Sporting Madness

Canada’s two USSF-2 teams start their playoff campaigns this week with home-and-home series. Montreal got off on the right foot Wednesday, beating the Austin Aztex 2-0 thanks to an Ali Gerba brace . Meanwhile, Vancouver will face their long-time rivals from Portland in a two-game series starting tonight at Swangard Stadium (10:30 p.m. Eastern: I’ll be live-blogging from the stadium press box, and the game can be seen via streaming video at whitecapsfc.com ). Both teams are in slightly different situations, but they have some of the same concerns and will face some of the same challenges. For Montreal, putting the ball in the net consistently has been an issue for most of the year. Gerba was solid down the stretch run, scoring nine goals in his last seven regular-season games , but he didn’t score at all in the regular season before that. The Impact weren’t able to find much scoring depth, either, and their depth hasn’t shown up much at all lately. The 2-0 home win was a terrific st...

The Vancouver Whitecaps - Seattle Sounders exhibition match earlier today was a pretty good display of soccer. The final score was 0-0 [ Bruce Constantineau , Vancouver Sun ], but both teams had their chances. Seattle held most of the possession, which is what you'd expect from an MLS side against a Division II one, but they weren't able to convert on their scoring opportunities. Steve Zakuani was perhaps the Sounders' best player, constantly making things happen on the wing with his speed. He did score once, but it was nullified thanks to an offside. Kasey Keller also turned in a solid performance in net for the Sounders. On the Whitecaps' side, there was some progress as well. New acquisition Blake Wheeler looked solid in midfield and had one of the team's better chances when he narrowly missed in the second half. Young striker Dever Orgill looked good as well, which is reassuring; he has been dominant with the residency team in the past , but didn't ma...

CBC's John Molinaro has a very interesting story today confirming that both the USL-1 champion Montreal Impact and USL-1 finalist Vancouver Whitecaps are set to break away from the league . Whitecaps' president Bob Lenarduzzi told Molinaro that both teams are looking to join the other teams (the Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina RailHawks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, St. Louis Soccer United and Tampa Bay Rowdies) in the Team Owners' Association in a breakaway league for next season. This needs to be approved by the United States Soccer Federation, as it oversees club soccer in the U.S., where most of the teams are based (I'm pretty sure the Canadian Soccer Association will go along with whatever comes out of this). "We're still pursuing the new league alternative, and by the end of the week, we should have our application into the USSF for them to grant us that status," Lenarduzzi said. "Our belief is that in order for soccer to grow in Canada and th...

It should be an action-packed evening in North American soccer. I'll be covering the Toronto FC - Columbus Crew game at 7:30 Eastern (4:30 Pacific) and the Vancouver Whitecaps - Puerto Rico Islanders game at 10:00 Eastern (7:00 Pacific), but there's also plenty of other MLS action, including New England at Houston at 8:30 ET, the L.A. Galaxy at Kansas City at 9:00, the New York Red Bulls at Colorado at 9:30 and D.C United at San Jose at 10:30; some of the other guys at Epic Footy will be reporting in on those games as well. Come join us for what should be a great evening of soccer! Soccer Saturday live blog

Apologies for the lack of new posts recently; it's been a crazy couple of days. I do have a couple of pieces that should be ready today or tomorrow. Until then, check out this excellent piece from Jason Davis of Match Fit USA ; Jason thought up some great questions about where American soccer and MLS will be in 2019 and got responses from two well-informed sources ( Zach Woosley of Ginge Talks The Footy and Chris Nee of twofootedtackle ), as well as myself. Check it out!