MLS Saturday Thoughts

Thank you Nick Saban and John Parker Wil­son. With absolutely no inten­tion of watch­ing MLS Sat­ur­day night, gear­ing up for the clash of the year in Col­lege Foot­ball I ended up watch more MLS than I have in about two months. That’s because the Crim­son Tide rolled all over San­ford Sta­dium mak­ing more of spec­ta­tors prob­a­bly wish they took the hedges out again and played real foot­ball on the pitch!

Here are some quick thoughts:

• Colum­bus is the best team in the league right now which guar­an­tees them noth­ing in MLS’ pecu­liar play­off sys­tem. At least they get a birth in the CONCACAF Cham­pi­ons League in 2009/10 for their troubles.
• Col­orado under Gary Smith plays a direct attack­ing style which he brought over from Eng­land. Omar Cum­mings in par­tic­u­lar fits this style well as does Mike Petke. The Rapids, as I men­tioned this past week on CSRN’s Amer­i­can Soc­cer Show will be tough to beat come play­off time. They are essen­tially play­ing the same style of foot­ball as USL-1’s Puerto Rico Islanders who have been the story thus far in the CONCACAF Cham­pi­ons League.
• Chivas USA is get­ting results with a makeshift squad. That’s a credit to Preki’s genius.
• San Jose fal­tered at home when it most needed the points. Not play­ing in two weeks cer­tainly did not help. Dar­ren Huckerby is still the go to guy but the Quakes defense is sud­denly look­ing shaky.
• Many may not recall the Yura Mov­sisyan and Mehdi Bal­louchy changed clubs late last sea­son. Both could end up being the pri­mary rea­son that their news sides make the play­offs this year. Bal­louchy has gone from being a wasted player under Fer­nando Clav­ijo to a key cog under Gary Smith. Movi­sisyan is a resource­ful player whose ver­sa­til­ity seems to have saved RSL at the right moment.
  
• The two USL imports to Red Bull NY are going to be stars some­where. Mac Kandji was great this past year for the Sil­ver­backs but part of the rea­son he was avail­able was because Atlanta missed the play­offs. Let’s hope he doesn’t end up 0 for 2.
• After all the talk of the East’s supremacy, the West could end up get­ting five teams in the play­offs. They could also get only yhe min­i­mum three still. Too much is still up in the air and late in the sea­son the East has not proven, beyond the Colum­bus Crew to be in any way stronger than the West.
• Conor Casey recall for the US? He gives Bob Bradley every­thing Brian Ching does plus a record of actu­ally scor­ing goals in Europe. Now that his con­fi­dence is back, a player with his tech­ni­cal skill and fin­ish­ing abil­ity is tough to find among Amer­i­cans. Last year  at this time I penned a col­umn call­ing for Casey recall and a year later I am still on that bandwagon.