Rookie Conor Chinn smiles on draft night. Last night, his two goals gave RBNY the 2-1 win over Philly. Also, Le Toux has dumb cleats. He’s “nationally ranked”

Evidently, the “Con-man” is in Toronto now. Can’t wait ’til he has to take goal kicks at Red Bull Arena

Photo Credit: Seth Binsted/The Breeze

In today’s MLS Expansion draft, we expected to see Amado Guevara, Frankie Hejduk or Eddie Robinson taken to help coach Peter/Piotr Nowak build the nucleus of what should be a pretty decent team in Philly next year. Instead, we saw a good, scrappy bunch of kids (including RBNY’s Nick Zimmerman) leaving their digs for “greener” pastures in Philadelphia.

There were no superstars taken, no former league MVPs. No players with U.S. national team caps, or players with multiple all-star appearances, or even players with ties to the Philadelphia area. When the final list of players chosen by the Philadelphia Union was announced, we were treated to a group of MLS players who could make up the type of tough and tenacious team that Nowak likes, and Philadelphia fans will want to root for. [SBI]

The fact that Zimmerman was left exposed (eff you Jeff Agoos!) makes me very, very angry. The new sporting director is on his way (believe me, it’s no damn secret who it is!) but we couldn’t find a way to hang on to a kid that had proven that he got it. We didn’t let Sassano or Sinisa go for similar reasons and dammit, I wanted Nick around. Now that $5 thing I bought off that kid in the Giants Stadium parking lot isn’t worth $h!t.

Ugh.

Last season, our precious Danny wasn’t granted his rightfully earned Goal of the Week for his 81-yard blast into the net, the first for an MLS keeper. In order to make it up to him, let’s all vote his amazing save against “The Wookie” Dan Dichio as MLS’ Save of the Week, mmm kay?

Go here and vote now, he’s currently in 2nd with 23% of the vote! (edit: as of 3:25 PM ET, Danny’s in the lead with 26% of the vote, but it’s close…keep spreading the word!)

(Update: 6/18 – 4 PM ET)

Rare is the day that I actually get an opportunity to sit down and rebut an intelligent and thought-provoking blog post, but here’s an example from Monday [Not every steroid scandal is quite what it seems]. Honestly, I don’t really do that here, this was designed as an attention-grabbing blog PRIOR to the performance-enhancing drug suspension of Major League Soccer’s own Jeff Parke and, the namesake of this blog, Jon Conway. I was bored and the guy has rubbed me very wrong personally so I made this as a way to entertain myself and the fans/season ticket holders of section 105 (we sit in row 9 and I am pretty easy to find if someone wanted to talk about my opinions or even share their own!) and it didn’t catch a lot of heat from players, but there was some. We still get grief from other Metro/RBNY supporters because they feel that what we do/think is disrespectful when, in fact, it’s just in fun. Always has been.

My number one issue with “the original incident” for which RBNY goalkeeper Conway got banned was this: he never did what Mike Petke managed to do in under two pages. He never explained what happened. It could have been a simple press release to Soccer by Ives or The Original Winger or someone, anyone. When the situation was brought up again this year, he declined to answer in a Mark McGwire-esque manner (“I’m not here to talk about the past”) and left that to the “press” who didn’t really dig too deep. To be honest, no one cared.

The suspension from last season was a great opportunity for the sport and the league to take a stance against WADA and some of their testing criteria and instead, they did nothing. Player representative John Wolyniec wasn’t cleared to make a statement, Don Garber merely announced the suspensions, but nothing else was done. Yes, the suspension made me happy because I think Jon’s a bit of a douche, but in my haste to crap on Jon Conway (which I started doing about 2 weeks prior to the suspension), I neglected Jeff Parke’s role as well and that wasn’t fair. I always said that “something wasn’t right about the test” and Petke’s blog post brought that question up on a larger stage at ESPN.

If in the next few days we start to see Mike stepping out and speaking up on these issues, that’s great. MLS should have done this last season. In not doing so, they allowed a larger misconception to spread: that Conway and Parke knowingly ingested some type of performance enhancing supplement despite the fact that it was an over-the-counter/GNC supplement that metabolized into a banned substance. My main questions that were answered in the post at ESPN were that (1) yes, MLS does give its players a list of substances that are prohibited: however, (2) there are items that don’t start off on that list that might end up there after our bodies process them. That’s not good news and if that is the case and the league is the body sanctioning the drug testing via the WADA guidelines, why weren’t follow-up tests conducted? If they were, why weren’t we alerted and wasn’t this situation brought to the WADA’s attention? Obviously the training staff wouldn’t have been able to identify a potential conflict if Conway or Parke brought the supplement in to the office, and that’s not good.

Without those answers, Mike, the most you can get out of this is that the players had no reason to believe that what they were taking didn’t meet the guidelines on the card presented to the players in preseason (which lists the 100 or so prohibited substances) but we can’t tell people what it is? If they did, why not make the public aware of it. There is the chance that whatever reaction the body has to this supplement could be fatal in a small number of cases. You might not believe it, but you can kill some people with most gums, diet sodas or even Powerade or Gatorade due to a sugar-like additive.

Without THOSE answers, it really feels like you were paraded out here for us to listen but you didn’t answer the big questions. I respect you as a person, obviously, and appreciate everything that you have done for the club and in your career, but without facts, we only have anecdotes and your position at ESPN should put the league and club in a different, more positive light. The mistake that occurred wasn’t your fault, but what is the harm in addressing the events that led up to, and followed, that day in October?

Click to See Larger Image

From the article:

Cosmo Girl: KISSING ON THE FIRST DATE?

Cepero: Absolutely necessary. [Cosmo Girl]

You go, Danny. Slip that lucky lady your golden tongue.

In a post from Soccer by Ives, it turns out that Dave Van den Bergh not only got traded away to FC Dallas, but REQUESTED that trade. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy here in NY/NJ area – his wife has family in the Dallas area who, according to SBI:

Van Den Bergh’s wife has family in Dallas which could help them with the care of their oldest son, who has been battling an undisclosed illness. The Red Bulls weighed the request, along with Van Den Bergh’s own demands for a new contract, and decided the best thing to do for all parties involved was to trade the 32-year-old winger away.

[Soccer by Ives]

The good news is that we got good value for him: the Red Bulls traded Van Den Bergh and the No. 14 overall pick in the MLS Draft to FC Dallas for forward Dominic Oduro, the No. 11 and the No. 18 picks in the draft. The MLS, Agoos and JCO did right by DVB.

I never thought that I would say that.

In this graph here, you can see that as Google Blog Posts relevant to “MLS Cup” increase, the number of sales (Sales Rank at Amazon) increases as well. That’s an encouraging sign for those in the MLS offices as they head into the offseason, and illustrates the league’s need to embrace social media as a whole in order to truly drive awareness.

Source: Trendrr

In a week with only three games to choose from, “Great” Dane Richards was selected as MLS Player of the Week for his heroics in Houston yesterday. The midfielder, in case you weren’t watching the Red Bulls bounce the two-time defending champions from the playoffs, has a goal, an assist and also set up the second goal (a PK) with his cross that was handled in the box.

Playing in 23 games this season, Richards has tallied a career-high in goals with three to go along with a team-high six assists in 2008. He played the full 90 minutes against Houston the first leg of the teams’ playoff series. The speedy winger from Montego Bay, Jamaica, was acquired by the Red Bulls in the 2007 MLS SuperDraft after he was selected in the second round (19th overall) from Clemson University. Richards joins Angel (Week 20) as the only Red Bulls named MLS Player of the Week in 2008.

[MetroFanatic]

More “after the jump”

Basically, he PWNED the Dynamo. My heart goes out to those very nice Dynamo fans that showed up in Jersey last week to support their team (as they were very nice), but seriously, that ugly style you’ve paraded around as “soccer” since your first title? Yeah, we’re over that.

In other news, Jon Conway still sucks, but at least people are finally getting to see what I was saying about our dude, Danny “Cep-HERO” Cepero, all season long. Goalkeeping FTW~!

That bit of nonsense aside, we advance to face a very talented Real Salt Lake in the Western (please don’t ask!) Conference finals that will see the winner taking on either Chicago or Columbus. If we are somehow able to keep this run of play going a bit longer, those are BOTH very entertaining storylines for the MLS Cup.

RBNY have a very tough task ahead of them.

Three Cheers for Jon Busch!

I have known Jon since I was 14. We aren’t great friends or anything, but its been a total pleasure watching his career take off. He’s not on RBNY, but he’s everything that is right with the position: highly cerebral, terribly athletic and he’s fantastic at controlling the tempo of the match and defending outside the six-yard box.

Busch, like Guzan or Hartman, is undersized and undervalued, and really has done a great job at both Columbus and Chicago. I just wish we could get him back here to NYC (no offense to Danny Cepero).

“Today is a day when the whole of America wins. Barack Obama is voted into the White House as the first President of African-American heritage to sit in the Oval Office, and of course Busch (not George W. Bush), but Jon Busch of the Chicago Fire, was voted Goalkeeper of the Year for the Major League Soccer season of 2008. America rejoices, and so do us goalkeepers, especially those of the shorter ilk!”

[Keeper Skool]

One day, I should scan in my Machnik evaluation reports from him. He was a great judge of talent. Here’s his highlight video, courtesy of MLS.