The Daily Dirt, January 25, 2018: Miami on the brink of joining MLS?

Today’s stories have a bit of everything - transfer news, MLS expansion tidbits, a few scores from cup competitions in Europe, and of course the never ending and probably futile USSF Presidential election.

Happy Thursday everyone!

Domestic

The Boston Breakers are in trouble... this is a real bummer. It will be interesting to see if USSF steps in to help the team play in 2018 or what will happen.

David Beckham might actually have a soccer team playing soccer in Miami sometime soonish.

USL is talking about having Pro/Rel between its D2 and D3 leagues one day. I composed a tweet for p/r bros so they don’t have to come up with anything original when they @ me and Jonathan Tannenwald (nobody’s @ing me, let’s be real): YEAH BUT CORRUPT ScUM IS GOING TO MAKE PRO/REL IRRELEVANT AND MAKE SOCCER IN AMERICA BE A COMPLETE FAILURE DESPITE A DECADE OF SOLID GROWTH AND EVEN UNEXPECTED LEAPS IN POPULARITY AND QUALITY OF THE DOMESTIC LEAGUE.

Hunter S. Thompson would have loved the USSF Presidential race, I can just imagine reading “Wynalda/Solo/Martino/Ganz/Winograd/Caligiuri made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Gulati/Carter/Cordeiro do every day of their lives, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything they stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be USSF President?” and Graham Parker of Four-Four-Two didn’t write that. But he did write about the fraught atmosphere on display in the U.S. soccer world last weekend from LA to Philly in a pretty entertaining article.

One of the challenges USSF will have at making soccer accessible to all will be overcoming class differences among players. These Football Times has a cultural analysis of how elitism, nationalism and the intersection of race and class impacts soccer culture on and off the field in the US.

Eric Wynalda released his plan called America United: How America becomes a global soccer power (which sounds like it went really far out of it’s way to avoid having the words “Make,” “America” and “Great” in it). It includes something called Soccer Stimulus which involves spending money but also getting rich (it might need work).

Houston still making moves as they rebuild after making the Western Conference Final.

Noticias del sur

Yesterday we updated you on Freddy Adu with the LV Lights, here’s another US International that is looking to make a comeback:

Translation: The hairplugs held finally! You look younger since arriving in Leon, right on brother.

International

This counts as international:

Arsenal beat Chelsea in something called the League Cup.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan is living the dream over and over and over again. He’s like soccer’s version of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Tom Marshall says that Mexico fans shouldn’t blame MLS for El Tri players moving to the league and bringing down the level of talent on the national team - they should be upset that there isn’t enough talent to push them to think they need to be in a more challenging league.

Check out this goal from the green team

Leganes FC knocked Real Madrid out of the Copa del Rey on a corner kick:

Atlanta Unitedish

Don Garber went on Planet Futbol TV, which is apparently a thing (sorry for the ads, pop-ups, auto-play videos, other ads, and other ads), to talk about how awesome Zeke is and about how good SUM, the company he is the CEO of, is along with talking about forsaking the history and tradition of the Crew. Aly Wagner talked about the WNT and Mal Pugh, the World Cup, and USSF Election.

On the #SignAsad front...

Apparently Dr. Bronner or whatever the owner of the Loons is called thinks he can do better than dropping $2 million on a DP who is a proven player in MLS while his team looks generally set to wallow in mediocrity for a second straight year (Yamil, don’t sign for Minnesota, we’re coming for you, we promise).