LAFC, who will join MLS in 2018, broke ground on the newly named Banc of California Stadium on Tuesday and they entrusted part-owner Will Ferrell to operate an excavator. Thankfully, no one was killed.
If the shoe fits… pic.twitter.com/CE3NaERT06
— Major League Soccer (@MLS) August 7, 2016
In the 19th minute of a match between Real Salt Lake and the Chicago Fire, play was halted and two of the referee’s assistants met in the center circle and began taking off their shoes. This, needless to say, is a strange occurrence.
Stranger still, the two men then put on each other’s shoes and returned to their positions. It seemed the linesman needed a bit more grip than his shoes were offering, so he swapped with the fourth official because, well, fourth officials could wear bunny slippers and it wouldn’t really matter. The match then continued without any further shoe swapping between the officials, who all apparently wear the same size by some remarkable coincidence.
There are many layers to the strangeness of this situation.
At the start of the season, fans eager to stamp out MLS’s “retirement league” tag and impatient writers desperate for pageviews dubbed Frank Lampard the league’s worst ever signing. Now, after a loan (that wasn’t really a loan at all) to Man City and a nagging calf injury that has limited his time in MLS since being unveiled by New York City FC in 2014, Lampard has scored eight goals in his last seven matches, including the first hat trick in his club’s brief history.
During his time with Chelsea, Didier Drogba scored 13 goals in 15 appearances against Arsenal. So when he ended his second stint with the Blues and moved to a different continent, Arsenal likely thought they were finally free from his tyranny. They were wrong.
I don’t think it’s possible to accurately explain what Fabian Castillo did to set up the first goal in Dallas’ 3-1 win over Chicago on Saturday, so just watch the video. I mean, he lobbed two defenders and then did a rabona pass to Max Urruti’s head. We’ve all seen people score goals with a rabona, but goals are big and Urruti’s head is not. This is ridiculous.
Portland’s Timbers Army has established itself as MLS’s kings and queens of tifo and they continued to demonstrate this with an unnerving Freddy Krueger/Nightmare on Elm Street display as they hosted their rivals from Seattle.
MLS does not have goal-line technology because it’s too expensive, but after their match against Sporting Kansas City, FC Dallas might want to foot the bill themselves.
Meahwhile, in Dallas… #rainy pic.twitter.com/8MW8ciOfS4
— Nate Dowdle (@nmdowdle) June 3, 2016
Remember the Bishop from Caddyshack who played a round of golf in a biblical storm? Well apparently that guy is real and now an MLS referee. The match officials for FC Dallas v Houston Dynamo decided to attempt to play in the worst conditions this side of Noah’s Arc.
The two sides actually played four minutes of handsfree water polo before the match was finally halted.
Look at this nonsense…
In a recent interview, NYCFC midfielder Andrea Pirlo offered his views on youth development in the United States and how that impacts the quality of play at the professional level.
From Reuters:
“What I’m talking about is actually a system or culture. I don’t mean that the level of technical skills are low. I just mean there is a cultural void that needs to be filled,” Pirlo told Reuters at an MLS promotional event in Manhattan.
The Italian, who turned 37 on Thursday, said Americans who play soccer at college are already behind in terms of their development when compared with European peers. […]
“[In Europe] they pick them and they train them in much more than just running,” he said. “They train them in stopping the ball. Here that doesn’t happen.
“So when a young man becomes a professional in the United States he still has some gaps that need to be filled when playing on the field.”
As far as his personal U.S. experience, Pirlo said he has adjusted to the new environment and found the level of play quite physical, which he attributed to how players evolve in the U.S. system.
“It’s a very hard league to play in. It’s very physical, there’s a lot of running. So there is a lot of physical work and to me, in my mind, too little play,” said Pirlo.
So how would Pirlo fix these systematic issues? Here are his steps to developing a more cultured game…
Anyone who has ever had a disparaging nickname knows how hard it can be to shake. For MLS, it’s the label of being a retirement league. That phrase has burrowed deep under the skin of the league and its supporters, forcing new signing who fit that stereotype to declare their intentions to actually try upon arrival.
Perhaps because of this, Americans have developed a compulsion for rushing to criticize aged stars from other lands who don’t immediately perform well once they join the league. As if condemning a well known player will magically rid MLS of the irrelevant yet somehow still hurtful “retirement league” tag or unquestionably prove that the level of play in the U.S. surpasses the expectations of its doubters.
