The League Soccer

 Alright folks I am back (mentally) from the International break! We have a slate of games tonight and then the All Star game on Wednesday and then the League breaks for Leagues Cup until August 20th! I'm going to be brief with my rankings and then give an All Star break review early in the week! Top 8: 1. FC Cincinnati 14-6-2 48 points; There's not much more to say here. They've only lost two games all season and they've been without Matt Miazga and Brendan Vasquez on two different international breaks. This team has built a comfortable Supporters Shield lead. 2. St. Louis City SC 12-2-8 38 points; St. Louis has been without their top three paid players, had to call up a guy from San Antonio and are still sitting atop the Western Conference. I would love to see this team try and add during the summer transfer window just to reinforce the current roster. If they do that, get healthy, and keep the one seed this team is going to be a really tough out in playoffs. 3. New E...

 I've wanted to wait for things to wrap up to give a little bit of a general 30,000 foot overview of the summer window. I didn't feel like blogging after the Panama game would've been fair to the players or the program so I wanted to let things simmer a few days, but I also want to talk about the program as a whole going forward: We won Nations League in convincing fashion with (most of) our best players. This is important on a few levels. Gio Reyna got some play at the number 10 position and Yunus Musah played as a stand alone number six and they both performed exceedingly well in those roles. Balogun made his USMNT debut and scored a lovely goal in the Finals. We didn't even have much of our center back core with Ream and Carter-Vickers out for Nations League. If Nations League showed us anything it is that we are head and shoulders above the rest of CONCACAF right now and need to use friendlies and Copa America to really test our A team ahead of 2026.  I also think h...

 I returned from vacation just in time to catch the last two Gold Cup matches and they couldn't have gone better. Our worry was we would run into Mexico in the semifinals and now it appears as if we'll avoid Mexico until the finals IF we can get past Jamaica in the semi-finals. It took back to back hat tricks from Jesus Ferreira and matching 6-0 results but the US lands on top of the group and will await the runner up from group D that would be Canada, Guadeloupe or Guatemala.  We learned a lot through the group stage of this year's Gold Cup for the USMNT but let's start with the positives: Jesus Ferreira has been a man possessed. While the rest of the group has been figuring it out, I found myself just hoping they would play the ball to the middle and give Ferreira a chance. After Brandon Vasquez came in, he moved to the 10 and showed a ton of value in that role as well. Ferreira aka the Pirate of the Caribbean has now notched 15 goals for country. I still believe he n...