Players coming off the U.S. national team’s January camp are filtering back into their clubs; remember, this camp was almost exclusively made up of MLS men.
For instance, Landon Donovan and Omar Gonzalez, two starters in Saturday’s 2-0 win over South Korea, will get a few days off before joining their MLS club’s practices on Thursday.
Speaking of American internationals and World Cups and U.S. dudes who scored in them… the Chicago Fire has a new assistant. No word on whether Clint Mathis will be rocking the Mohawk on the sidelines, a la World Cup 2002.
Mathis, whose goal in 2002 helped launch the country’s breakthrough, quarterfinal run, leaves his post with the Galaxy, where he served as the club’s director of camps and clinics.
FC Dallas announced it would meet San Antonio in a March 1 friendly. That’s one week away from the Major League Soccer first kick. Of course, an MLS team meeting a North American Soccer League team in a preseason friendly is nothing unusual. The real reason that match is important enough for us to mention: we get to run a picture of San Antonio’s very cool little stadium, a recently completed, privately funded 8,000-seat ground, which you see above.
(MORE: MLS set to announce Miami expansion Wednesday)
New Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt is throwing down some big hints – not check that … he’s more or less just saying it – that there are branding changes coming for the league’s Ohio club. He said so in an interview with Kyle McCarthy. “We will be introducing some changes to our brand in 2015. We love the name Columbus Crew. We love the colors. We love black and gold. That never changes,” he told McCarthy. “We’re looking at ways we can evolve and change our logo. We want it to represent the Columbus we’ve come to know.”
The preseason matches are starting to happen regularly now; the champs just drew with Portland, 1-1. Kansas City was without three of its U.S. national teamers, who will soon be joining the club’s workouts in Arizona.
Chivas USA has loaned Michael Farfan to Liga MX club Chiapas. Honestly, there’s not much to like about this. A guy who made 15 appearances for the club, who could have provided some good depth, will not be around to help new coach Wilmer Cabrera. More than that, the player is now gone for which Chivas traded away its first round pick in the last draft. That ended up being the No. 2 overall pick … a place where a club would be expected to get something considerably better than Gabriel Farfan, no offense to the lesser half of the Farfan brother tandem.
