Category Archives: MLS

Colorado Rapids Assures Fans That They Are The Defending Champs

Denver, Colorado – The Colorado Rapids are out to set the record straight.  It seems most long-time area residents refuse to believe that they are in fact the defending MLS champions.
It seems the confusion  began this January when are residents who had previously bought single-game tickets received direct mailings offering season ticket pages for “your defending champion Colorado Rapids.”   Within days of sending out the mailers, the Rapids front office was flooded with phone calls. 

“In the customer service center, all you could hear was people saying things  ,’ ’Really,’ ‘Really,’ and ‘they gave us a trophy, and everything,’” reported a source within the organization,  “They weren’t even calling to buy anything – they thought they were doing us a big favor by pointing out the ‘misprint.’” Continue reading

February 9, 2011 – News Briefs

*** Zinedine Zidane claims, in interview with sports daily L’Equip, that he backed Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid to help grow the sport in the Middle East.  Zidane denied that his involvement was purely for the money.  In fact, he claimed to have received no personal benefit at all, stating that the millions of Euros he received were distributed entirely to charities, such as the Zinedine Zidane Tahitian Beach House Foundation, and the Zinedine Zidane Center for the Furtherance of his Personal Automobile Collection.  Zidane further added that his headbutting of Marco Materazzi in the final of the 2006 World Cup was intended to help facilitate world peace.

*** MLS dashes Atlanta’s hopes for franchise.  In recent months, Arthur Blank, the founder of Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons, has been taking time out of his busy tanning schedule to lobby MLS for an expansion franchise.  Don Garber, however, rejected the Bea Arthur lookalike’s overtures stating that there would be no franchise until they had a plan in place to build a new soccer specific stadium.  I’m not terribly familiar with the geography of Atlanta, but if you live in a distant suburb full of parking lots, strip malls, and lightly-used industrial parks, you may someday be in store for a modest low-budget soccer stadium in your neighborhood. 

*** UEFA withdraws threat against Ukraine.  Previously, we reported that UEFA was rattling its saber, threatening to withdraw Ukraine’s right to host the 2012 Euro championship due to political influence over the soccer federation.  After the Ukranian government and federation officials assured UEFA that no further interference would occur, UEFA said that Ukraine would remain co-host of the event.  It is unclear yet how many cars these “assurances” can purchase.

*** According to the Zimbabwean, “The Zimbabwe Football Association will get a whooping $300 000 bonus from world soccer governing body FIFA”   http://bit.ly/fZGPLE (emphasis added).  It is unclear what makes this bonus, which stems from FIFA’s huge profits from the 2010 World Cup, so noisy but hopefully it will be spent before it causes undue disruption for the poor citizens of Harare.  [Aw, yea - I went there - take that online editor of low-budget African newspaper!]

Gastón Puerari Edits Own Wikipedia Page, Describes Self As ‘Impressive’

Chicago, IL – Last week, the Chicago Fire announced the signing of 25-year-old Uruguayan striker Gastón Puerari.  With that announcement came a flood of searches on Wikipedia for information about Mr. Puerari.  However, there was no entry for him on the Internet encyclopedia.  That would not last long.

Within hours of his signing several anonymous editors collaborated to create a page about Puerari.   Puerari was not impressed and immediately went about correcting it. 

“First off, I saw that someone listed me at 5 foot 7, and I nearly came to tears,” Puerari said, “I am a solid 5′ 8″ and that isn’t even when I wear my European man-heels. So, naturally, that had to be corrected.”     

“Also, whoever made my entry added little more than facts and figures about which teams I had played for, and so on.  There was no flair.  No representations about my greatness,” Puerari went on, “People make it out as if anyone can score 14 goals in 78 matches in a middling South American league, but it isn’t true.  It takes a special talent and my Wikipedia page desperately needed to reflect that, so it was imperative that it mention that I ‘impressed’ several major clubs and that I was a ‘key player’ for the  Montevideo Wanderers.”

Despite his edits, Puerari is still not fully satisfied about his entry.  “I keep removing the word ‘diminutive’ but someone keeps putting it back up – I mean, how is that necessary? Or even accurate?  I weigh a solid 103 pounds! Since when is that diminutive?” Puerari asked, before being knocked to the ground by a gentle breeze.

Chicago Fire Owner Planning To Move Team To Miami, But First Must Assemble Team So Poor That He Can Escape Stadium Lease

Chicago, IL – Andrew Hauptman, owner of the Chicago Fire, has all but declared his intentions to move the team to Miami, Florida.  Unfortunately for him, however, his lease to Toyota Park provides only one escape clause: extremely poor attendance.

Together with general manager Frank Klopas, Mr. Hauptman has hatched a plot to assemble a team so awful that no one would possibly come to watch them, thus facilitating the team’s move to Miami.  This is not their first attempt: the scheme began last year when they hired Carlos de los Cobos, who most recently split his time between operating a small muffler shop and coaching the El Salvador national side.  Although the team played pitifully, attendance was still not bad enough to terminate the lease.

Last year’s has-beens performed too well in the attendance department.  So, this year, the Fire have decided to populate their roster almost exclusively with no-names.  Gone are the swan songs and unibrow freakshows.  In are 30 year olds who failed to make strides in the Azerbaijani third division.   

Hopefully, for Fire fans at least, this rag-tag team can rally and foil their owner’s scheme and rally to win a place in the MLS playoffs (perhaps with inspiration from a cardboard cutout of Mr. Hauptman where portions of his clothing are removed pursuant to each victory), but I sincerely doubt it.

Chicago Fire Fails To Land [Homeless] World Cup Star

Chicago, IL – Chicago Fire’s roster woes have been well documented on these pages. Barely able to field a side for a 7 v. 7 exhibition, Technical Director Frank Klopas has been pulling out all of the stops to replenish his squad. Just this week, rumors swirled that they were on the verge of signing the winner of the World Cup golden boot. The Homeless World Cup, that is.

Unfortunately for Fire fans, their hopes of adding a big new scorer appears to be fading. Negotiations have hit an impasse. “Greezy” Geech Slopnik, who shares the Interstate 90/94 Fullerton underpass in Chicago with an oil stain shrine of the blessed virgin Mary, explained that Chicago’s current offer was “an insult.”
Continue reading

Don Garber Provides Bank Information To Nigeria In Exchange For Hundred Of Talented Prospects

Today, MLS Commissioner Don Garber announced that MLS had reached a deal to bring hundreds of Nigeria’s most talented youth prospects to American shores with little or no cost to the league. 

“Not to toot my own horn, but I single-handedly doubled – nay, tripled - the talent level of MLS today,” explained accomplished horn-tooter Don Garber, ”It all started when I received an e-mail from a group of Nigeria’s leading football scouts.  They offered to provide us  – totally free of cost, I might add – with hundred of highly touted prospects to populate our football academies and youth teams and all they asked in return was our bank information so that they could secure transportation for the players.”

In unrelated news,  hours after Mr. Garber’s press conference, the league’s public relation office distributed a notice stating ticket prices would be quadrupled for the 2011 season in order to allow the league to recover from an  ”unexpected massive loss of funds.”

[contributed by Rory Miller, thanks Rory!  For more by Rory, check out: www.tiny.cc/1nt1i]

Chicago Fire Loans Template Press Conference Responses To Nery Castillo’s New Club

Chicago, IL – On January 20, 2011, the Chicago Fire reported that Nery Castillo would be joining Greek club Aris FC.  Apparently, Castillo wasn’t all that Aris received from the Fire.  The Fire also provided Aris with a memorandum containing sample press conference responses.  According to team sources, the Fire received this memorandum from officials at Manchester City and they apparently received a copy from Shaktar Donetsk and paid to translate it into English.

“It has been invaluable,” said a team source – in a thick Greek accent - who wished to remain anonymous, “it is one thing to be disappointed with a signing but it is even worse when you have to express that disappointment on the fly.”

Beer and Soccer has obtained a copy of the memorandum, the contents of which are reproduced below: Continue reading

Chicago Fire Opts for Monster.com over Ladders.com for Staffing Needs

Chicago, IL – With less than two months to go until the Fire kick off their 2011 MLS campaign, the Fire’s front office has expanded its search to the internet in order to replenish its badly depleted roster. 

Fire honcho Frank Klopas launched an exhaustive scouting search of Chicagoland parks (from “Highland to Tinley”) this off season, but after several months he had nothing to show for it except frost bite and syringes of dubious origin.  Despite this failure, Klopas was undeterred.  After hearing about the “Internet” from a neighborhood child, Klopas decided to take advantage of 50 free hours of “Internet” time that he says he “won” in a “mail order sweepstakes” from America Online.  After several hours of attempting to load the software, Klopas was on his way to complete his reconstruction deconstruction of this once championship-caliber team. 

“Last year we really tried to give Andrew’s money away to every reclamation project we could find: Nery, Collins, you name it.  Now that I’ve exhausted every player and coaching recruiting resource I’ve got, I’m turning to the only other connection I have - my internet connection.” 

After lovingly describing the features of his 28.8k modem (“do you see all those lights?”), Klopas went on to explain his approach to Monster.com.  ”The loss of our jersey sponsor and our DPs cancel each other out, so that’s good, but the lower attendance over my tenure has really strained our hiring practices,” Klopas explained, ”clearly we can’t field the type of $100,000+ players that theladders.com caters to.  But that still leaves Monster.com, which has a much fiercer sounding name, anyways. ”   Thus far, the posting on Monster.com has yielded well over 1,000 hits for the Forward position, however, after realizing the compensation structure surrounding and learning that Carlos de los Cobos would still be managing, all applicants have since dropped out. 

Undeterred, Klopas pledged to forge on, “Results and attendance are only part of the story.  This front office has a vision and will use the Google tirelessly until we find out what that is.”

[This piece was contributed by author Mark.  For more by Mark, check out his blog at http://ussoccersnob.blogspot.com/ (ed: this is the correct link, an incorrect version had previously been posted. sorry)]

Sporting KC Selects Name “Colorado Rapids” in MLS Re-entry Draft

Just a month after rebranding themselves as Sporting KC, the former Wizards front office pulled off another shock by selecting the moniker “Colorado Rapids” in the MLS Re-Entry draft. The Rapids front office immediately declared that they were surprised that leaving their name exposed had turned out so badly for them.

“We totally get where KC is comming from, I mean, even though it is confusing to call a team in Kansas City by the name ‘Colorado,’ it is hella less confusing than that Sporting Club nonsense” said former Rapids GM Jeff Plush.  Colorado is believed to be looking into renaming their team as “Miami Fusion” in honor of captain Pablo Maestroeni’s former team, or possibly going with “Denver Olympiakos.”

[contributed by Rory Miller, thanks Rory!  For more by Rory, check out: www.tiny.cc/1nt1i]

Schellas Hyndman’s Special Combat Training Spurs MLS Coaches to Enter Accelerated Martial Arts Program

The coach of the MLS Cup Runner-Up and Western Conference champion is also a Combat Ki Master.  What does that mean? 

FC Dallas manager, Schellas Hyndman has been shown to receive repeated kicks to the groin without the appearance of pain or functional damage.  This type of “manliness” apparently contributed to the success of the Frisco, Texas club in their run to the MLS Cup.  Other MLS coaches have taken notice, such as LA Galaxy’s Bruce Arena and Seattle Sounders’ Sigi Schmid who will both be enrolling in a special training session with Combat Ki.

Humbled by a loss in the Western Conference Finals, Bruce Arena was forced to the special training, ordered by the Anshutz Entertainment Group, owners of the Galaxy.  CEO Tim Leiweke states, “Maybe what he needs is a good kick in the balls, then we might win some real trophies.”

Sigi Schmid’s Sounders also had an early exit from the playoffs, which prompted Schmid to sign-up.  However, Schmid had a more positive outlook, “I’m looking forward to getting my balls of steel.”

The one-week training session is to include smashing bricks with their foreheads, clearing a bamboo forest with only the use of their shins, and sticking their tongues to the goals at BMO field and ripping them off.

[this article was contributed by author david ma. thanks, david.]