The Daily Dirt February 28, 2018: Last gasp for NASL 2.0

The world is a cold, cruel place, filled with injustice and pain. Let’s take a break from my usual cynicism and think about how happy puppies make everyone.

Domestic

The NASL has finally been crushed under it’s own weight of poor management, over ambition, alleged USSF favoritism of MLS, and refusal to just go on and play the season as a D3 league. Alas, some lawsuits will continue to pointlessly go on as the league’s owners try to get... something? Out of their conflict with USSF.

Miami is totally being honest and building goodwill with their stadium planning and not getting secret breaks from county taxpayers in Miami-Dade. Jorge and Jose Mas have their work cut out for them in getting the club actually on track to start play in 2020.

This gave us a good, hearty chuckle in the DSS writer’s room as it was posted yesterday. The team that gave up their best striker and best winger had the best preseason because of meaningless games played before matches that count begin. That’s right, the Columbus Crew had the best off-season according to MLSSoccer.com in a take that seems less like an honest assessment of a team that is going to be over-reliant on Federico Higuain this year and more like an effort from the league’s PR office to push back on the “Columbus is tanking while Precourt and Garber continue to blunder in an effort to re-locate the team or get them a new stadium in Cbus” narrative.

Speaking of predictions, are you worried about Atlanta’s over reliance on a 34 year old who is also the team’s backup center back? I’m totally not, it’s just that you look worried.

Yet more Vegas odds came out on Tuesday - these give Atlanta an 8/1 shot at winning MLS Cup. Oddly, Seattle has the same chance of winning it, so I guess their path to the final is easier so they get a bump in the odds maker’s eyes.

New coach, new players, same Colorado Rapids.

Finally, Precourt Sports Ventures wrote a long statement about how good their bid for a new stadium in Austin is, complete with an overly-aggrandizing assessment of the marketing and PR consultants they were devoting to the effort. They released it during the Columbus Crew season ticket event because the consultants who helped get a stadium deal in Austin rejected recently know what they’re doing.

International

Guangzhou Evergrande manager, and 2006 World Cup champion, Fabio Cannavaro offered criticism of the Italian FA. He sharply criticized the old, bad ideas that the federation’s leadership is pursuing, noting that it doesn’t even really matter who coaches the team if the federation isn’t going to create the foundation for future success. Sounds familiar.

Usain Bolt signed with a soccer team, not really, but he’s going to play soccer.

Very excellent highlight video

This appeared on my timeline yesterday and I thought it was worth a mid-week share.

You should read

This completely serious look at what it would be like for “complicated men” from literature to be on Tinder from McSweeney’s.

You should spend some of your finite life minutes on...

Also, I don’t know if you are aware or not, but we have a Fantasy MLS league and if you don’t play, I can’t crush you in the game - so get with it already.