Because soccer isn't gay, but once in awhile it kinda is.
Posts tagged mls
New Hair, New Flair: LA Galaxy 3 – 1 Portland Timbers
04/16/12
Los Angeles Galaxy racked up their second win of the season last evening in a come-from-behind victory over the visiting Portland Timbers off of strong performances from its core veterans – and a central defender three days new to the team.
Game summary and match impressions after the jump.
Cosmo Picks Major League Soccer’s Hottest Players … (In Some Cases, Poorly)
04/12/12
Cosmo Magazine has done a piece of “Hot Soccer Players We Can’t Resist” and it’s been making the Twitter rounds heavily this week.
While they didn’t explicitly say so, they seemed to go with a one player per team approach, and under this approach some of their choices are somewhat questionable when compared with other options they had on some of their teams.
I can’t argue with some of their picks; after all, some of their favorites also made our top ten draft pick list.
But Freddy Adu? Really? Is that the best you could do for Philadelphia? Way to jump right to the guy who you just know because he shilled for Sierra Mist way back when. Or you couldn’t dig deeper into the Galaxy roster past Golden Balls to introduce your readership to some hot players beyond the guy they already know from Pepsi and Burger King ads?
So what do you think? Which of their hot player picks do you think Cosmo got right? You can pick as many as you think they got right in the poll after the jump…
MLS’ Extra Time Radio Takes on the Colin Clark Incident
03/27/12
The Tuesday morning edition of MLSSoccer.com’s Extra Time Radio tackled the Colin Clark incident from Friday night.
I tried to transcribe it all, but it was a thankfully long discussion with some good points, and sadly some poor ones as well, so I jotted down the main ones to address. I also apologize in advance for not knowing all of the speakers by their voices, so only know who said some things based on them being pointed out to me directly.
The full conversation can be found here, from about the 21 minute mark to the 31 minute mark.
The salient points:
- Simon Borg. Oh, Simon Borg. Simon pretty much spent the entire conversation saying that if you suspend Clark for this you need to suspend every player who drops the f-bomb on the field. Simon, you need to head over to GLSEN’s research page and see that almost 85% of GLBT youth are verbally harassed with that word and others like it in their schools; they don’t need to hear the athletes they look up to harassing each other with it as well. Kids are killing themselves out there, Simon. KILLING THEMSELVES. And this is something I take very personally and seriously. I shudder to think if that kid or another one who heard this is gay himself or herself and has to endure hearing that word hurled at him daily.
- There was a good conversation about how this is different than Lee Nguyen’s tweet during preseason and the league not handling that with any disciplinary action. Yes, maybe that should have been handled with more harshness and a good point was made on ETR that non-action then doesn’t mean there can’t be action now, and maybe if there had been action then maybe this incident would not have happened at all. This is something I personally struggle with knowing that we as a site didn’t push for some sort of punishment against Nguyen when he gave a similar apology and desire to do work to learn from his actions. Is it the target (teammate vs. ball boy)? Is it the audience that heard the comment (Twitter vs. a national TV broadcast) ? I don’t know, and please forgive me for not knowing and let’s work on this one together.
- Finally, the discussion ended with the wonderful statement from Greg Lalas that the league should take a lead in sports that this kind of language isn’t a good thing. That the league should take a stand and be progressive. In response to Simon someone also said games should be an atmosphere where players should be able to go to the disciplinary committee or referee and report this sort of behavior even if it’s not caught on a microphone. Amen and amen.
According to the show, most MLS disciplinary decisions are handed down on a Wednesday or Thursday after a weekend’s games, and it’s believed that Clark met with the committee Monday night.
A Roundup of Colin Clark Posts and Opinions
03/26/12
Here’s some notable coverage of Colin Clark’s use of an anti-gay slur from over the weekend and today:
The Washington Post: “The MLS should come down hard on Clark — both for his words, and for the ball boy at whom he directed them. Regardless of whether they came ‘in the heat of the moment,’ the incident provided a jarring reminder that discrimination and homophobia persist in professional sports, and more must be done to eliminate discrimination in athletic competition.”
Philadelphia Daily News: “When Garber and MLS complete their investigation into the matter, and it shouldn’t take long given the clarity of the audio on the broadcast, Clark needs to be whacked, not just slapped on the wrist.”
The Seattle Times: “NBC Sports producers didn’t catch Clark’s slur on the live broadcast and would’ve issued an on-air apology had they heard it, according to a spokesman.”
A Call for Patience
03/26/12
Since Colin Clark’s use of an anti-gay slur against a ball boy at Friday night’s Seattle vs. Houston game, I’ve been following Twitter searches about the incident and comment sections of web stories about it.
There are a few things I’ve seen I want to address in a few posts.
First is the notion that MLS is “dragging their heels” or “trying to sweep the incident under the rug.” These feelings have been exacerbated by one of the videos of the incident being removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim by MLS.
What some see as slow I personally see as deliberative. I see MLS giving their ultimate response and consequence for Clark the consideration a reaction to an incident of this gravity deserves. Also, the Houston Dyanamo have two weeks without playing a game, so any suspension wouldn’t take effect until mid-April.
While patient now, my patience isn’t everlasting and hope to have MLS’ disciplinary decision soon so we can work to make sure this is the last incident like this we see in the league we love.
What do you think?
This Follow Friday, Help Us Add to the Allies List
03/16/12
While you’re doing all your Follow Friday tweeting, why don’t you ask some of your favorite players to join our Ally List at gay4soccer.com/allies? Especially if you’re a fan of one of the following teams without any players on the list:
Have them send a Tweet saying they’re a #soccerally (using that hashtag) and we’ll be sure to see it and add them to the list!
Houston Dynamo Win on the Road and Prepare for New Home
03/13/12
The Houston Dynamo captured a big win against Chivas USA at The Home Depot Center this weekend. The Dynamo, who made it all the way to the MLS Cup Finals last season, have not won their first game of the season since 2006.
It looked like the Dynamo would walk away scoreless in their first regular season match of 2012 when the game remained scoreless at the end of 90 minutes. It was Andre Hainault who notched the game winner in stoppage time to help the Dynamo walk away with three points. Hainault, who was married last November (boo!), is no stranger to scoring goals. Hainault scored three goals last season, with two of those goals coming in the Dynamo’s post season playoff run.
MLS, Meet BCS
03/09/12
As we head into the season, I’d like to give my fellow fans an interesting piece of food for thought: The 2012 Supporter’s Shield winner may be undeserving of the title.
A few days ago, mlssoccer.com released their latest round of 2012 Pre-Season Power Rankings and, to little surprise, the same team that topped the list last year is once again on top. For many years, this meant little: the Power Rankings were nothing but a pundit’s best tool to engage his/her readership, stir up the riff-raff… and not much else. The rankings held little actual value.
But over the last couple of years, thanks to better coverage and writing by those in the business of doing both, the preseason power rankings have been a fairly good indicator of – if not exact table placement – how the playoff picture would shake out.
But not this year.
While I have no doubt that this year’s power rankings are a fair representation of where the league’s concentration of quality lies, lurking beneath them is a dirty little secret:
Thanks to our “new and improved” schedule, at the end of the regular season, a team may find itself undeserving of its final table spot. Even the regular-season champion, the Supporter’s Shield winner, may be undeserving of the honor.
Does that sort of problem sound familiar? Just call us the BCS.
And through some (slightly arbitrary) number crunching, I’m about to show you how and why.
MLS Releases Mobile App Updates
03/08/12
by gay4soccer
in MLS
This morning MLS rolled out updates to its Match Day mobile apps for 2012 with some significant updates.
They are available here for Android and here for iPad/iPhone.
We gathered some opinions from the g4s writers on both the Android and iPhone versions…
Danny Califf’s Mohawk Returns, Commence Swooning
03/07/12
YES! The Philadelphia Union Captain Danny Califf has returned to his former mohawk’d self for a new season of defensive bad-assery. Finally, Danny brought back his bad boy hairstyle to complete a solid back line of hair conscious individuals. With Porfirio López, Sheanon “The Human Trebuchet” Williams and, always sharp, Carlos Valdez, I have a feeling some of us are going to be looking out for more than league leading defensive play.
