Photo: Paul Rudderow
Philadelphia Union
Montreal Impact beat Philadelphia Union U-17’s 2-1 in the final game of the group stage to clinch a berth in the semifinals. A rough result for a young Union squad that looked very good. They only needed a point to advance.
Matt Real has left the U.S. U-20 camp in Spain early to rejoin the Union in Chester.
Over the weekend, Haris Medunjanin earned his 60th cap with Bosnia-Herzegovina, while Andre Blake captained the Reggae Boyz once again.
MLS
Power rankings after a quiet, uneven week in MLS.
ICYMI: Matt Doyle thinks the top six teams in the East are better than any Western Conference side.
Does Phoenix have a shot to join expansion hopefuls Cincinnati, Sacramento, and Detroit?
Zlatan took a 95% pay cut to join the Galaxy. I mean, the weather in Manchester is bad, but…
NWSL
Unhappy with the trade that sent her to Houston, Christen Press has signed a short-term deal with her old club Goteberg in Sweden.
Megan Rapinoe out there like, “Giovinco who?”
Your weekend roundup of league action.
USL
Your Eastern Conference roundup of all the weekend action.
U.S. Soccer
The USMNT squares off against Paraguay at 7:30 p.m. tonight. Watch it on Fox Sports 1, Unimas, or FuboTV.
Tim Weah is trusting the process.
The youngsters are ready to be let loose.
Interim manager Dave Sarachan knows there is no crystal ball for his future with the team.
Matt Real is starting this game. Our backline will consist of 2 homegrowns and 2 draft picks (one who should have been a homegrown). Exciting times.
I hope you are wrong. By my memory, he has 20 appearances as a pro and 19 starts. That is less than half of the professional experience to fall back on that Auston Trusty had when he was handed he keys to LCB.
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if it works, it’s great, but to me he is too good a prospect to risk the downside of a bad performance.
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I do not know him, I have spoken to him only once and that briefly after the charity match the Steel played in West Chester last summer, so I have no real feel for his personality.
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Given everyone who is hurt, he and Yaro are the only two defenders available for the bench, and two defenders are the usual bench allocation.
I highly doubt they are bringing him back early to sit on the bench. That would make no sense.
My understanding of Zlatans ManU deal was that much of his pay was linked to performance bonuses he couldn’t trigger. I don’t think he was going to be anywhere near $27M, which is why he asked to be released. He’ll get enough playing time in a warm climate to justify getting back on SWE before June. He doesn’t need the difference between whatever he was really pulling at MU and LAG.
Also, Matt Doyle is on crack:
“The top six teams in the East are all better than any team in the West”
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Just stop dude.
i think he’s trying to develop a persona of weird hyperbolic hot takes. he wants to be like the malcom gladwell of mls. just shoveling out smart seeming counter intuitive observations that appear to be boldly right but are actually wrong.
and i say that all with an attitude of gentle ribbing. i find his non hot take analysis to be pretty good
Yeah, I think he took it a little too far, but it could be argued that Columbus, NYCFC, NYRB, Toronto, and Atlanta could all be better than anyone from the west. Not sure who #6 is, probably the undefeated Union though.
HIs twitter POV is not much different.
The Union and Revs are in 5th/6th. Does anyone (who is sober) think they’re better than LA? SKC? Galaxy with Zlatan? Would anyone lay money on that belief? No.
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He does this every year, watches part of a match and then extrapolates his narrow view to mispredict he future. We won a few games last year and he said the U would make the playoffs. Anyone else could see the difference between road and home form but him. Oh well.
Matt Doyle is wrong. A lot.
If you rebrand yourself as a Lalas-esque hot take machine your success rare doesn’t matter and you generate more hits.
A win/win if you don’t care about the facts.
I used to listen to Extra Time radio…. Can’t do it anymore. The interviews are almost always pointless and the banter is just silly. Feel like I don’t learn anything. Maybe I never did. And, to be fair, I always thought Doyle was the best part of anything on the MLS networks….
Extra time radio is great when they interview players and coaches. That being said it seems like it’s set-up to be more like SportsCenter with hot takes from young hip soccer media personalities which now does the show on YouTube. Meanwhile they are almost always wrong with their predictions.
The Carlos Luiz interview was terrific. But too often, I find the interviews are pretty dull. They never seem to ask really good questions. I don’t think they do a bad job given the fact that they’re employed by the league. That’s a tough position to navigate. Stacked up against other podcasts, they don’t quite do it anymore for me.
*Ruiz