The Daily Dirt March 12, 2018: The day of the brown pants

Arrrgh, the Monday after Day Light Savings may only be rivaled by the Monday after the Super Bowl as the worst Monday on the calendar. A lot of people don’t realize this, but the day was first celebrated in 1907 when Punxsutawney Phil wouldn’t come out of his cage until March to deliver Christmas presents to the local children on their way to work in the local central Pennsylvania coal mines, someone told him it was 6 AM rather than 5 AM one day and in order to keep up the charade the whole town went with it for eight months. The film Goundhog Day cut an entire sequence explaining the history of the sacred holiday so nobody knows that, put another way, in no way is any of that true, but it is a story deserving the complete and utter uselessness of changing the clocks twice a year.

Domestic

I don’t get to watch all of the MLS games, but the ones I did were pretty great for early season MLS action. It turns out to make Gyasi Zardes into a useful player, all that anyone needed to do was stand him six inches in front of goal and let the ball bounce off of his shin - Columbus demolished Montreal 3-2.

Speaking of players who were amazing in 2015 and then disappeared for two years, Ethan Finlay had a brace and Minnesota United beat Orlando Detention Center who has one point in their opening two home matches on the year. Elsewhere, Vancouver converted their penalty against Houston, so they only lost to the Dynamo 2-1. The Whitecaps will bring their average team height of 6 foot 9 to Atlanta next week as the Five Stripes attempt to get their second win of the season.

After a very active flurry of trades around the time of the NWSL draft saw NWSL Golden Boot winner Sam Kerr go to the Chicago Red Stars and Carli Lloyd head home to New Jersey while Christen Press went from Chicago to the Houston Dash. It now appears that Houston will be without Press after all. The forward has decided not to sign with the club, electing to find chances to play in Europe. Press is clearly looking out for her best interests here and there is some debate about how forthright Chicago was when the sent the player to Houston, but the result is that the Dash are without Press - though they will retain her rights should she return to the league at some point.

International

Things got out of control in London during the West Ham game. Last week I linked a story about the tension between supporters and the front office, and Saturday things boiled over. The fan revolt included a pitch invasion where someone liberated the corner flag.

A song for Sergio Ramos: When you’re playing in defense and you feel something in your pants...

While Manchester City is poised to wrap up the Premier League in a few short weeks, the cloud of human rights abuses hangs over the team and manager Pep Guardiola’s advocacy for rights in Spain.

La Liga is one of the most exciting leagues in the world filled with technically gifted and creative players, see:

And then there were goals this weekend, so many beautiful goals

While you were watching Felipe Gutierrez score trash goals against the Chicago Fire, this happened in LigaMX.

No puede ser indeed

Speaking of things that cannot be - here’s Boca Juniors getting a game winner at the death to put them 8 points clear in the Superliga Argentina de Futbol.

You should go running

And/or support More Than Just Me to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis with their virtual 5K.