Good grief....

Okay, I'm going to spare EVERYONE the lengthy laundry list of real life reason why there has been no blog or podcast out of me as promised. Suffice to say the overwhelming majority of it is highly personal. For those who are friends of the blog/myself you guys can fire away. You know where to reach me.

Onwards and upwards. Tonight I will be doing some audio testing and getting things online to see if I can "demo" my set-up. In the meantime, here's a taster of what I'm going to talk about:

Torres for the USA! How about this kid? Yeah, it was mop up duty but I was really thoroughly impressed and i seems like others were as well. Hopefully he starts tomorrow/tonight against T & T. I'm also hoping to see some sort of Szetela, Torres, Adu combination from the get go but that's probably too much for El Bobbo. We shall see.

MLS Expansion. I have to be honest, I've been keeping tabs on this much more closely than the playoffs, although, I will admit to rooting for an RSL-Crew final. I'd settle for Chivas against the Crew as well for the sake of having a home team in it. Otherwise, Chicago would be intriguing for the McBride, Blanco, Hamlett storylines. I just really don't want to see NE-Houston again and if one of them has to be there, how about it be the Revs FINALLY getting over the hump? That would be nice... to put it mildly.

USL schtuff - particularly the attempted "defections" of the ATL, Montreal, Vancouver, Miami, Ottawa, Portland... oh hell, pretty much everyone besides the Islanders, Battery and Railhawks. Okay, Rochester, too, but you get my point. Hopefully I can get some comments from people in the know about these situations particularly with the Silverbacks in mind. I know I'd be smashing a few things tonight if I worked in their front office. What I really want to know is, has there been any contact or offer from Blank and co. to work with the 'Backs who have been working so hard on this whole futbol things down South? Of course, I still believe MLS really wants to get St. Louis in and barring that, the Vancouver and Montreal deals look potentially massive. Miami's now got Barca going to bat for them? Yeah, I wonder if this isn't a bit of a, pardon the pun, hail mary from the NFL's Falcons owner? I will say this, the notion of the following expansion sequence would intrigue me:

2011: St Louis, Vancouver

2014-15: Montreal, Portland

2017-18: Atlanta, Miami

There are a whole lot of dilemmas wrapped up in this thing which I plan to spend a lot of time discussing in the podcast, especially how to keep interest stoked for those left out of upcoming rounds and what about NY2, as we know it's another pet project of Garber's, does the USL become a full-on MLS expansion incubator? Moving along...

Over in England, my Hammers have been... tumultuous to say the least, in regards to their front office. This disguises the fact that they have actually been fairly consistent in the season so far. It's beginning to look, however, like new manager Gianfranco Zola will have to make due with budget signings like this week's free transfer signing, former Depor great, Diego Tristan. Many will quickly remind you, though, that "great" is hardly a term that springs to mind from the last couple of seasons for the striker.

Aside from these topics, I'd like to see if I can get some talk in about WPS and maybe some added Euro leagues and WC Qualifying discussion but we'll have to see how the voice holds up and how much time I really want to yak for in the premiere.

At any rate, hopefully many of you will actually be hearing me instead of just reading me soon.

In soccer,
Bill