The Daily Dirt April 30, 2018: New stadiums and new friends

The newest stadium in MLS opened on Sunday and it is just so pretty and filled with celebrities and hawks and a fan led rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. All that aside, it is fairly incredible that MLS went from a team in LA folding in 2014 to an expansion team in LA joining the league in 2018 and building the second soccer specific stadium in the city. LAFC might be a season away from really being relevant in MLS, but with the resources that the owners have and the following that the team has, they should be a relevant team in MLS year in and year out.

The game was not good. The homophobic chants were worse. In the end, Xbox lost to Youtube 0-1 thanks to a Stefan Frei howler on a Laurent Ciman free kick.

Anyway, onto the dirt...

Domestic

In local news, Josef Martinez got a new puppy. I think someone just wanted to see him smile.

Reached for comment, Alpharetta Dad said, “Maybe the dog can teach him to stay on the right side of the defense and not play offsides and stop coming over to do his business on my lawn” before posting about someone in a ‘so-called’ repair truck on Nextdoor.com.

We had the recap of the NC Courage continuing their undefeated season on Saturday, but catch up with the rest of the league from Equalizer Soccer.

International

Over in Italy, Napoli followed their 1-0 miracle win at Juventus by losing 3-0 to Fiorentina. The result all but ensures that the team who will lose 5-0 to the MLS All-Stars in July will win the league this year.

As is well known, Promotion and Relegation will solve all the problems in the world. Which is why soccer is Mexico has no problems, none. Not one problem.

Goal

In case you missed it...

You should binge...

We Came to Win - it’s a podcast about great World Cup runs and their greater impact beyond the games themselves. It is for me what military history is to Alpharetta Dad, I couldn’t get enough and they released three episodes in their first week.