It's tough to deny MLS has made strides in recent years. Fanbases in LA, Seattle, Philly, Chicago and Toronto are legitimately passionate for soccer, and actually back their passion up with their wallets. The league is expanding regularly, and hasn't abandoned a city since 2005 (and then promptly gave San Jose a replacement franchise). Tonight's MLS Cup is on primetime on ESPN, in soccer-mad Seattle, and features two of the biggest stars in the league in Landon Donovan and David Beckham (in that order

So why won't I be watching?

I do enjoy soccer; I haven't missed a USMNT game in five years. And while the level of play in MLS is second rate compared to domestic leagues in some countries, the fact that they're evenly matched against each other makes the games just as exciting.

The fact is, MLS would have worked before satellite TV. There's enough soccer fans in this country now to support a league, but with Premiership and Serie A and Bundesliga and La Liga and Ligue 1 and a host of South American leagues on television every week, I'm going to watch and follow those before I'm going to get into MLS. Unless I have a vested interest.

I suppose I just haven't been able to get emotionally involved in the league. I don't know the players, the rivalries, or the storylines. My local team has been horrible forever (notwithstanding last year's fluke title game appearance), so their games aren't appointment viewing. I still have yet to go to a game, because it's near impossible to get there without a car (the new stadium opening next year will help).

The league can't control parity, but they can get their players out there so I'm forced to pay attention. Stuff like Chris Seitz slinging fish at Pike Place Market, pictured above. Let their personalities show. Where's MLS's Chad Ochocinco, or Sean Avery? Where's the player who'll make me tune in to see what they'll do next?

So let your freak flag fly, MLS. Bring in the washed up big name players from overseas. Break out the cheerleaders. Encourage over-the-top goal celebrations. Give me something I can sink my teeth into, because competent play just isn't cutting it. Sure it'll piss off the purists, but they've never been numerous enough to keep the game thriving here.

Now if you'll excuse me, Eagles/Bears is coming on soon.

•••••

Thanks for letting me into your modem, as we begin a mercifully abbreviated week. Remember, there's strings attached to every single blogger.

The sports heckler is really just a close ancestor to another unfortunate phenomenon of modern life—the Internet Tough Guy. Go to any sporting event, from NFL playoff games to little league softball, and you will regularly hear unbelievably vile epithets hurled at anyone standing between the lines. (And not just in Philadelphia!) You know, the kind of things you would never say in front of your mother. But if asked to back up their raging threats, most folks immediately back down like the cowards they are.

Like this guy:

Video blogger Ramsey Mohsen was at the Kansas City game and right on top of the action when Beckham had his little showdown with the fans. (You should really watch the whole video, but I grabbed this snippet just to make my point.) One of them, wearing an England kit, insulted the player's wife so Beckham told him he had no business wearing that jersey. (And maybe called him a scumbag later.) The other guy dared Beckham to call him down to the field if he thinks he's so strong. So Beckham did call him down ... and the guy, of course, did not answer the challenge. That didn't stop him from trying to brag about it on video anyway. Well played, sir.

The safety of the bleachers allows fans to shout terrible things that they would never, ever say to another person's face. (Just like I'm doing now, maybe!) The L.A. Galaxy fan who leapt on the field actually tried to back his talk up, which is why it's sort of fitting that his lifetime ban from the arena was lifted. Congrats on not being a coward! On the other hand, Beckham would have never pulled that crap in Europe, because he would probably be stabbed in the heart with a burning road flare. They don't mess around on the continent.

I'm not saying taunts shouldn't be allowed at games, or that you should go charging on to the field at the first sign of a challenge. I'm just asking fans to take a little more pride in their trash talk. Be clever. Be amusing. For real amusing, not just internet comment amusing. Making a player laugh would be way more distracting than making them angry. There's no need to be cruel/offensive/racist. Most of all, don't make threats. Because you know you can't back them up. If you said those things to David Beckham on the street, he and/or his security guard would pummel you into the concrete. But it doesn't make you a hero to say it to him from behind the safety of the railing.

Unless you're these guys. They walked the walk, they can talk the talk.

Beckham Fan Incident Explained [Hillcrest Road]

Josh Paige was the member of the "Riot Squad" section who was hauled off by security during the Galaxy's friendly vs. AC Milan, after he jumped out of the stands to confront Beckham. Of course, Beckham went over to the section first and appeared to challenge the fan, so he wasn't exactly an innocent victim. However, for his crimes, Paige will never be allowed to return to Carson, California's most glamorous Olympic training facility.

Imagine being denied the right to attend the L.A. Women's Tennis Championship or X Games 15 or ... that's it really. Oh, I guess there's the soccer games, which this guy obviously lives for because he's a registered member of the "Riot Squad." But still ... it's the Home Depot Center. Who are they turning away?

Fan pays for Beckham confrontation with lifetime ban [USA Today]

That's Fredy Montero, the Columbian star on loan from Deportivo Cali, touting the Sounders' first game of the MLS season, which occurred on March 19 (and in which Montero scored the franchise's first-ever goal). But evidently he's not adjusting well to life in the Pacific Northwest. Montero is under investigation for a sexual assault that allegedly occurred on March 22, and then, on Tuesday, for allegedly stalking the same woman.

According to a law enforcement report about the incident, the 23-year-old woman told police on March 31 that she saw Montero in a car near her home in Sammamish. The report stated that she feared for her safety because Montero allegedly had sexually assaulted her in Bellevue the week before on March 22, which she had reported to the Bellevue Police Department.

I have a feeling they may be removing these ads from Seattle buses soon.

And speaking of stalking, here's a fan who wrote a song about the Sounders' Evan Brown. Key verse: "So technically I'm jail bait, but that's okay/You're only twenty-one and I'm worth the wait."

Update: The sexual assault charge has been sent to the King County prosecutor's office. As for the stalking charge, police say it may have just been a coincidence that Montero and the woman were in the same area at the same time.

Sources: Sounders' Montero Subject Of Police Investigation [SeattlePI]

Pictured here we see Mark A. Belanger, 34, of Sarasota, who was arrested on charges of child endangerment on Sunday night when he allegedly let his eight-year-old son drive a van, which almost plowed into two Toronto FC coaches who were walking nearby. Some tremendous quotes here, so let's get right to them.

Belanger told police he was "feeling woozy and didn't want to drive." He also told them he let his child drive "because he wanted to have a bonding moment with his son." The two pedestrians nearly hit by the child driver are coaches with a Major League Soccer club team, Toronto FC. The team has been in the area for about a week in a training camp.

Witnesses said the boy crashed the van into a tree, shattering the driver's side rear window, after the two coaches got out of the way. The boy then crashed a second time into a tree, damaging the car's radiator, the police report said.

When police arrived, Belanger fell to the ground after he dropped his wallet. When he fell, he slammed his face on the pavement, leaving a gash on the bridge of his nose. The boy told police his father took "liquid medicine in order to feel better." He pointed to an empty bottle of Canadian whiskey in the vehicle.

Mark A. Belanger just pawn in game of life!

Please note that this story has nothing to do with Mark Belanger, the former shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles.

Father Charged When Eight-Year-Old Son Causes Damage [Bradenton Herald]

Pujols, a native of the Dominican Republic who grew up in New York and Missouri, has joined the ownership group for the proposed St. Louis MLS franchise. It is one of seven cities jockeying for the selection.

A master plan and design for a $400 million soccer, retail and entertainment complex in Collinsville, Ill. has been completed by the firm of Suttle Mindlin Architects, said Jeff Cooper, an East Alton, Ill. lawyer who is lead investor. It will include 14 fields for use by area youth and school teams. Collinsville is a collar community for St. Louis, just on the east side of the Mississippi River. As MLS soccer-specific stadiums go, Cooper said the Collinsville site is closer to the downtown area than most.

"We are eight miles and eight minutes, all highway from downtown St. Louis," Cooper said. "You can stand on the ground at our site and you have a beautiful view of downtown and the Arch. It is as an easy place to get to.

Good to see someone is adding jobs these days. I thought the MLS was in trouble when it moved the San Jose Earthquakes to Houston; if you can't have a viable pro soccer franchise in San Jose, there's no real hope for expansion anywhere. But then all became right with the world when a brand new Earthquakes showed up in San Jose this year. From what I understand soccer is big in St. Louis, so best of luck, and please no mooning.

Pujols Hopes To Bring MLS To St. Louis [MLS.com]

The Fire will meet either the Kansas City Wizards or the Columbus Crew in the final, which I'm sure will be ratings gold for ESPN. Of course if they ignore the game and simply pan the spectators for the duration, that will help.

Fire Changes The Picture [Chicago Tribune]

Cepero was making his MLS debut, and was in the game replacing regular goalkeeper Jon Conway, who had been suspended for testing positive for performance enhancing substances (this happens in soccer?) The free kick — the first goal ever recorded by a goalie in MLS history — eluded Crew goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum, who, if he'll take my advice, will begin drinking heavily. New York beat the Columbus Crew 3-1.

I'm trying to think of an American football equivalent to this feat, and all I can come up with is this: Terrell Owens catches a 90-yard touchdown pass, quietly hands the ball to the ref and doesn't say a word about it.

Cepero Makes Historic Debut For New York [New York Red Bulls]

"I'm embarrassed,'' said Espindola, who celebrated goals with a flip since his days as a youth player in Argentina. I'm never going to do that again. I don't know what happened. I've done it a million times. If I would have known I never would have done it.''

Change the sport to football, and make it Terrell Owens, Chad Ocho Cinco, or any other NFL receiver who does this after scoring a touchdown. Yeah, it would end up a featured question in the Presidential debates. But soccer, Salt Lake has a team? Wow.

RSL gets a break in split [Salt Lake Tribune]
Soccer player breaks his leg [The Beautiful Game]

Are those tattoos? And what's dripping from his head? Do not make soccer fan angry ... you wouldn't like him when he's angry.

A halftime brawl between more than 100 fans marred an exhibition match Sunday between West Ham United of the English Premier League club and the MLS' Columbus Crew. The fights, which overshadowed West Ham United's 3-1 win, began when a handful of West Ham supporters, some wearing the team's claret and blue colors, entered the northeast corner of the stadium where the Crew's most boisterous supporters typically gather.

Crew supporters began directing chants toward the rival fans, and fights quickly broke out between more than 100 Crew fans and at least 30 West Ham fans. Columbus police officers and Crew Stadium security staff eventually separated the groups.

This is the only way soccer is going to catch on in the U.S.: Having Europe export their hooligans. Perhaps we could work out some sort of lend-lease deal?

Crew-West Ham United Friendly Marred By Brawl Between Fans [USA Today]

Yep, American soccer has arrived. And I say that as a big soccer fan. Chase Hilgenbrinck, a reserve defender for the New England Revolution, is retiring at the age of 26 to enter a Maryland seminary. Hilgenbrinck will spend six years at the seminary before he can become a priest. Per the AP.

Hilgenbrinck had his initial interview for the seminary last July, followed by a rigorous application process. There were written tests, personality screenings, background checks, fingerprinting and meetings with three different psychiatrists to make sure he had the right temperament to be a priest.

Your move, fat Ronaldo, your move.

Hilgenbrinck retires to entire priesthood [ESPN]

Soccer player prefers god to groupies [With Leather]

I'm kvelling, and not just because I'm going to be eating matzo all next week. No, the reason I'm feeling so good is that David Beckham is sending his son Cruz to a Jewish nursery school in Los Angeles.

While Becks and Posh say they have no plans for Cruz to convert, which is probably wise because that other Cruise — Suri — probably won't date a Jewish guy anyway, at least they're going halfway.

Then again, how much can you really ask from someone who's only half Jewish (on his mum's side) and has a Hebrew tattoo on his clearly Gentile body?

As for the biggest mensch in the Galaxy, he's having quite the month — at least off the field. He got to sit courtside at the Lakers-Clippers game and was given his first traffic ticket for bending too much on a left turn. But perhaps the most exciting news is that a recent survey of adult film stars named him the celebrity they'd most like to shtup.

All I can say is: Mazel Tov!

It's not often that I plan my Saturday night around watching a MLS game, especially when it kicks off right when my man Tyler Hansbrough is in the midst of giving little Ricky Pitino a facial for the ages. But this was not just any MLS game, it was the showcase match of the league's opening weekend, and it involved a certain English underwear model who plays for the LA Galaxy and, who from all accounts, was finally healthy and ready to justify his "$250 million" hype as the latest Messiah of American Soccer.

So really, what choice did I have but to TiVO the Heels, hook up an I.V. of Stella and watch David Beckham's do-over debut for the Galaxy against the Colorado Rapids? I had granted Becks a mulligan for last year 's train-wreck of a season in which he had played in only five games and scored a single, solitary goal. Yep, I had decided to give him a clean slate, to suspend any judgments on his ability to transform a team, a league, a sport, until he could perform pain-free on the field.

But after watching him stroll around Dick's Sporting Goods Park Saturday night (it doesn't quite roll off the tongue like Old Trafford, does it?), it's clear that no amount of Becks' trademark laser-guided passes or exquisite dead-ball deliveries is going to change the fact that the Galaxy are eye-bleedingly awful. The ease with which they were dismantled 4-0 by a workmanlike Colorado Rapids team missing half a dozen key players makes you wonder what Lalas and the rest of the Galaxy 's so-called braintrust were thinking when they surrounded their prize catch with what looks to be two MLS All-Stars (Donovan and Ruiz) and eight one-legged circus performers. Even more astonishing is how they were able to convince the great Dutch player Ruud "Sexy Football" Gullitt to coach this farce, other than by promising him safe haven in Bali if things didn't work out.

You would think that after last year's premature ejaculation about soccer's second coming in the U.S., the MLS might have lowered the expectations. But there on Saturday night was Fox's Max Bretos, the carnival barker of American soccer, assuring us "it's hard not to get excited by a game of this magnitude" (Jeez, Max, how tumescent would you get about, say, Brazil v. Argentina?) Referring to the game's marquee attraction as "David Robert Joseph Beckham" Max pronounced "the Beckham Era" upon us.

As it turned out, it was more like the Terry Cooke Era. Cookie, who played alongside Becks on Man U's youth championship teams back in the day, eventually crumbled out of Old Trafford in the mid-nineties and found his way to Colorado two years ago. On Saturday, he had a goal and two assists against the Galaxy and combined with Colorado's Argentine playmaker Christian Gomez to make LA look like a poor man's Derby County, if such a thing is possible. And I should know because earlier in the day, preparing for a "game of this magnitude," I watched another game that was hard not to get excited about — Derby vs. Fulham for the bragging rights to the title of the Worst Prem Team In Anyone's Memory.

For years Lalas has been yammering about how the best MLS teams could hold their own in the lower reaches of England's top flight. Let me just say that, as spectacularly incompetent as Derby is, the Galaxy, on the basis of Saturday's performance, aren't worthy of washing their jocks. But given where Beckham's priorities seem to be — getting a new $5,000 tattoo of a bare-breasted angel who looks like his wife, playing footsy with Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes," or offering a private lesson to Salma Hayek for $350,000 at a charity auction — who cares about soccer when you can look at a giant billboard of your golden balls in Times Square? Yes, there he is in all his near-naked glory at the crossroads of the world, reclining in a pair of too-tighty Armani whities for which he's been paid an estimated $30 million, which, if you believe Posh Spice's math, works out to about three million an inch.

"He does have a huge one," she recently said, describing how he truly bends. "You can see it in the advert. It is all his. It is like a tractor exhaust pipe."

That may be fine when it comes to plowing HER field, but the MLS needs every inch of Beckham The Player to take soccer to the next level. That means no more jetting off to make cameos for England three days before a Galaxy game. Congratulations on your 100th cap, Becks, you looked sharp launching 40-yard balls to Rooney and Gerrard in that 1-0 loss to France on Wednesday. I realize it's perhaps not as gratifying pinging gift-wrapped passes to Landycakes and Ruiz, but I hear Lalas is scouting a new striker for you. Her name is Salma Hayek.

Yes, for as little as 600 bucks, you could spend your Christmas with the MLS Cup.

If you're a Dynamo fan within deep enough pockets, you can bid on the chance to do whatever you want with the trophies. And I mean anything. You just need to live within 40 miles of Houston, and be willing to spend an hour with the media on Christmas Day. Oh yeah, and have enough money to do it.

Wait, you can do anything? We suspect Daulerio could come up with a few ideas ....

Here's How You Can Spend Christmas With The MLS Cup [Lion In Oil]

This is from last night's exhibition match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Vancouver Whitecaps. Honestly, if we were a security guard, you couldn't pay us enough to tackle that guy.

We know, we know: Running on the field is dangerous and reckless. We got it. It's still awesome.

David Beckham Upstaged By Streaker In Vancouver [Towleroad]