb. 28 and toured the site of the franchise’s future stadium being constructed in Chester, Pa. The tour took place days before FC Barcelona announced it wouldn’t pursue an expansion franchise in Miami.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber declined to comment on the visit but said, “FC Barcelona has expressed for some time an interest in Major League Soccer financially and strategically. They spent a great deal of time with us looking at Miami and are continuing to look at opportunities around the league.”

MLS Philadelphia CEO Nick Sakiewicz said he didn’t discuss investing in the franchise with LaPorta but acknowledged that the Philadelphia franchise is still looking for strategic partners.

There has been loads of talk surrounding the financial health of this expansion club. Adding a backing like Barcelona as we all know would be a huge step for this club. Plus for Barcelona you could see Philly being just as important to them as Miami was going to be.

Barcelona’s involvement could help ease the blow of some financial loss that the Philly owners are having right now. Plus having them as even a sister club would be huge.

More details will come of this soon. Either way we will see Barcelona help someone out here.

Happy voting.