The Red Bulls desperately need their defense to get healthy and play well to challenge for the Cup. If we have to go with Stephen Keel in the playoffs again we're screwed.

They don't really need youth...they need experience and Cahill has 8 or so seasons of experience in the Premiere League. Will he be around for more then a couple seasons? Probably not but this is about making a contender now.

If you thought Kaka was coming here you were fooling yourself. Tim Cahill is a quality player. Is he going to put a lot more asses in the seats? Not really, but this is a soccer move. He adds a lot to the attacking center midfield.

Interesting take with the whole FIFA thing. I also think there has been an emphasis from the league office to their refs on simulation for them to be extra sensitive to it. They know that the American market won't fully embrace the sport if they're behaving like a bunch of Europeans and South Americans and they need to curb it from the get go.

Have to disagree...there are flops where the guys go to the ground grabbing their faces and legs like they were just shot. Adu doesn't do that here. I'm not saying he didn't go to the ground trying to draw a penalty but I've seen FAAAAAR worse dives in my day.

Clearly it wasn't a foul. Now the question is whether Adu flopped or if he went to the ground for some other reason. To me it looks like he's bracing for contact, trying to draw it but it never comes. Is that a flop? Personally, I think a flop has to have some element of acting or faking for it to be yellow card worthy. He certainly didn't deserve a penalty and he should have been attempting to stay up more then he was but I don't know if he deserved a second yellow for it...seems a bit harsh. I guess this is where the league needs to more clearly define what is a card inducing flop.

Call me crazy but Junior Flores should be getting as much run with the older guys as possible. I'd have him on this roster just to see what he can do.

With more then half the teams in the league making the playoffs the regular season continues to be a lot more meaningless then every other league in the world. There should be 8 teams max in the playoffs and even that is generous. The more importance that every MLS match has on it, the more the fans will come out. It's like we have 34 exhibition matches and then the season comes down to a few crucial games. Silly.

No, I like soccer because I like the beautiful game and this is how it formatted almost everywhere else in the world which is a lot more relevant then what a pro hockey league is doing in North America...in my humble opinion. Obviously you and Don G disagree.

I would like to think that getting soccer purists to be happy would lead to greater attendance, ratings, etc. but maybe that is wishful thinking. To me it is the difference between short-term thinking and long-term thinking. In the short term they are weighting the matches with better ratings and attendance but over the long term they aren't building a product with a reputation that means much in the soccer world.

How do you tell an owner to keep losing money? He invested to make money, not to lose it. DC needs to step up and work with the team instead of hamstringing them like they've been doing for a decade.

The challenge is not to get people that watch the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA to watch MLS. The challenge is to get the Americans that watch the EPL, La Liga, Serie A to watch MLS. This country has a HUGE soccer following but they regard MLS as a Mickey Mouse league and part of that is the unbalanced schedule and bizarre playoff formats. They need to start pandering to the soccer fans that already exist and stop trying to convert Joe American into a fan.

I don't know why Garber always justifies format and rules by comparing MLS to other N. American sports. There's a reason we're soccer fans and not watching the NHL or MLB. There should be a balanced, single table format. Period. 36 Games against every team home and away. There is zero reason why this shouldn't exist. Secondly, the focus on rivalries is so stupid. The quickest way to make a rivalry irrelevant is to over play it. This is what MLB to Yankees-Red Sox. They play too much and the games mean less and less.

+1...love the Nats and support him when he plays for the USMNT but he needs to shut it and just play.

Are you kidding? Henry is playing his @rse off for this team and it's fans. The guy was going 110% yesterday and it showed. He's tracking back and playing as hard on defense as any forward in the league. Marquez is another story. His play is shoddy. He makes sloppy passes and then acts like this teammates were at fault when they don't receive it properly. His attitude is also terrible and is a cynical player. Not a fan at all. Rost seems like he is playing well and I like having him although I can't say that I don't wish we didn't still have DeRo. Landon Donovan is a baby and whiner. Good player but he needs to stop yapping and just play.

I'm just responding to Garber's comments: "...we'll continue to look at all those other markets that have been noisy about soccer, whether that's all the ones I've mentioned in the past, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Miami." Nothing to do with ownership groups. Not to mention that they did have a pretty strong ownership group that was backed by Anheiser-Busch.

Why they keep ignoring St. Louis as a potential expansion market is beyond me. It has a great history, passionate sports fans, and a geographic region to help fill out the midwest.

Not even close...the graphics and aesthetics of PES have fallen to far behind. The players can make passes and shots that unrealistic. If you have fun playing ping pong on a pitch then fine, but it FIFA is the better game.

Having played these games in one form or another for 15 yrs I can tell you that while PES used to be the gameplay choice and FIFA was graphics and licensing, FIFA is no longer inferior in gameplay and is the better all around choice. FIFA11 was a game changer in terms of gameplay and they seemed to really tuned it up for 12. I like what I see from the new defense controls in the demo. This is the game to get unless you're a PES lifer and are used to it.

Are you suggesting that if per chance either LA or NYRB signed Neymar it would be bad for the league? Sold out stadiums everywhere he goes...

yeah, obviously foreign players are garbage. That's why the US dominates international competitions. *overly sarcastic tone.

Exactly...great point.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest he was kidding.

Here's the dilemma that the league has...it can't grow if the perceived quality of the league is subpar. Americans have shown a willingness to embrace top quality soccer, but MLS hasn't captured that interest totally because, well, it's not near top quality. The league also can't afford $100m payrolls. There has to be a balance. There has to be a way for the league to sign more and more quality players, thereby increasing quality, thereby increasing revenues. Incentivizing clubs to invest in top quality youth either through homegrown contracts or exemptions for foreign youth is a great idea.

Here's an idea: How about doing away with DP's but limiting the amount a players salary counts towards the cap based on who they are. Example: The cap is $3.0m and you can't go over it, but only the first $500k of a players salary counts towards that cap. There would be exceptions that would reduce that amount for any particular player like their age, nationality (US vs foreign), national team caps, years in youth system (homegrowns), etc. Limiting teams for paying for talent is a bad idea. Limiting teams from getting into an arms race is a good idea and this concept rewards teams for spending on quality.