The FC's of Toronto are off on a special "TEAM BUILDING RETREAT" this week, in an effort to help Carlos Ruiz "bond" with his new teammates.

Of course, it would have been even nicer if Carlos had actually shown up when he was supposed to, but apparently he did finally put in an appearance.

The good news for Ruiz is that Carver is taking a DECIDEDLY DIFFERENT APPROACH with the Guatemalan forward than he did with Jeff Cunningham:

"What I'm not going to do is start a war with him"

Well THAT'S certainly good news.

"You can't do that with certain players."

Like, for example, Jeff Cunningham.

"Some players need a cuddle to get the best out of them"

Can someone help me get the picture of John Carver cuddling with Dave Dichio out of my head now? Please?

"This is a guy who you have to show respect to."

So I guess if he misses an open shot he won't find his stuff hanging on a nail by the door?

Shrewd.


I've read a lot of comments around the interweb, as well as here on BigSoccer, regarding Hope Solo's performance against...

Bill Archer

Be sure to tune in to FSC tonight at 8PM to watch the Revolution take on the club with the greatest club name in the hemisphere: Joe Public.

What some of you may not know is that JPFC is wholly owned by our good friend and CONCACAF Supremo Jack Warner.

What's more, the stadium they will be playing in, Marvin Lee Stadium (NOT Lee Marvin Stadium) is part of the $22 million Joao Havelage Center of Excellence.

Named after Sepp Blatter's predecessor, the funds for the JHCoE came from the entire FIFA development grant allocation for the Caribbean region for five years.

About half the teams in the CFC have to play their national team games in the US or someplace else because they don't have a FIF approved pitch.

The money that was supposed to build them FIFA caliber football stadiums went into Jack's palace instead.

It still wasn't enough though, so Warner had to sign a note for another $8 million. Two years later, when he hadn't paid one red cent on the debt, FIFA quietly wrote the bank a check for the full amount.

It's nice to have friends.

The place was resurfaced with FieldTurf just last year thanks to another $8 million from FIFA....

Bill Archer

For quite a while now MLS and USL have had a kind of uneasy truce.

The formal agreement between the two expired several years ago and no one has made much of an effort to come up with a new one.

Part of the problem is of course that the two leagues are exact opposites of each other structurally, making any kind of meaningful partnership virtually impossible.

USL is basically a sole proprietorship, a sort of Mom and Pop outfit owned and operated by one guy, Portuguese ex-pat Francisco Marcos. Team owners pay a franchise fee to Mr. Marcos, which then gives them the right to field a team. Each team is solely responsible for their own bottom line.

MLS is a corporate entity which you join by, essentially, purchasing a partnership position. While some revenues are withheld for individual team operations, most are returned to the corporation to be used for league operations and player salaries.

(Note to passing attorneys: I fully realize that I have misused terms here which have legal definitions. Please don't point it out. I'm simplifying.)

All of which goes a ways towards explaining why the cherished dream of so many American fans - "Promotion and Relegation"...

Bill Archer

If there was a "Headline of the Day" contest around here, then certainly "Surly Internationals Hurting TFC" would rank pretty highly on this particular Monday.

According to THIS ARTICLE OUT OF CANADA TODAY Carlos Ruiz has spent the last week playing hide-and-seek with Toronto FC and MLS HQ.

Seems Carlos - for whatever reason - simply refused to return anybody's phone calls. Or maybe he just forgot his charger. Who can say?

Now presumably he knows about the trade, possibly through his agent, because he's reportedly in Los Angeles where he had ONE OR TWO THINGS TO SORT OUT which is why he couldn't get to Toronto in time for Saturday's game.

One can only speculate as to what Ruiz is "sorting out" out there. Paying the paperboy? Getting the phone shut off? Filing a change of address with the Post Office?

But here's the thing:

Several US Olympic Team players, Robbie Rogers for example, flew HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD and actually put in some minutes 48 hours after the US bombed out of the games.

These guys were probably so blown they couldn't have told you what day it was but they showed up for work because it's their...

Bill Archer

With the MLS season rounding the clubhouse turn and heading down the homestretch (I never mix metaphors, but I do enjoy beating snot out of them) the roster-tinkering and rookie-coddling and team-building stuff is pretty much over.

No more big foreign signings to hope for, no more "integrating" recent acquisitions, no more waiting for fresh faced kids to "get acclimated to the pro game" and stake claims to playing time.

Players are back from the Olympics and the recent spate of international matches (well, except for Carlos Ruiz; more later), have recovered from the jet lag and are back in the lineup.

So what you've got now is pretty much what you're going to end the season and start the playoffs (or not) with. This is the time, in short, when teams start playing what sportswriters call "statement" games, letting everyone - including themselves - know they're serious.

Games like, for example, DC, New York and Columbus played this weekend.

All three teams took out a big old stick and whooped up on an unsuspecting opponent by 3-0 scores which could easily have been twice that.

The most interesting of the three (and the one...

Bill Archer

Colorado Rapids Head Coach Fernando Clavijo has BEEN LET GO/LEFT FOR PERSONAL REASONS/OTHER as of today.



While he has indeed been dealing with an undisclosed "family situation" in Uruguay recently, it's also true that club management met with him a week or so ago and made it clear that something had to change.

Clavijo reportedly expected to be fired at that meeting and was surprised that he was going to be kept on until the end of the year, when his contract was due to expire.


New York Red Bulls Managing Director Erik Stover has announced that the now on-track stadium being built in Harrison will be called RED BULL ARENA rather than Red Bull Stadium, for some reason or other.

I can't think of another outdoor venue in the US which is referred to as an "arena" but hey, it's their money.


I am indebted to loyal BigSoccer member CLG431 for the legwork in digging up some quotes from earlier this year by TFC Head Coach "Whining John" Carver who, after watching his team lose had this to say about Guillermo Barros Schelotto and the Crew:...

Bill Archer

Call it the Curse of EA Sports: lately it seems that getting your mug on the cover of one of their ubiquitous sports simulation games means you're on your way out of town.

Following in the footsteps of their decision to put Brett Farve in Green Bay duds on the front of NFL 2009, they prominently featured Maurice Edu in TFC red:


Will EA offer an updated cover for download, LIKE THEY DID WITH THE FARVE COVER or, seeing as how it's MLS, will they figure nobody cares anyway?


Toronto GM Mo Johnston meanwhile has some other plans regarding the Edu transaction, prominent among them being a rather novel idea about what to do with his cut of the money.

Buy himself a flashy new Argentine forward? Hire a coach who doesn't annoy the hell out of everybody? Take the team out for lobster?

No, Mo is thinking bigger; he thinks he'd like to use the dough to RIP UP THE FIELDTURF AT BMO and replace it with grass.


Just last month "Whining John" Carver was saying that there wasn't a thing wrong with it. "MLS...

Bill Archer

Once again this morning I had a lovely piece all set to post and somehow, when I had my back turned, it scurried off to some unknown corner of the interweb.

If any of you come across it, would you let me know? Thanks.


In news worthy of Ripley's Believe it or Not", they have begun actual, physical construction of the actual steel structure which will eventually become RedBull Stadium.

Considering that it's taken all this time just to dig the damn hole, their projection that the stadium will be ready by Spring seems overly optimistic, but I hope I'm wrong.

This is the stadium MLS as a whole has needed for a long time now, although DC is right behind. It's hard to "showcase" a team that's playing in a cavernous stadium on fieldturf yardage markers.

Unfortunately now that it appears that reports of the demise of les tauroux rouges may have been exaggerated - that 10 man match against TFC was a real eye-opener - comes some bad news: they may all be in danger of DROPPING OVER DEAD

In fact, some countries are actually BANNING THE STUFF.

Hey, I think "Aquafina New york" has a nice ring to it.


Good...

Bill Archer

Like the saying - and that awful song - goes, "Be Careful What You Wish For".


In Hope Solo's case, the Olympic Gold Medal game, a replay of last year's US-Brazil match in the Women's World Cup, is her chance to prove to the world that her postgame comments, ill-advised though they may have been, were dead on.

You'll recall of course that Solo remarked to reporters that had coach Greg "Satan" Ryan started her instead of a musty, flea-bitten old has-been that Brazil would have scored NO goals and the US would have won.

(She later sort-of apologized, saying that when she criticized the coach for starting a useless old hag in her place she of course meant no offense to the useless old hag, a distinction which was lost on many observers particularly, it should be noted, most of her teammates and the useless old hag herself.)

So as fate would have it, she's being handed her chance at redemption: the same opponent, in a super-high profile match with everything on the line.

It's unfortunate that she's ratcheted up the pressure on herself higher than it needed to be, but that's the...

Bill Archer

Say what you will about MLS but this season has been about as entertaining as the Britney Spears - Tia Tequila Trailer Park slapping match that will surely pop up on Cops any month now.


Hot on the heels of the "Bruce Arena to Los Angeles" rumors, where the headlines are reading "Arena Tipped to Take Over Galaxy" but the meat of the article is always full of non-comments, evasions and "have a nice day", comes this juicy nugget courtesy of The Star:

BECKHAM GETS GAFFER CALL


Yes, it appears that "the fans" in LA have risen up as one (first time for everything, right?) and are demanding that DBecks take over as Player-Coach of the Galaxy.

(Now before I am inundated with an avalanche of "Silly American, The Daily Star is about as reliable as the National Enquirer" let me just say two words: John Edwards)

So before il Bruce rings up some well-tanned West Coast Real Estate weasel and starts scheduling tours of RELEVANT LA AREA HOMES based on his projected AEG salary,...

Bill Archer