1) Seattle…wow
Screw the David Beckham saga.  Seattle Sounders FC is THE story of the young season. I’ll get into a few more specific thoughts below, but let’s just remember that the last expansion team to start the season 2 and 0 went on to win the MLS cup that year (granted, in a weaker version of the league).  I feel the need to say that I was predisposed to hate the Sounders.  I was skeptical of the Ljungburg signing; I felt the stealing of Sigi Schmid from Columbus was a bit of a questionable move after he just helped that city win it’s first league trophy; having them play on a turf field that’s in a football first stadium; the fact that they’re in Seattle (which I have other sports issues with); and the fact that they basically swiped an NASL identity rather than create their own, although I have since reversed my feelings on this issue…bring in all the NASL identity’s you want.  It’s our professional heritage as a soccer country!  All this had me, uhh….let’s call it slightly put out with the Sounder expansion team when things first started.  But they have built a program up there that’s to be respected rather than slaping an expansion team together that’s prepared to fall back on the first year excuse.  And all props to Drew Carey, who is one of the best high-profile soccer fans in this country.  Little fact: he still holds his Galaxy season ticket despite being a minority owner of the Sounders because he lives in L.A. and wants to support his local team.  He’s good for this country’s soccer programs. He and the Sounders made the effort to woo the city and it’s fans first rather than just hoping they’d turn out.  They made it so that the city of Seattle identified with that team from the very start.  And they’re getting results to boot with two very convincing wins to start the season, one of them against a team who was in last year’s MLS cup, and another against a team many pick to make a run this year themselves.  After having watched the city embrace them, support them, and the model they’ve put together, I’m a converted fan.  I’m pulling for them for many reasons, not the least of which is if they are successful more expansion teams will aim to emulate their style and enthusiasm…and I don’t see how that could be a bad thing.

2) Columbus prettiest soccer in MLS?  Maybe, but here comes Seattle.
In watching most of the games in the first to weeks of this 2009 season I feel I can say with some confidence that the Columbus Crew, despite their tag of being the hardest working team in the MLS, also are currently deserving of the title of the prettiest soccer in the MLS as well.  Guillermo Barros Schelotto runs his mid-field with precision and confidence on the ball as well as a kind of player’s player mentality that just makes that team fun to watch.  I’m a huge MLS supporter, but even I recognize that the MLS has a ton of direct play, bypassing the midfield, and loose ball type play that gives it a few hard to watch games every year (by a few I mean more than half…and by that I mean a lot).  I love the physicality of the league, and the work ethic of the players, and the parity of the league, and the unpredictability of the way things bounce in the MLS, and the Revs…I love the Revs (although I’m super disappointed at Parkhurst’s departure…it’s taken something from being a Rev fan for me).  But when I want pretty soccer, I watch England’s Arsenal or Spain’s Barcelona.  Columbus is changing that a bit.  They are a hard working, good-looking soccer team.  Good for them, and I tip my soccer fan’s hat to them for that.
That being said, Sigi Schmid is putting together a pretty good-looking side in Seattle.  They were a bit frantic in the opening minutes, and even after a couple of goals, of the Red Bulls game.  But they showed some great flashes of slick play, a huge hunk of which came from the young Columbian, Freddy Montero.  Their second game against Real Salt Lake was a much more complete game from start to finish.  I was excited watching them play, their attacking runs, the way they controlled the ball and managed the game, which Ljumburg did very well upon his entry despite his high attacking expectations and the ho-hum response to his short performance.  He was smart and I, as a player, appreciated what he brought.  Rookie Steve Zakuani made a few overly long wasteful runs in which he covered a lot of ground only to get caught in a tight space and lose the ball, but brought it on enough occasions to warrant his continued selection.  If the expansion/inexperience blues don’t weight this team down over the run of the season, they’re going to continue to be effective, but more importantly they’re going to continue to be entertaining.

3) Hang on to Freddy Montero

This one’s no surprise really.  I don’t know what Montero’s contract deal is for, but I pray to the soccer-gods that it’s longer than a year, and that Seattle has the balls and brains to hang on to him as long as they can.  This kid’s been nothing short of brilliant in the first two games and he’s going to start to draw notice really quickly.  Someone who thinks they’re being business smart would say that when the high offers start coming in for Freddy Montero from overseas we should sell him and get bank for the kid early before he starts to decline or gets injured or something.  I say Seattle should go shopping for a second DP tag and hang on to this kid as long as is humanly possible.  He’s the kind of player that can galvanize entire fan-bases around him and his team.  He’ll put butts in the seats.  He’ll be remembered long after Ljumburg has ended his 1-2 year run, Keller has ended his 1-2 year run, and Seattle has lost it’s expansion buzz.  Other bright young talents will sign with MLS because of him as long as he’s here.  He’s the kind of player that the MLS needs to hang on to if it wants the level of play to go up.  Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, Bobby Convey, Freddy Adu, and others were smart sells at the time because the league saw the benefit of the money to grow the league, and didn’t have quite enough swagger to pull off hanging on to them and their ambitions.  Montero represents the beginning of a new time period in MLS history.  He’s a smart, cheeky young player who’s come to the league from elsewhere in his prime as his announcement to the world.  Now’s the time to capitalize on his faith in the league to begin to hang on to these players and think about the product on the field.  A bold move like this would benefit the league long after any allocation money that would have been received for him would stop circulating.  I’m not stupid enough to think we won’t lose him eventually, but a year or two isn’t enough time to really allow what his actual playing impact can be to trickle down through-out the league.

4) NY reorganized to look disorganized
I’m shocked and disappointed that the NY Red Bulls revamp in the off-season has left them looking so disorganized and piss-poor so far this season.  Juan Carlos Osorio is looking less and less like the good coach he appeared to be with Chicago, and more and more like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  In both their opening games so far they have looked like they were scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on in their defensive half, abandoned most of their midfield play, and had little to no possession on in the attacking third.  I sure hope they get it together or Juan Pablo Angel may decided he wants to go on loan somewhere in Europe this summer.

5) Houston and NE dominance over?
As much as it saddens me to say it, especially given my Rev’s trophy haul during this time, I believe Houston and New England may have seen one too many important players fly the coop than can be compensated for.  I believe both Dominic Kinnear and Steve Nicol are brilliant coaches, and I tag them both to dominate this league again with their team selection, but for now both the Revolution and the Dynamo look to be teams who are no longer set up to dominate this league.  They have both been unimpressive so far this season, and seem to be searching for answers in key positions.  Will Stuart Holden step up to lead the team and take some of the burden off Brian Ching?  Will stadium concerns and field concerns dog Houston all year?  Will Taylor Twellman and Steve Ralston come back with enough form to lift New England up by the bootstraps, and then continue to stay healthy?  Will Steve Nicol find someone or a combination of someones to replace the vital cog that Michael Parkhurst represented?  Can either team keep the ball on the ground long enough to actually create some flow to a game and therefore some decent attacking opportunities from the run of play rather than counter attacks and surprise chances?  These questions and many more will determine if we even see these two once dominant teams in the playoffs this year, but for now I certainly wouldn’t lay any money on seeing either of these two teams come out of the tunnel at Qwest field come MLS cup ’09.