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…

Today just seems like as good of a time as ever to update this list. Seeing how it has been nearly a month’s time since our last view at this list. Some rookies are shining in league games and in once case in SuperLiga games.

With only ten or 12 games left on the year (depending on the team) some guys have to make a serious push in the final months of the season to get votes here. A couple guys are still well ahead of the rest. Some guys have fallen completely off the watch and some new faces have come up in recent weeks.

I think there is finally a true order to this list as well. Before I had said there was no need to have a true order until we had seen enough out of some players – well I think we have now.

And as always, feel free to pipe in your own thoughts and comments on this list with a list of your own.

1. Kheli Dube, New England Revolution – For most people now, Dube is the front runner for this Rookie of the Year award this season. Four goals in 15 games this year for the rookie is some solid numbers. What may be more impressive is the fact that he was a Supplemental pick! Not a SuperDraft pick! Continue Reading…