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.

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.

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

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.