The first XI for the 2008 MLS All Star game was announced. This isn’t necessairly the starting lineup – coach Nicol will decide who starts. These are just the first 11 guys named to the team. If it were the starting lineup it would look something like this:
Donovan – Cooper
Rogers
Kljestan – Blanco – Joseph – Beckham
Parkhurst – Conrad – Hejduk
Reis
What other players do you think will be added to the team? What will the starting lineup really look like?
Thanks to Nicole for pointing out my terrible blogging skills on the previous post. I mentioned that Beckham could earn his 101st cap for England but didn’t mention that Donovan may get his 100th cap for the US in the same game.
Nicole pointed out that Donovan would be the 4th youngest player ever to reach the 100 cap mark. I wondered who made it quicker and some quick research gave me 3 names I’d never heard before. Cha Bum-Kun got to 100 for South Korea at age 24 in 1997. Then in 1998 both Sami Al-Jaber and Mohammed Al-Deayea got to 100 caps for Saudi Arabia at age 25. Donovan turned 26 in March.
You probably know that Landon Donovan is the all time leading scorer for the US Men’s Nats with 35 goals. Who have his goals come against. Looks like Cuba is the favorite target of Landon many thanks to a 4 goal game in 2003. Here is the full list of how many goals Landon has scored against other countries:
6 – Cuba
4 – Mexico, Panama
3 – Ecuador, El Salvador
2 – Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Honduras
1 – Grenada, Jamaica, Korea Republic, Paraguay, Poland, Sweden, Venezuela, Wales
I want to see some countries like England, Argentina and Spain show up on that list soon!
A little know fact about Landon is that he played goalkeeper one summer. During his summer in goal he bought a pet bird and named him Tony – after US goalkeeper Tony Meola. Ok – I just made that one up, that was actually me that named a bird after Tony Meola.
Sorry Nicole – thanks for pointing out my own stupidity. Keep reading, there will be much more crap for you to catch!
US coach Bob Bradley has named his team that will face England on May 28th. The roster is dominated by European based players who are not in the middle of a regular season, while only including 3 MLS players. Landon Donovan, Brad Guzan, and Ricardo Clark are the MLS representatives on the team.
David Beckham is also on the England roster for the game which will potentially be his 101st cap for England.
The game will be played at Wembly on May 28th.
This is from an article about Real Salt Lake attendance and American fans adopting MLS.
L.A.’s Landon Donovan, Chicago’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco and defensive shot-blocker Jon Busch are among the best soccer players in the world.
I guess if I were standing in a room with some of the best soccer players in the world, you could say I was “among the best”.
I don’t want to put down Jon Busch or any other player in the MLS, they’ve proven themselves to be great athletes just to get a chance with an MLS team. Maybe it is a stretch to call Busch among the best soccer players in the world. He was just recently waived by Columbus and Toronto, two non-playoff teams.
Maybe just being a professional soccer player puts your among the best in the world. Professionals do make up a tiny percentage of every person that plays, so why not call them all among the best in the world?
Is Jon Busch among the best goalkeepers in Major League Soccer? To qualify for “among the best” for this situation you have to be in the top 1/3rd of all goalkeepers.
First of all in case you didn’t see the SuperLiga final last nite this is how it went:
LA gave away and own goal in the first half and Beckham went off with what I hear now is a sprained knee (I watched on TeleFutura but I don’t speak spanish). The Galaxy dominated parts of the 2nd half and both teams were unlucky to not score several times. Chris Klien scored in the 92nd or so minute on an awesome bicycle kick on a poorly cleared ball. Both teams were unlucky again to not score in extra time. In the penalties it came down to the 10th shooter with the penalties all tied up.
If Donovan can make one PK the SuperLiga belongs to the Galaxy. He gets up and does his usual weird finger kissing thing but this time I think the keeper knew what to watch for. He kissed fingers on his left hand more times than fingers on his right hand, which meant he was going to his left (keeper’s right).
That shot didn’t lose the game, but it could have won the game, so it was on to one at a time. Pachuca scored the next one before Abel Xavier sent one wide to give the first SuperLiga to Pachuca.
The first XI was decided last week, and now the All Star roster is complete.
MLS All Star coach Steve Nicol added 5 players of his choosing, and then Don Garber added his two commissioner’s picks. Nicol choose Brian Ching, Landon Donovan, Ronnie O’Brien, Kevin Hartman and Pable Mastroeni. Don Garber choose Jones and Pope, both long time MLS stars who are retiring after this season.
Maybe they aren’t quite all stars this season, but Cobi Jones and Eddie Pope have served Major League Soccer for a long time and deserve a spot on this team.
The MLS All Stars will be facing Celtic at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on July 19th. The game will be televised on ESPN2 at 8:00 PM CST.
The nominees in the category of Best Major League Soccer Player at the ESPYs have been announced. I don’t know how much of a season these awards are supposed to cover. Being that the award show takes place on July 16th it seems odd that they would be based on this current season, and it is kinda late to give awards for last season, so maybe it covers anything that happened in they year 2006, or possibly just the past year since July 2006.
The nominees are Jeff Cunningham, Christian Gomez, Landon Donavan and Matt Reis. If the award covers the past season, I think it goes to Jeff Cunningham. Gomez was the MVP last year, but that is different than a best player award. Cunningham was the leagues top goal scorer on a bottom of the league team.
Who do you think deserves the award?
Eight Major League Soccer sides will have representatives on the team that will represent the US in this summer’s Gold Cup. Bob Bradley announced the roster today featuring 12 MLS players and 11 from outside MLS. The Gold Cup is the number one priority for Bob Bradley this summer, so this should be his top team. The US won the Gold Cup in 2005. All of the players listed as forwards come from Major League Soccer.
MLS Members:
Non-MLS Member:
This commercial should be files under “Should have never been made”.
The short kid is picked last, then he kicks the ball way over everyone else, then Landon says “I’m Landon Donovan, Don’t Descriminate”.
Right before the game i sent this text message to a buddy:
The laptop goes off during the game, I’ll catch you later
3 – 1 USA!
That is two in a row with only proof to one person. I really must start posting those predictions here a couple days ahead of time.
Glad to see Landan Donovan ripping it up! He scored a hat trick today in case you did not see or hear about the game.
I agree with Wynalda, why haven’t they hired Bradley yet? I also really hope they aren’t waiting to get a foreign coach.
Dick’s Sporting Goods shows a lot of MLS support, they even built a stadium for the Rapids, but why do they keep showing that baseball commercial? You think they could come up with a soccer commercial they could show during the soccer games the sponsor?
Oh and the jerseys weren’t as bad as I thought they were a couple days ago. I still don’t like the pinstripe.
