Glad to see no Chivas de Guada in the mix for Champions' Cup... very glad

Ugh, not Saprissa. If DC can't get Harbour View and the awesome away trip it would entail, then I want Motagua and another opportunity for United to hand Amado Guevara his ass again for old times' sake.

for my money, gomez is much more valuable to d.c. than veron would be. gomez has a much better nose for goal whereas veron likes to sit back and pull the strings from a distance. if gomez were to leave and veron replaced him i think we'd see a much different style of play from d.c.

I'm confused about the prediction. It's just a straight draw right? One MLS-MFL team gets matched against one of the Caribbean or Central American teams. Is there some way of predicting which of the four possible opponents is more likely? Do they manually pick the matchups?

The Olympic qualifying situation is sticky. Nobody wants to see one of the two regional powerhouses sit out simply because of the way the tournament is organized, but for the sake of the other teams in the region, they can't outright rig it either.

Lawrenceterp,

Given that it's CONCACAF, a briefcase of money is likely also involved.

with MLS looking to expand more into Canada, i can see the canadians really missing out of the Champions Cup competition unless one of their team finish top in MLS

More info on the Quakes' tryouts here:

http://blog.soccersiliconvalley.com/

The Oly qualifier needs to reorganize the second round.

They should advance A1, A2, B1 & B2 into a round-robin Group C. The top two advance to the Olympics on points earned in matches against the teams in Group C with the usual tiebreakers thrown in.

No additional game days are needed if the results from the first round matches of A1 v. A2 and B1 v. B2 are counted in the Group C standings.

They then play A1 v. B1, and A2 v. B2 on the day that had been the semifinals, and A1 v. B2 and A2 v B1 on the day that was to host the meaningless final. Ideally these last games are simultaneous but that is optional. Maybe they play them in an order that assures no shenanigans.

Not only do you get rid of a match (USA-MEX in a semi) no one in CONCACAF wants but you get a meaningful last day of the tourney.

What happened to the Champions League style group play tournament? Is that being scratched?

Or an even easier solution is to just have two groups as normal and the winner of each group qualifies for the olympics. Why do you need the "playoffs" since I don't think it matters whether you qualify as Concacaf #1 or Concacaf #2. If order does matter then you have the two qualifiers play eachother to determine ranking.

Mark M.,

You just beat me to the punch, though I hadn't thought about including the head-to-head results from the preliminary group in the final group.

I've never understood why the semi-final matches in a tournament should be the ones that really count. Or is it possible this is some sort of convoluted FIFA regulation?

That totally sucks about the Earthquakes tryouts. I can't see how someone can be considered ineligible for trying out with a team that won't pay them a dime. This lady seems like she's out to hurt the kids more than anything. Hopefully they work out whatever the issue is and these kids will be able to continue with their school teams.

about the kids in high school forfeiting games due to trying out for the Quakes developmental team - good grief!

I don't have kids, but I have seen the, in my opinion, childish way that high school and local club teams fight over kids. This sounds like more of the same.

Kinda sad.

Soccer is a winter sport in Northern CA, so it's affecting those highschool players mid-season. Kinda like here though, HS soccer doesn't mean a whole lot to the good players on good club teams except at a few schools.

dwbpnm,

Obviously you could just take the group winners but there are two (potential) problems.

1) Uneven group strength (unlikely in this case) and

2) too much importance on one game.

The only chance a secondary team has of winning a 4-team group is beating the best team in the group in a single game. You have play a "playoff" game but in the middle of your group play. And the strongest team could fail to advance despite due to one bad bounce.

Soccer is too flukey to allow one game to matter too much. Playing more games allows the cream to rise.

Ben,

I'd love to say that Recycled Results(TM) is a moment of pure genius on my part, but I can't

FIBA (Int'l Basketball) used RR(TM) in a recent major tournament. Maybe they do it all the time, I don't know. It takes a bit of a paradigm shift but is really quite useful.

I'd love to see it implemented at the World Cup. Imagine a second round with 16 teams being reduced to 4 in two matchdays filled with 16 high-quality, PK-shootout-free games.