The Day MLS Turned The Corner Is Finally Here

I'm really excited for MLS today. Not just for the MLS Cup match, though that is going to be brilliant, but for MLS in general.

The owners finally put the Beckham Rule on the books at the league meeting yesterday. I saw finally because Landon Donovan, Eddie Johnson, and a few others have fallen under the Beckham Rule for quite some time. Or the unwritten one. The official one says the league will pick up $400,000 of a superstar's salary while the team can pick up as much in addition as they want to.

So if Chicago Fire wanted to sign Juan Riquelme (okay, maybe that's just my dream), that's now entirely legal. Though why they would sign an Argentinian as that wouldn't help gates that much, I don't know. I just couldn't think of an exciting Mexican offensive minded player since Jared Borgetti now in the hinterlands might not even need the Beckham Rule.

And the better part of the new rule is that teams can trade away their Beckham Exemption to another team for domestic or smaller international players. So a team like Red Bull New York could, in theory, buy two international superstars.

Heh. Maybe they should call it the Bruce Arena exemption since he was the one who pushed for the Red Bulls to be able to operate in that way. :)

They also passed the Youth Development rule which lets teams sign players out of their own youth system instead of exposing them to the draft.

And I've heard rumors of single table for next year.

MLS is become a real league. A really, real league. Not made of wood anymore.

Now if only single entity would go away. I guess it's baby steps.

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But I'm also excited about the game today.

This is the game that should have happened last year when Houston was San Jose. These were the best two teams in 2005 and they're still among the top four so it should be an even matchup.

Of course I want New England to win because Clint Dempsey and Sharlie Joseph are going to be playing in England after a two month respite and they should have had a ring from last year. Then again, Dwayne DeRosario won't be playing in the United States either, but rumors are he'll be playing in Canada and not in Europe.

Even if he's good enough to cross over the seas.

Though I don't know how those transfer rumors about DeRo can possibly be true. There is no way that Houston will leave DeRosario open to the expansion draft (which is coming up in a week).

Maybe Toronto FC will use their Beckham exemption to lure him away. :)

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Speaking of silly moves, it appears as though Manchester United is about to give Freddy Adu his long awaited European trial.

On a related story, Boston mayor Thomas Menino has offered Houston mayor Bill White 10 Boston cream pies if Houston wins.

I am a bit jealous of New England Revolution since they have a mayor in their major municipality who really seems to care about them. He even wants to build them a stadium downtown. Combine that with Bill Kraft (who is probably down in Dallas today as opposed to Foxboro since the Jets don't offer nearly as much competition) and they might benefit from the Beckham Rule more than anyone but Los Angeles Galaxy and Red Bull New York.

I'm pretty worried about what the Fire are going to do with theirs.

Though there are some good players on the Polish national team playing in Scotland and Germany right now who would be good candidates. Or maybe Robbie Keane. He's not that happy right now. Maybe that would get Mayor Daley interested.

Or maybe that's a pipe dream.

It's more likely that Chicago hosting the MLS Cup would, though hosting the All-Star Match didn't seem to do much for that.

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So who's my money on in the end? I think Houston is going to win and they are the longer shot but this is the sort of game where pride is important to me. So I think I'll put money on the Revs depending on how my NFL bets go.

They can't let me down yet again, can they?