David Beckham's MLS 2020

[Lowerdeck]

USL League 2 has been cancelled for the year.  Championship and League 1 still suspended, but hope teams can start training informally within the next month.

[Colly]

 

[Lineker]

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Aleksandar Katai has been released by the LA Galaxy after a series of alarming social media posts by his wife, Tea.

The Galaxy announced their decision to “mutually part ways” with their new Serbian winger Friday in a one-sentence news release.

Tea Katai made the posts on her Instagram story earlier this week, and the Galaxy angrily condemned them as “racist and violent” on Wednesday.

The Instagram posts made by Tea Katai on Tuesday, which have since been deleted, mocked protests related to the killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis last week. One image showed a police SUV attempting to drive through protesters in New York. A caption in Serbian read, “Kill the shits!” while a second showed a picture of an individual carrying boxes of Nikes with the caption “Black Nikes Matter”.

The Galaxy met with Aleksandar Katai on Thursday. He disavowed his wife’s posts late Wednesday night, saying the “views are not ones that I share and are not tolerated in my family”. Katai signed with the Galaxy as a free agent on 31 December.

Galaxy fans immediately reacted with wide online calls for his dismissal. On Thursday, a handful of fans gathered by the David Beckham statue outside the club’s stadium holding a banner reading “No Racists in Our Club” along with a circle and a red line through No 7, Katai’s uniform number.

The 29-year-old Katai had been participating in voluntary individual workouts this week with his Galaxy teammates at their training complex in Carson. On Thursday, he posted a message on Instagram calling the posts “a mistake from my family” and saying he took full responsibility, apologizing “for the pain these posts have caused the LA Galaxy family and all allies in the fight against racism”.

Although he had played in only two games with his new club before the coronavirus pandemic postponed the MLS season, Katai was expected to be an important part of the Galaxy’s attack this season alongside Javier “Chicharito” Hernández and Cristian Pavón.

Katai joined MLS with the Chicago Fire in 2018 after a career in Europe, including time with Serbian powerhouse Red Star Belgrade. He had 18 goals in his first two seasons with the Fire, who acquired him from Alavés in Spain’s La Liga.

[Lineker]

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Major League Soccer to restart season with Disney World tournament on 8 July

The league’s 26 teams will be divided into six groups for the opening round of the tournament played without fans at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports complex at Walt Disney World.

Teams had played just two games to start the season when the league suspended play on 12 March because of the coronavirus outbreak.

While in Florida, players will be sequestered in a resort with a rigorous testing protocol. Each team will have three group matches, played over 16 consecutive days with multiple games a day. The group matches will count toward the regular-season standings.

Sixteen teams will advance to the knockout round, with the winner earning a spot in the 2021 Concacaf Champions League.

Following the tournament, teams will resume the season in their home markets.

Teams can begin arriving for training on 24 June. Those that have already been training in market must arrive no later than seven days before their first match.

[Lowerdeck]

USL Championship is hoping to come back on July 11th, with teams playing in their own home stadiums.

 

The specifics haven't been announced yet, but its progress.

[GoGo Yubari]

Both Atlanta United and Inter Miami have had players test positive for COVID-19. This MLS Is Back tournament is gonna be a shitshow.

[Szumi]

I mean, the whole concept is a shit show to begin with, so it's very fitting

[GoGo Yubari]

So the NWSL, the pro women's soccer league, is also planning on doing a tournament featuring all ten teams in the league starting at the end of this week in Utah. Except one team today just pulled out because of a sudden rash of COVID cases, stemming from a trip to a bar.

That team was the Orlando Pride. Orlando, of course, is where the MLS tournament is meant to be taking place. Again, a shitshow in the making.

[Szumi]

The MLS truly deserves for this to be an abject failure

[Lineker]

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It appears that it’s not only teams that are overvalued in MLS.

Nutrition is crucial for players, so it made sense that the league wanted to make sure its athletes got the best food as they prepare for the MLS Is Back Tournament in Florida, which starts next week.

With players housed in a “bubble” at Disney World, the league has made sure they are isolated from the general public and have their own dining area as well as the option to eat in their rooms, with some meals coming in at $65. While that may sound expensive, options included mouthwatering delicacies such as “house roasted prime New York strip loin” and “bourbon glazed smoked Virginia ham”. It’s safe to say the product is not quite as billed.

Toronto FC’s Omar Gonzalez tweeted a picture of his meal: a sandwich with a banana and a small pot of potato salad. His teammate, Eriq Zavaleta, went for the ham and got a soggy looking sandwich and … a banana.

Inevitably, comparisons were made to the disastrous, and infamous, Fyre Festival. The Athletic reported that the meals tweeted out by Zavaleta and Gonzalez were the room service option and MLS, rather than the players, would pick up the tab.

MLS was put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the month-long MLS Is Back Tournament is planned to be a precursor for the resumption of the regular season in August. The NBA will also resume its season at Disney World at the end of July, although league commissioner has admitted that dealing with an “unpredictable” virus means the league’s plans could change.

[Szumi]

Dallas had to pull out of the Mickey Mouse Invitational because a bunch of the players have COVID. This thing just gets more and more ridiculous

[Lowerdeck]

Nashville ended up dropping out too.  Chicago was moved to Group B to take Dallas' place, and Group A now has four teams like everyone else.

Caught the second half of Orlando/Miami which wasn't bad.  Fields seem smaller than normal.  Good to have live American sports back.

 

In USLC, its opening weekend starting tomorrow.   Teams play in their own venues rather than neutral sites.

Louisville hosts Pittsburgh on Sunday to open up their new stadium.

[OctoberRaven]

 

[LL!]

And yet... Still competitive in all the losses. David Beckham, the handsome leader that he is, will right this ship. 

Not to mention how much a sham this tournament is. But that's not something you want to talk about. 

[gunnar hendershow]

Yeah this tournament is a total joke. Kind of a lame year for the new expansion teams to never develop any chemistry together. I'm sure both Miami and Nashville will improve next year as they get more footing in the league and start bringing in more players. Not everyone can start off like LAFC or Atlanta United. They're the exceptions not the rule.

[OctoberRaven]

5 hours ago, LL. said:

But that's not something you want to talk about. 

I'd rather talk about the real Miami team, not the plastic corporate version owned by scumbags, but there's no USL thread.

[Lowerdeck]

5 hours ago, OctoberRaven said:

I'd rather talk about the real Miami team, not the plastic corporate version owned by scumbags, but there's no USL thread.

I basically just use this thread for USL discussion, since I assumed nobody else cares.

[LL!]

Inter Miami CF is as real as David Beckham's statuesque physique. 

[GoGo Yubari]

Yeah, it's... look, I'm happy I get to watch the Sounders play and to be fair, I've gotten to see Jordan Morris play his ass off in these games. In the beating they gave Vancouver he and Raul Ruidiaz gave me some of the prettiest attacking play I've seen out of our team since Dempsey and Obafemi Martins were the starting strikers. But you really can't infer much of anything from these games, it's a glorified version of the preseason tournaments that happen every year in Arizona and the like.

[OctoberRaven]

2 hours ago, LL. said:

Inter Miami CF is as real as David Beckham's statuesque physique. 

https://www.caughtoffside.com/2015/01/30/david-beckham-labelled-fat-by-his-own-daughter/

Inter Miami is the worst thing to happen to Florida futbol.