Sick day

Sorry I haven't been around to give my thoughts on the goings-on around MLS and Mexico. My daughter's been sick all day so I haven't had the chance to blog much. Cleaning up vomit is not my idea of a fun day.

I've also been trying to keep up to speed on the swine flu in Mexico as it's affected several games and tournaments. The Under-17 tourney has been canceled and the CONCACAF Champions League final might also be postponed. And more Mexican league games will go on without supporters in the stands.

Anyway, I'll be back later with my rankings. Chivas USA will still remain at number one despite their midweek loss to Toronto. Chivas USA are after all massive.

Du Nord's back

The venerable soccer blog Du Nord is back, in case you hadn't noticed. Check it out here.

It's a pain sometimes running a soccer blog when you don't get paid for it and I'm sure brucio's passion at some point was overtaken by his need to unplug and get away from things. So it's good to see him back in any form. I was enjoying his stuff over at Bunky County as well, but Du Nord is great so welcome back brucio!

Ah, the memories

Former blog partner and current Goal.com colleague Andrea Canales put together a bit of a quiz over on the Goal.com blog. It's pretty cool actually. She took a bunch of pictures of players who have moved on, some from the Galaxy, some from Chivas USA, some from other teams. I could probably name them all, haven't tried but I feel I have an unfair advantage since I remember most of the pictures and when they were taken, and even took at least one of them myself.

Anyway, thought it'd be worth a read.

When the cat's away

I leave you guys alone for a couple of hours....

I'm not in a position to do it right now because I'm going from one game to another but I will have to moderate comments from now until, sometime after the game I suppose.

I like the passion and debate but not so much the insults and such.

I have to go ref a boys varsity game now, young'uns so do behave while I'm away.

UPDATE: I've enabled comment moderation. Enough's enough. See, you guys sent some bad karma my way as I had to give a yellow card to a coach for the first time this season.

Grateful for soccer

I suppose this could have been a Thanksgiving column, sort of what I'm thankful for about soccer. But I took the opportunity at the end of this year to look back not on just 2008 but a lot further back than that. I kind of gave reasons for what I'm grateful for in soccer here on my weekly PE Column.

Here we are again

After not blogging for a week, I've come to the realization that I need to blog. It feels like the soccer world is whizzing past me and I'm just a bystander on the side of the street. Sure, I've had my say on several things this week, have gotten a few stories published but I've stifled myself. There have been plenty of thoughts that have surfaced in my mind that I've not been able to express. I mean, I couldn't exactly talked about the Galaxy in my MLS playoffs preview, right?

I've got some audio clips to put up, some stories to share, thoughts to peruse but nowhere to do it. Sure, I could have stayed on with Sideline Views and kept that running but that was really something that was an LB and AC creation. I felt like I need my own space, set up my own standards and build something from the ground up.

So if you're here, thanks for checking out my now trusty blog. I hope you will bookmark this page and check back every now and again to see what I've got to say about the world of soccer. Lord knows, I've always got some sort of opinion on something.

Anyway, I wanted to set down some ground rules or expectations or whatever you want to call them. Not that I really had any before - I let the readers dictate where I wanted to take the blog - but now I feel like I am way more prepared with this blogging thing that I was before.

- Breaking stories or providing updates is not necessarily the theme of this blog. The one thing I want for this blog to be is fun. I want it to be fun and exciting when I think of it and if I start to post scores and stuff from around the soccer world it will become not fun. Not fun means less posts. If it were not fun and I were getting paid, well, that's a different story. But being as I am not getting paid (and I'll get back to this point), I want this to be a fun experience for me and you.

- On the payment part, I don't expect to get paid. I'm not looking to get enough readers to try and sell ads or anything.

- It would be great to have an abundance of readers but that's not my goal. If you come here and like what you see, come back. If you come here and don't care for what I'm providing, move on. There are lots of other soccer blogs and sites out there.

- This is my blog. If I want to cuss, that's my fucking prerogative.

- I reserve the right to post on non-soccer things. I like music and movies and all that so I may chime in on, say the Metallica concert I'm going to here in Ontario in December or whatever. They may be random and may only appear every now and then but don't be surprised if you see them. I'm not going to bore you with that stuff but I'll throw some things out there time and again that have nothing to do with soccer.

- I hope to post daily, in fact multiple times a day, but sometimes I may have real life issues that need dealing with. If so, give me some time. I've decided to make this commitment so I intend on following through with it.

- These are the things that interest me the most in the footballing world, so these are the things I will post about: Major League Soccer, Mexican soccer, US national team, Mexico national team, Chivas USA, Los Angeles Galaxy. To be honest, I don't give a fuck about English soccer. Sorry. I would rather watch Columbus play Real Salt Lake than watch Liverpool play West Ham.

Well there you go. I may add some more later. But for now, I wanted to put this up and let you know that I'm back and on my own.