MLS Is Back: Catching Up

What a summer! MLS has returned to play after the World Cup, and I have returned to calling games ... but clearly have been derelict in my blogging.

I'll share the highlights from my recent games, but quickly: There are many changes occurring throughout sports broadcasting at the moment. One of these has seen my role at ESPN drastically reduced. Having called multiple college soccer games every year since 2014, I was told I would be hired on a free-lance basis (if at all) this fall, rather than on a set contract, which had been the setup since the ACC Network launched in 2019.

This was not welcome, by any means. It feels very strange not to be prepping 50+ college soccer rosters and trying to track lineups as the season gets underway. But we are used to going where the work is, and I am excited about the broadcasts I do have and will have this fall.

Since MLS returned to action, I have called three games in three cities with three partners, and each has offered its own unique high points. Lata drama and controversy in D.C. while working with a football legend, Phil Neville. My first trip to wonderful soccer-specific stadia in St. Louis and Montreal. A wonderful chance to see family and bring them out to a game, albeit a wet one! A reunion game with my man Jalil Anibaba. A first chance to work with a player I covered for years, Lloyd Sam, who I somehow convinced that I thought he was left-footed!

Here are the on-field highlights:

D.C. United 2, Toronto FC 1

St. Louis City 1, Real Salt Lake 1

CF Montreal 1, D.C. United 1

More trips and more games to come! I'm excited to see what the fall brings.

Soccer's back already? Escaping New York for MLS preseason in Florida

The snow just keeps coming in New York this winter, only my third in the Northeast in the last 13 years, so I was only too glad (and very lucky) to escape to Florida on Tuesday to cover some Major League Soccer preseason action.

Going from this:

to this:

certainly brightens your day, even if that day starts at 5 a.m. on about three hours' sleep.

At any rate, I'm working with MLSsoccer.com as part of its preseason coverage, and on Wednesday night we'll offer one of the best preseason matchups you could ask for: D.C. United vs. Toronto FC (7 p.m. ET, MLSsoccer.com). It sounds a little strange, given that those teams finished last and second-to-last in the Eastern Conference last year. But these are teams in the midst of big-time makeovers, and being the first to get a look at the new groups is exciting. Even if those groups are still assembling.

We'll also cover the Columbus Crew's first game under new head coach Gregg Berhalter when they take on Swedish champion Malmö at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and I'm excited to get a first look at the new Crew.

Here's a pre-game look from each perspective:
Columbus Crew website
Toronto FC website
D.C. United via Washington Post

The new IMG Stadium seems like a good preseason venue,
even if it does have a track.

The Toronto-D.C. game stands out because there are SO many new faces on each side. Well, not NEW faces, exactly - familiar faces in new places:

D.C. United brought in seven MLS veterans in the offseason and could probably start six of them at some point (three are center backs). The cast of characters has plenty of talent and could instantly put D.C. back in the playoff hunt. Why don't more teams re-build this way? It's expensive, since D.C. acquired several players through the re-entry process, but a double dose of allocation money (for missing the playoffs AND for reaching the CONCACAF Champions League) sure helps. One of those new guys is defender Bobby Boswell, who began his career with D.C. from 2005-07 and who I consider a friend after working together for four years in Houston. It was great to see him on Tuesday and catch up on his busy offseason, including the birth of his second son, Nash, last month.

Another former Houston friend in town is Dwayne De Rosario, who went from D.C. United to one of his old clubs, Toronto FC, in the offseason. Yet De Ro - always entertaining and still as confident as ever - is one of the lower-profile acquisitions by free-spending Toronto FC, which brought in seven new signings of its own, including the high-priced trio of England international Jermain Defoe, U.S. international Michael Bradley, and Brazilian forward Gilberto.

MLSsoccer.com's Samantha Yarock sat down with Toronto FC on Tuesday, and I listened in on some very entertaining interviews. Among the lines of the day were Ryan Nelsen saying "a hardened MLS player is gold dust for me" and De Ro pointing out that one of his fingers is feeling lonely right now (he has four MLS Cup championship rings).

It's all got me ready for my first MLS action of 2014 on Wednesday at the IMG Stadium here in Bradenton!

Preseason invitees 2013 - Eastern Conference

The MLS preseason is inevitably a blur of players coming and going as teams try to fill out their rosters. Here is an attempt to keep track of who's under contract, who's in camp with whom, and which teams are keeping spots open for the summer.

Information is unofficial, acquired to the best of my ability via team and media reports.

Eastern Conference:

Chicago Fire (17-11-6, 4th East) -- Frank Klopas			Signed: 26 / Open: 4
2013 Newcomers: MF Joel Lindpere (trade, New York), FW Maicon Santos (re-entry, D.C. United), MF Jeff Larentowicz (trade, Colorado), MF Brendan King (1990, Bray Wanderers - Ireland), MF Dilly Duka (trade, Columbus), FW Quincy Amarikwa (trade, Chicago), MF Yazid Atouba (draft, 1993, Cameroon),
Draft: Atouba, LB John Gallagher (1990, Penn State), GK James Belshaw (1990, Duke), DF Caleb Konstanski (1991, Indiana)
Trial: GK Alec Kann (1990, Charleston Battery), FW Colin Rolfe (1990, Houston), DF Pascal Chimbonda (1979, Guadeloupe), DF Leo Lelis (Fluminense, Brazil)
Other: GK Jay Nolly (1982, Vancouver) - rights acquired, unsigned

Home-grown cage match: FC Dallas vs. Toronto FC

The FC Dallas signing of home-grown defender/midfielder Kellyn Acosta on Thursday got me thinking. If the two most successful MLS academies in terms of home-grown players signed (7 each, by FC Dallas and Toronto FC) met on the field with only those players, who would win?

Here's what such a 7-on-7 matchup could look like, although the size and surface of the field and the rules of the game would surely affect how teams chose to lineup.

FC DALLAS (2-2-2)

GK Richard Sanchez (18yo)

DF Kellyn Acosta (16yo) ------------------ DF Moises Hernandez (20yo)

 MF Victor Ulloa (20yo)

MF Bryan Leyva (20yo)

FW Jonathan Top (19yo) ------------------ FW Ruben Luna (20yo)

FW Keith Makubuya (19yo)

MF Nicholas Lindsay (19yo) ------------------------------- MF Matt Stinson (19yo)
MF Oscar Cordon (19yo)

DF Ashtone Morgan (21yo) ------------------ DF Doneil Henry (19yo)

GK Quillan Roberts (17yo)

TORONTO FC (2-3-1)

Now it's an interesting game, but I'm giving the edge to Toronto because the combined experience of Morgan and Henry at the back would cancel out the main Dallas advantage - two forwards who have seen MLS game time - and limit Toronto's disadvantage in goal, where I think Richard Sanchez is further along than Quillan Roberts.

I like the Ulloa/Leyva tandem in the midfield, but even if Top dropped in to match Toronto's numbers, I don't think Dallas is getting on the board. Makubuya has yet to make his MLS debut, so Toronto could struggle up front, but the speed of a healthy (for the purposes of this exercise) Lindsay against the green duo of Acosta and Hernandez would put Toronto over the top.

Who do you think would make a difference in this game? Who would come out on top?

My inner Canadian

I covered today's Toronto-Philadelphia game as a free-lance writer for The Canadian Press, and I was so inspired that I even sang along to, "O Canada," in the press box. The English words, though, not the French.

The game itself was one-sided, which means finding good quotes and story angles can be difficult, but both Terry Dunfield and Jeremy Hall were very classy and well-spoken in defeat, so my thanks to them.

So far, my wondrous prose has appeared on the website of The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and MetroNews Canada (with a huge, bold headline). Pretty cool! And yes, they switched out my "defense" for "defence" ... stylistic differences we may not solve overnight.

But seriously, everybody from TCP has been really helpful and classy to deal with, so my thanks to them for the second chance this year to work together.

Disney Day 7: Nothing like a couple of 1-0 games

I don't know where to start with for this one - it's been an exhausting seven hours. I worked on the ESPN3 broadcasts of the Pro Soccer Classic for the second consecutive year, which is a real thrill because the production value (audio, number of cameras, graphics, etc.) is on a different level from anywhere else I've worked. There were some big changes to the setup from last year, and I think they mostly worked out very well - I had a good time calling both games, and hopefully the broadcasts worked for our viewers in Texas, Canada, and wherever they were watching.

Disney Day 6: What's in a nickname?

Well, in our final broadcast together for this tournament, Simon Borg and I spent time in the first half basically picking on Toronto FC and pointing out how not ready they were for Wednesday's Champions League first leg against the LA Galaxy. Then rookie midfielder Luis Silva woke his team up, scored two goals in five minutes, and turned our show into a discussion of potential nicknames for Silva. QuickSilva (@BobbyBrizzo) and Luis Skillva (@MikalManu) were my favorites of the Twitter suggestions, and Simon went with QuickSilva for the rest of the show.

Disney Day 4: Controversy rules

That's me on the left.

After attending MLS broadcasting meetings yesterday and today, I found myself on the air again tonight in the fourth doubleheader of the Disney Pro Soccer Classic. Simon Borg and I called the Dallas-Orlando City game in the nightcap, a big game for me because (a) I'll be calling a lot of Dallas games this year; (b) the atmosphere is a lot better when Orlando City is playing; and (c) the teams played two tight games last year. So I was looking forward to this one, and rightly so.

The game turned on a fourth-minute play in which Orlando goalie Sean Kelley had a rough touch on a backpass and then was forced to take down Dallas forward Blas Perez in the penalty area. Everybody agreed with the foul and penalty kick, but it was the red card about which my esteemed colleague disagreed. Orlando stayed in the game for maybe 25 minutes, but Dallas pulled away to lead 2-0 at the half and win 4-0, taking control of the group. That didn't mean we weren't still talking about that red card!

Disney Day 2: High winds, high entertainment

I had seen enough weather reports to know that today, Saturday, would be the coldest day of the tournament, but I still wasn't prepared for the cool temperatures and whipping wind that wreaked havoc with any notes that weren't taped down and kept my nose at a constant run. Despite that, I felt like Simon Borg and I got to call the best game of the tournament so far in the opener, and I enjoyed watching the nightcap despite the weather.

Disney preview: Toronto FC

The 2012 Disney Pro Soccer Classic starts on Friday, signaling the final countdown to the MLS season. I’ll be calling games at the tournament for the third straight year, teaming up with Simon Borg as part of MLSsoccer.com’s coverage of the group stage and then working the final day of the tournament on the ESPN3 broadcasts. As the week goes on, I’ll preview each of the eight teams set to participate in Orlando.

This is the third edition of the tournament, and three teams have participated in each one: Houston, Dallas, and Toronto. Two of those will take the field for their first game on Saturday, and that brings us to my fifth preview, Toronto.