Daily news roundups

News roundup: MLS knockout round begins, Alberg rumors

Photo by Earl Gardner

Philadelphia Union

After much speculation, it looks like Roland Alberg may be leaving in the off-season.

With US Soccer in shambles, FourFourTwo came up with a list of who they see as moving the sport forward here at home. Number 1 looks familiar.

They also think it’s time to make C.J. Sapong the centerpiece of the team.

Local

In college soccer, Penn fell to West Virginia 0-1, La Salle beat Drexel 1-0, Villanova lost to St. John’s 1-2, and Lafayette beat Navy 3-2

MLS

The eight-team knockout round of the playoffs began on Wednesday. San Jose were eliminated by the dominant Vancouver Whitecaps, and New York Red Bulls routed the Fire in Chicago to advance.

Atlanta United face Columbus Crew in Atlanta Thursday night, and it is going to be one hell of a crowd.

Bill Hamid has officially completed his transfer from D.C. United to Danish side FC Midtjylland.

Amidst the possibility of moving to Austin in 2019, Columbus Crew SC has offered refunds to all 2018 season ticket holders.

Around the globe

Get to know the USSF presidential candidates.

Good interview by Jonathan Tannenwald with soccer executive Kevin Payne.

England will play Spain in the U-17 World Cup final on Oct. 28.

Mexico, the United States, and Canada are increasing their joint push to host the 2026 World Cup, and things are looking good for Philadelphia should they get it.

A pro-ISIS group has released a disturbing and threatening poster that features Lionel Messi.

32 Comments

  1. I mean this in the nicest way possible but making a limited player like CJ the centerpiece of our team is a joke.

    • It’s a shame more people don’t realize how good CJ really is or understand his game. Is he going to pull a Giovinco and dribble 4 guys? No. But he does have a natural goal scorers instinct and desire. If Jim had played him correctly in ’16 and not continued to move him back to half he would have had his break out year last year. As it stands I don’t think this was a blip, and I expect to see CJ putting up numbers like this next year.
      .
      One more thing to add, he was the highest scoring American in MLS this year.

      • Are there better strikers than CJ in the league? Of course. What he anywhere close to the cause of our problems this year? Of course not. He’s a top 4 player on this team and could easily score 20+ goals if we had actual legit players at ACM and RW.

    • OneManWolfpack says:

      I agree. CJ is the least of our problems

  2. Too bad they are looking at the Linc rather than Talen for 2026.

    • Why on earth would they be looking at TES as a WC venue over the Linc? It’s capacity is way to small, it’s hard to get to (especially if you are from out of town), it doesn’t have the necesary infrastructure to handle the crowds (parking, security, mass transit, etc.), and it isn’t set up for the media hoards. An NFL stadium is perfect as a WC venue for all these reasons.

      • I completely understand that TES isn’t big enough for a WC game. That being said, it’s still a much better place to watch a game than a football stadium is. If you’re in the back row of the upper deck at the Linc, do you really have any idea whether a tackle was clean or not? Can you tell whether the defender used his arm or his shoulder?
        .
        I’ve heard many people say that in TES there are no bad seats. I’ve never heard that said about the Linc.

      • I see your point, but whenever I have watched soccer matches from the upper level of large stadiums before I had an awesome experience. The energy of the big crowd is amazing, and the wider angle allows you to see the entire field. It is admittedly a totally different and less intimate experience than TES, but the energy and spectacle of a WC match would more than make up for it.

    • OneManWolfpack says:

      Yeah isn’t there a requirement for an amount of seats to host a WC game? Talen offers perfect training/practice grounds and the Linc offers a regulation size pitch with close to 70,000. It’s perfect

  3. Great story about Atlanta and why they getting more fans to come to their games than most Premier clubs. The Union look like amateurs compared to their business plan and execution. http://m.bbc.com/sport/football/41726695
    .
    Only 11k showed up officially in Chicago last night. Looked more like 7k. This lack of fan support and their weak defense were instrumental in their loss against all predictions.

  4. el Pachyderm says:

    That attendance for a playoff game in a city with surrounding suburbs of roughly 20,000,000 people is BLISTERINGLY troublesome for the league when Soldier Field can sell 80,000 tix to an international friendly or a club friendly. In the end this can be spun or dressed up in canvas clothing, doesn’t change the reality, in many to most enclaves, people do not give a shit about fake soccer.
    .
    But hey, its working here? Right? This policy and model…
    .
    Attendance was up 4% over the regular season this year from last year, or was it? Take away Atlanta and it actually dropped.
    .
    Oh wait, I know, was the World Series on last night? Did the Blackhawks play. Must of been the Pistons. That’s it. Maybe that’s what managed to keep IDK a hole 10,000 other people home. Keep telling yourself soccer is the 4th or 5th most popular sport in the US and us it as an excuse for shitty attendance.
    .
    Feel free to debate deliberate disregard —whatever. What is, is what is. Final words.
    .
    Eric Wynalda for president.

    • Spot on. There really is no excuse… That’s what you get for designing a soccer club for suburban families.

    • So by your logic, Fire fans who had been attending regular season matches decided not to go last night because of the US doesn’t have pro/rel?

      • el Pachyderm says:

        no I’m saying an open pyramid in time solves all attendance issues.
        .
        0.1 percent of 20,000,000 people is 20,000 yes?
        .
        so if there were 10,000 in announced attendance, closer to 7 or 8 IMO and based off of what I read on Twitter that is 0.05%.
        .
        Maybe I’m off, but that’s really bad, no?

      • Oh, there’s no denying the fact that the sparse crowd in Chicago was embarassing.

        I think that Pete hit the nail on the head, Bridgeview is a suburban location which is difficult to get to from Chicago without a car (I’ve done this before, it’s similar to going to Talen from Philadelphia using SEPTA). The Union didn’t even sell out their two USOC finals in mid-Sept at Chester primarily because of the stadium’s location (also school was back back in session).

        There’s a reason why MLS is waiting to announce when Red Bulls play. If ATL wins, they will be playing NYC at home so that will be put on Halloween because they’ll still get a good crowd then. If the Crew somehow wins, they’ll probably play NYC on Mon night in Columbus with NYRB-TFC moving to Tues night. Just a hunch.

        MLS playoff format still needs improvement after all of these years.

      • An old school teacher has to add — wait for it — school night and responsible parenting.

      • The USOC isn’t even an MLS (fake-soccer, whatever you want to call it) competition. People prefer weekend games. Or warm-weather games (so, um, lol on Wynalda switching us to the Euro calendar). People without a car who normally take public transit couldn’t go at all because the usual bus wasn’t running last night.

    • So Chicago gets 6,000 people for a playoff game and relegation would solve that? I think it would reverse that.
      —-
      That stadium is out of sight, out of mind. I think if the Union’s stadium was in a better location attendance would be slightly higher (not 19 or anything, but maybe 17,500). Who knows. MLS took a huge risk gambling on suburban middle class families when millennials living in the city are really driving the attendance numbers up. Those suburban families would drive to a game anyway, but urbanites are much less likely to travel by car, especially that far away. Public transportation and things to do around the stadium.

    • lol yes eric wynalda for president. he will force mls to play a winter schedule and attendance will drop 85%

      • OneManWolfpack says:

        Disagree on Wynalda. I feel like switching to the Euro schedule wouldn’t be that tough. Start in August. You have Aug, Sept, Oct, and at least half (if not all) of Nov. for the cold weather cities to get games in. That’s 12-16 weeks of games. Take the next month off and resume back in mid-January. Play those games in warm weather cities (not easy, but I feel like it could be scheduled). Return back to regular play in mid-February. This would really only then impact a couple games on a 34 (or so) game schedule. The league normally starts in early March now anyway. I genuinely don’t think it’s that difficult. This allows us to play playoffs and important games in better weather, instead of in 12 degree weather in Toronto for a Cup Final.

      • That works for the Bundesliga. They take off from Mid Dec. to Mid Jan. I’d probably prefer bundling up for a Jan. match to sitting in the sun in mid summer. Thought I was going to die from heat stroke at the July 2 match this year.

        Also, the threat from people watching NFL instead I think is bunk. Men in Blazers had the director of operations from Atlanta on a week or two ago. He said the NFL / MLS fan overlap was something like 5%.

      • OneManWolfpack – Russia does this for 3 months! and the sky doesn’t fall.
        totally would accept it.
        i’m a hockey fan so second season (aka the playoffs) is what it’s all about. let’s split the different at 2 months. use the break regroup, retool, fire you head coach, let your overweight striker lose 15 lbs., get a #10 on transfers, etc.
        seriously, this is how some of your favorite tv shows operate. why can your sport?

      • you guys are delusional if you think people are going to watch mls in philly, ny, dc, canada, minnesota, and chicago in february. some of the march games are barely tolerable

      • el Pachyderm says:

        CLAUSURA. APERTURA.
        .
        Problemo Solvo’d
        .
        For the 1000th time.

      • Just go with a split season (Aug-early Dec and mid-Feb thru mid-May). Crown an East & West champion for each season and the next two teams in each conference with the combined most points. Those eight play for MLS Cup in late-May/early June.

        While the spring season is shorter in duration than the fall, there are typically more FIFA dates in the fall than the spring. However, you would have to modify this during a World Cup year so playoff teams wouldn’t lose players due to that. So maybe what you do in that scenario is play 1-2 matches of the spring season in Dec to allow the spring season to finish quicker.

      • Agreed, Pachy. Pretty simple.

      • To counter the weather argument – I wore shorts and a T-shirt to the finale on October 22. Columbus, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Minnesota and New England would definitely be cold, but most other places you could play until the 1st week in December and then take off until February – assuming that there is the same amount of games on either side. It could be 5 degrees in February, but it could also be 55, which is tolerable. It’s feasible, and the NFL & weather arguments are valid but in the end they ultimately have little to no impact.

  5. note: got a text message from my ticket rep. wish i could screen grab and share here how that went.

    • Please oh please give us a summary. I need a laugh. Seriously.

    • I have a DC United ticket rep who has been leaving me messages about getting tickets for the new stadium. I must have gotten on to their list when I went to the Gold Cup quarterfinals there in 2011.

    • Thanks for reaching out. (note: this was added later. me being kind. not his fault for what follows.)

      (Was asked if i saw Sunday’s game) No. I watched decision day coverage. I don’t get TCN so 21 matches this year were unavailable for me, including this one.

      Despite the goals scored the national broadcast didn’t want to cover the two non-playoff competing teams.

      Hoping the Crew don’t move. Garber looks like he’s reaching Bettman and Goodell status with the move. That’s some elite company.

      Tell Jim thanks for the work, but no. He’s a good guy, but I almost threw my shoe at him in Atlanta. Tell Andre and C.J. thanks. Tell Jay and Earnie next time I’m in a club box with them, muted respect will be replaced by a tempest. (note: i have broke bread with these gents. like the time Andre came into the box after Gold Cup injury, i respect these men and their time and don’t photo-op or corner them)

      Lots of work to be done.

      19 weeks.

      • Section 114 (Former) says:

        Since we have to fill in the later questions through our imagination:

        Thanks for reaching out. (note: this was added later. me being kind. not his fault for what follows.)

        (Was asked if i saw Sunday’s game) No. I watched decision day coverage. I don’t get TCN so 21 matches this year were unavailable for me, including this one.

        (At what point in the game did you start to wonder why they hadn’t been able to do this all year?)
        Despite the goals scored the national broadcast didn’t want to cover the two non-playoff competing teams.

        (So, we aren’t the worst team in the league. Aren’t you proud? Can we raise your ticket prices to get Jay another helicopter?)
        Hoping the Crew don’t move. Garber looks like he’s reaching Bettman and Goodell status with the move. That’s some elite company.

        (Why won’t you renew even after Coach Curtin brought Andre, CJ, and Fabinho over to your house to clean the gutters? By the way, has Roland or Ilsinho gotten there yet — they said they were almost there?)
        Tell Jim thanks for the work, but no. He’s a good guy, but I almost threw my shoe at him in Atlanta. Tell Andre and C.J. thanks. Tell Jay and Earnie next time I’m in a club box with them, muted respect will be replaced by a tempest. (note: i have broke bread with these gents. like the time Andre came into the box after Gold Cup injury, i respect these men and their time and don’t photo-op or corner them)

        (We are expanding the solar rocket to also fit some other guys)
        Lots of work to be done.

        (What’s 2 times your favorite movie?)
        19 weeks.

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