Woo, made it to day two with this new concept or idea rather. I know I’ve been a bit quiet today with post, blame the load of actual paying work that I have at the office for that. We also have a couple MLS teams in action tonight, two facing very important matches, and the third being a big time friendly. But more on those in a second.

I mentioned earlier on Twitter that I will be doing a post about each club’s remaining schedule. That may be up by the end of the week. I was hoping to get it out today but again work kept me from getting finished with it. I believe my stopping point was either Dallas or Houston. I do hope to finish it soon though.

Anyways, down to the business at hand, a few links/stories for your evening reading.

2009 SuperLiga Final

Chicago Fire host Tigres UANL of the Mexican Primera Division.- 7pm CST on Telefutura

I would expect nothing less than a Fire win really. I hear the Fire are taking this game serious and from the sound of it so are their supporter’s, which is really good to see. Tough part is until this tournament gets an English broadcast on FSC or something like that no one will care about it (you can watch it online though). I asked folks on Twitter earlier if they cared and those that responded didn’t see too unless they were actually a Fire fan.

CONCACAF Champions League Play-In Round

New York Red Bulls host Trinidadian side W Connection – 8pm EST on FSC

This is big and it is a make or break kind of game. If the Red Bulls win and advance they could at least salvage a little bit of their pathetic season. All they need is a win or even a 0-0 or 1-1 tie to advance. It is that simple. All MLS fans need to get behind New York tonight and hope they advance. If they don’t it will just add fuel to the fire on so many things surround this club.

International Friendly

Seattle Sounders FC host FC Barcelona – 10:30pm EST on ESPN

This should be fun. Tune in to ESPN2 tonight for this one folks. I know Seattle held their own against Chelsea a while back but I would be impressed if they are able to do the same against Barca. If I were Sigi Schmid I would be resting key guys as much as possible in this one, even if it means getting beat. With the playoffs coming up you don’t want to lose someone because of this game.

Jozy Moves To England

Link

The big topic today was Jozy Altidore and all his tweeting about moving to England to play for Hill City. The best part was reading all the reports with quotes from Jozy’s Twitter feed. I guess that is the world we are starting to live in, when players say something on twitter before the press get ahold of them in person.

Cooper Introduced in Germany

Link (to photos)

No need to say much, Cooper is finally over in Europe and looks happy in the process.

Argentina League Season Put On Hold

Link

Wow, big news down in Argentina is that a new season was suppose to start in two weeks. However that has been put on indefinite hold due to a deep financial crisis at many of the clubs. No other actions were announced. This could very well mean we could see a flood of players come north if nothing is resolved soon.

Okay, while I was gone a lot changed in the landscape of Major League Soccer. And by a lot, as you all probably know by now means a lot. One club punched their ticket into the post season while everyone else made it a little more interesting to see just who will get in the playoffs.

East v. West

One thing that is funny is how we talked all year how great the East is and how poor the West has been. Funny story though, right now four eastern clubs are in the playoff picture and so are four western clubs. That’s exactly what MLS went for when they changed their playoff format in the manner that they did. It created more push for the playoffs and right now its all about who’s got the hot hand and out west you are seeing some hotter hands.

Not to say the East is losing their steam this season but it means the West is finally waking up and realizing that in order to play for a MLS Cup you have to reach the playoffs to do so. A 30-game season is long, and as some say its a marathon and not a sprint. The clubs that have paced themselves the best are doing the best while the others who ran out in front too soon lost momentum and now are looking at a top three draft pick in January.

Continue Reading…

Just how much do marketers in New York (or wherever SUM is located) hate this SuperLiga final match-up between New England and Houston? Before the tournament they saw plenty of dollar signs with the Mexican teams coming over to play in a bragging-rights kind of tournament, plus not to mention solid ratings with those teams on TV.

Now, they get two American teams that have played each other in the MLS Cup final each of the last two years. I’m not saying this won’t be a great game but clearly this isn’t what SUM and the directors of this tournament wanted in the beginning.

Having one Mexican team and one MLS team would have worked fine and been great, so would have two Mexican teams. But two MLS clubs just won’t sell, especailly for a tournament that has lost it’s luster since the first kick a couple weeks ago.

But in all honesty, the two clubs that are left deserve to be where they are…in the final.

Right now MLS fans couldn’t have asked for a better matchup. New England has clearly been the league’s best club for a while not and Houston is starting to really hit their strides here (thanks to SuperLiga). To say this match won’t be at least half way decent is an understatement.

So the game will be in New England, a place where the Revs have dominated the Dynamo in recent years (another annoyance of this tournament is that the final isn’t on a neutral site). The last meeting in Foxborough was a 3-0 slamming on the Dynamo on the first day of the MLS season. Sure that game was ages ago but the sting is still there for the Dynamo and the sting of two straight losses in MLS Cup by the Revs is still there.

Tonight’s game will be good, probably a bit sloppy at times as both clubs will want to win but will not want to risk too much for the rest of their season. I see New England coming out on top though. As good as Houston has played recently, a trip up north just doesn’t sound good for them right now. Plus I really like how New England has played in this tournament.

As usual, Steve Ralston and Shalrie Joseph are the difference makers for the Revs.

WVH Prediction: New England 2, Houston 1

Today’s big story seems to be how New England and Houston players are handling the prize money to tomorrow’s SuperLiga final. Well, MLS Commissioner Don Garber spoke out against the players in their efforts to pool the winnings from tomorrow’s final.

“That’s not something that is permitted in the CBA [collective bargaining agreement], it’s not something we are going to allow and something, should they decide to do, we will have to manage it the way we would manage any other violation of the collective bargaining agreement. I believe we have got great players who have strong levels of integrity and competitive spirit, and I believe they will play this game the way they play every other game. … We will pay the prize money as it was originially dictated as determined by MLS ownership. If there is something we determine is a violation of the CBA, we will address it.”

Sounds to me like the next round of CBA discussions are going to be mighty interesting. It also sounds like the players will be taking a big time stand against the league to get what they want.

Also, for those who you who’ve asked where the “million-dollar” payout all goes to…Donny G spoke on that too:

“It goes to the club owner. It’s no different from a NASCAR tournament where the team owner wins prize money and the team owner has a driver under contract, and whatever his agreement with that driver is is what that driver receives. … What I have found very frustrating is that this has been positioned as the league misleading the public by saying that the prize would go to the players. We never, ever implied that the players would get the one million dollars. The winner is the team. The club gets that million-dollar prize, and then we have an agreement as to what that share would be to the players.”

What do you all make of this news?

I just got word that New England and Houston will be splitting the winnings of the “million-dollar tournament” after tomorrow night’s game in a stance against the Collective Bargaining Agreement, this all according to Steve Goff.

“The players on the Houston Dynamo and New England Revolution have agreed in advance of tomorrow night’s SuperLiga final that they will split evenly the bonus money at stake in the game. The players have made this decision to show their solidarity and in protest of the league’s violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement with respect to the negotiation of bonuses for this tournament.”

According to the tournament format, players on an MLS team that wins the title are to share $150,000 and $100,000 split by the MLS team that is the runners-up. So two groups of players have decided to pool the $250,000 and distribute it equally, regardless of who wins tomorrow night.

This is a really interesting development here because it sounds like the players really care less about this tournament since they have decided to split the winnings here. We know these two can put on a good enough game but will it be at a high level or just at a play to PKs kind of level?

Also, will the tournament directors (SUM, MLS) allow them to do this? That we will have to find out later on.

What do you all make of this news? Good idea or bad idea by the players? Obviously they want the money that is publicized here but are they doing this at a cost of the tournament?

I think I’ve gotten around a half dozen emails this morning about last night’s SuperLiga semifinal between New England and Atlante. I caught the majority of the game and thought it was a bit chippy but what happened towards the end pretty much put a damper on the game and the tournament that didn’t need any more bad press.

New England went ahead early thanks to Shalrie Joseph. Atlante lost the match because of that early goal and then a few players due to red cards. They tried to turn the final minutes and seconds of the game into a full fledged battle royal. Players and coaches got involved from the Mexican side and showed just how sore of losers they really were.

Things were just ugly.

With Atlante’s actions last night it put yet another damper on this tournament that has not had the same luster as the 2007 version. I won’t take anything away from what the MLS clubs did on the field because New England and Houston deserve to be where they are at in this tournament, in the finals. I just think this year’s tournament hasn’t been nearly as good as last years.

The use of smaller stadiums, the poor field conditions at some stadiums, poor officiating, and let’s not forget for the MLS sides that this isn’t quite a million-dollar tournament like everyone hyped it to be. All things against this tournament in 2008.

I hope this year’s tournament will serve as a guide that SUM and MLS need to revisit this tournament and redo it a bit. Hopefully the actions by some of the Mexican clubs will cool off in future editions of this tournament and the officiating will improve.

What do you all make of this year’s tournament? To me it hasn’t been nearly as watchable as last year’s.

I nearly forgot to put this up, though I may be late with one of the games. Below are some links to some live video feeds of tonight’s two SuperLiga matches for those who don’t get Telefutra.

Live SuperLiga Stream (DC v. Atlante…DC is currently down 1-0)

Live SuperLiga Stream (Houston v. Chivas)

Live PSN Pasíon por El Fútbol Justin.tv channel for those of you who can not get the above streams to work or want the Telefutura stream in Spanish. (Or if MLSnet streams are not working.)

Enjoy!