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. (more…)

Eff yeah, our little Danny got the call-up to the big leagues. I didn’t see any mention of Jon Conway on this list, must be that he’s a big ol’ ugly troll.

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.

After his 10 game suspension for failing a performance enhancing drug test and his seeming inability to address that same important issue a la Mark McGwire, the not-so-lovable Jon Conway returned to RBNY to collect a 2-0 win last night.

Ugh.

For the uninitiated, on a direct kick in the 89th minute he set a wall incorrectly and that almost resulted in a near post goal (it was def. his fault). After misplaying a breakaway, the ball hit his knees (not his hands or body like the proper technique would have created) and almost soared into his own goal (thanks to Goldy for the flying save), he gets “credit” for having played well. I don’t understand how fans can overanalyze the release points of pitchers or quarterbacks, but people STILL don’t get that there is more to goalkeeping than stopping the occasional shot.

Jon Conway is a good shot stopper. That’s really it. He’s a terrible game manager, he’s lousy with distributions/counter attack (less distance and, more importantly, accuracy, than Cepero), he makes dumb decisions and just when people start to see that gathering a cross in the air prevents a shot from even happening (which is WAY safer than allowing a point blank header or volley) this guy lucks into a start and ends up with a shutout due to Danny’s injury last week?

What’s he got on JCO and Des, cuz Cepero was suited up and on the bench last night.

Don’t get me wrong, I love RBNY/Metro, I always have and probably always will. I just know that RBNY was thisfar from making the playoffs with Capt. “Won’t Talk About My Suspension” and a younger, albeit greener keeper lead us to the Cup Finals with big saves and by managing the game well.

Coincidence?

No.

For as much ribbing as I have been taking these last few months for talking up my love for Red Bull New York (aka New York Red Bulls) of Major League soccer, it is pretty clear that the largest media market in the world having a team in the league’s title game is good for exposure.

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

Holy effing eff, we are going to the Conference Championship for the first time in 8 years. This is a ridiculous day in MetroBulls history and we have 5 great saves (or 8 saves, according to ESPN) from Danny Cepero to thank for that. Let’s take a minute, build a shrine and thank this man for his ridiculous athleticism:

Yes, Dane Richards, JPA and Woly all had goals (and thanks for those, guys!), but when it came down to crunch time and the two-time defending MLS Cup champion, Houston Dynamo, were pressing hard for an equalizing and/or goal to reduce the lead, Danny played out of his gourd. Thanks to you, Danny Cepero, I have to go book my tickets to Utah. More thoughts later. Now, we drink heavily and eat Chinese food.