Recent Stories with tag mls

Freddie Ljungberg, the most famous player ever to suit up for a Seattle soccer team, likely won't wear the rave green again. With the Sounders unwilling to commit to a 2011 contract for the former Arsenal star, Ljungberg is looking elsewhere, likely to hook up with a team in Europe, where the season starts next month.

Ljungberg's signing five months before the Sounders' inaugural season gave the team instant credibility with local soccer fans. His pedigree was unmatched in local soccer history: nine years at one of the world's top club teams, a Premier League player of the year award, participant in two World Cups. Short of David Beckham, he was the most accomplished player in all of U.S. pro soccer.

During season one Ljungberg's reported $2.5M contact appeared to be worth the investment. He made the MLS "Best XI," confounded opposing defenders with his skill, speed, and strength, and helped the Sounders to the best expansion season of any Seattle franchise.

Season two started off poorly, with Ljungberg skipping preseason training and pissing off teammate Kasey Keller. Didn't get better once the games started. The Sounders have flopped, as key players like midfielder Osvaldo Alonso, defender Jhon Kennedy Hurtado, and striker Nate Jaqua have missed most of the season with injuries. Ljungberg's presence hasn't done anything to make up for their loss. If anything, his presence through the Sounders' slow start suggests that he may have been less valuable than his far-less-heralded teammates.

Normally an offensive center midfielder, Ljungberg played a few games at forward this year as coach Sigi Schmid tried to squeeze more offense out of the team. Didn't work. Ljungberg will finish with as many goals this season as Ken Griffey Jr. had home runs. (Zippo.)

Taken as a whole, the Ljungberg signing was a success. His fame was a key ingredient of the hype soup that turned Seattle on to the Sounders. The franchise may never get a player of his caliber again.

Photo via Wikipedia/Creative Commons

Roger "The 'Stache" Levesque did it again. The MLS washout and holdover from the minor-league Sounders scored yet another game-winning goal last night, diving to head a last-minute Fredy Montero cross just inside the near post to beat DC United 1-0.

In the 1940s, the Brooklyn Dodgers had a fiery second baseman named Eddie "The Brat" Stanky. An opposing manager said of Stanky: "He can't hit, he can't field, he can't run—all the SOB can do is beat you."

Translate into soccer terms, and that's Levesque. I recall seeing him first in '05 with the old Sounders, and immediately falling in hate. Even a soccer neophyte could recognize how slow Levesque was, that he often lost the ball under pressure, that his passes rarely hit their mark, and that he didn't have the skill to beat defenders one-on-one. Yet who scored the game's only goal? Levesque did.

Don't take my word for it, read what Coach Sigi says about Levesque: "Roger’s a hard working player who can play a number of positions and always gives you his best." You may notice certain words missing from that summation. Talent. Skill. Ability.

For this reason, Levesque was a long shot to make the MLS Sounders, and didn't start an MLS game until late in the season. The team has brought in several younger or more accomplished contenders to take Levesque's roster spot. But Levesque continues to produce, in a big way.

Levesque scored the game-winner in the Sounders US Open Cup win at DC United last year, and his game-winner at Kansas City clinched the Sounders a playoff berth. Now he's notched another goal for the Sounders, themselves now long shots to make the MLS playoffs.

Roger Levesque can't run, he can't dribble, he has limited skills, and he can't pass. All Roger Levesque can do is beat you.

With Argentine team Boca Juniors (of Buenos Aires) here Wednesday, we figured it was a good time to check in with our underutilized Senior Argentine Soccer Correspondent, Josh Michtom. What can you tell us about Boca, Josh?

Boca plays in a little bandbox of a stadium called La Bombonera (the candybox), located in a rough neighborhood at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and has always been the more down-and-dirty, "people's team," in contrast to its archrival and Argentina's other perennial soccer powerhouse, the appropriately English-named River Plate (although Boca is the Juniors, so go figure).

It's not that the River and Boca fans divide neatly along class lines--far from it; like New York baseball allegiances, people's soccer loyalties in greater Buenos Aires can stem from myriad accidents of personal history (I root for River because my best friend in Argentina rooted for River, and I always detected a certain reactionary streak among the Boca fans I knew, although this was probably just coincidence.).

La Bombonera

In Buenos Aires and environs, it is pretty much assumed that people root either for Boca or River (to the chagrin of boosters of lesser area teams like Velez and Argentinos--for whom I feel great sympathy now that I live in Central Connecticut, where the baseball breakdown is 45 percent Yankees, 45 percent Red Sox, and 10 percent my beloved Mets.).

This is the source of frequent fights and interminable boasting matches and Ditka-vs-host-of-angels style what-ifs, many of which settle on the inarguable fact that Boca was the home team of the greatest Argentinian soccer player of the modern era, Diego Maradona. Maradona, by the way, really embodied the Boca aesthetic with his scrappy-yet-showy style, his flashy living and womanizing, and all of that.

I remember that when I lived in Argentina, Boca won the national championship and its fans overturned and burned cars in my neighborhood to celebrate. I don't think that really proves anything about Boca or its fans, but it was a memorable occasion for me when I lived there.

Thanks, Josh! The Sounders/Boca Juniors match is Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Qwest. Plenty of good seats left.

The Sounders FC held their season opener last night against expansion team the Philadephia Union, winning handily 2-0 (off goals by Fredy Montero and Brad Evans), despite showing some off-season rust out of the gate.

New kids on the block or not, the Union came out hard, snagging a yellow card in the first minute of the match, and eventually playing a man down after Toni Stahl secured a red card in the 40th minute. For the Sounders, Freddie Ljungberg was everywhere, giving a clinic on play-making.

Rain was more or less constant, the grass was slick, and wind gusts captured long balls, so I'll give the Sounders the benefit of the doubt on the number of missed passes. One thing was clear--the Union had no answer to Sounder speed to the ball. The score could have been 3 or 4 to 0, and the Sounders owned the second half, leaving keeper Keller mostly an onlooker.

On their blog, Estately makes a bold prediction about spring real estate sales (boldface is theirs):

Spring and summer of 2010 will be different! Every year, there is an annual increase in people searching for real estate from December to January. But this year we are seeing a much bigger bump – 80% bigger.  This year we are seeing 40% more people searching for homes on Estately in January than we were in December.

Seattle's seasonal bump in traffic is among the top, at 55 percent, Estately says. They expect a slow January, agreeing with the Seattle Bubble that the $8,000 homebuyer credit hoovered up a lot of future demand, as people decided to buy before the cut-off deadline (since extended).

They also argue that they outrank Google Trends in this department because they're an MLS-based search site, which cuts down a lot of media noise having to do with real estate market ups and downs, rather than prospective buyer searches. (In a tongue-in-cheek way, Seattle Bubble's The Tim suggests that Google's search trends may finally allow us to see Robert Schiller's "animal spirits" in action.)

Seattle Bubble actually agrees to some extent with the prediction for a spring surge, but points out that the tax credit may be a harsh mistress: "I can see February through April being better, but if the Fed’s MBS purchases really end and no new tax credit is enacted, I think there is a distinct possibility that sales will drop to frigid levels again, pushing prices even further down."

Where does David Beckham, in town to play in Sunday's MLS Cup, ranks on the list of world celebrities? Top 20, at least, right? Maybe top 10? I mean, I'm talking about people who are household names all over the world, not just on one continent. It's not a big list. (Off the top of my head: Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Madonna, Michael Jordan, Bono). But Beckham's definitely on it. And he's here, in our crappy little port! Above, it's Becks at the Metropolitan Grill, where sources tell the Times' Jose Miguel Romero he ate "onion soup (without cheese), a petit filet and scampi, asparagus (sauce on the side) and cranberry juice."

I was all set to sell my Cup tickets, until a friend reminded me that Beckham was playing. He came here once before, in an 2006 exhibition while a member of Real Madrid. But this is a championship game, I'll get to see Becks at his most competitive. Fun!

The MLS Cup is Beckham's L.A. Galaxy vs. Real Salt Lake. It's at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday at Qwest Field. You can watch on ESPN or head...

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