Dave’s Football Blog

You can tell the Rugby World Cup is getting closer by the number of people out there trying to do the All Blacks’ Maori Haka, but some people, like Max Bretos of Fox Soccer Channel here, should probably just leave it alone.

To be fair, though, he does it better than these guys.

(Spotted on Soccernista.)

So Jozy Altidore, the teenage striker for the New York Red Bulls, is blogging for the New York Times, and he wrote last week about how he and some other players like to take their laptops with them to watch movies while taking the train to D.C. for a road game.

Anyway, nobody blames Jozy for wanting to watch a few flicks while on the road, right? Well, someone left this comment on the blog:

EDITOR: For Jozy’s protection, you’d better remove that comment about watching Bourne Ultimatum on DVD – seeing as that’s still in theaters, he must have a pirated copy.

The editor did remove Altidore’s remark, but he forgot to remove the user comment, too, which notes it ironic that Jozy himself wrote:

After a year under the spotlight, I’ve learned that you have to conduct yourself in certain ways and watch what you’re doing because you don’t know who’s watching.

Like the MPAA, for example. Those delusional bastards think movie downloading is a much more heinous crime than bank robbery, and anyone who “steals” a movie who should do hard time. Never mind that all those claims are bogus. According to Hollywood, Jozy Altidore is a dirty pirate who is costing them billions of dollars. Billions! Goodness, he might as well be soccer’s answer to Michael Vick!

Whatever. The kid lives a busy life, and if he wants to watch a copy of the new Bourne flick — which one of his teammates probably got from Landon Donovan, who probably got it from his wife Bianca, who’s a working actress who knows people in the biz (most movie torrents come from internal studio leaks, y’know) — while riding a train, big deal. The biggest crime here is that a Major League Soccer team is riding Amtrak. Seriously, can the Red Bulls not afford to buy a team bus or something?

Most fans of American soccer missed this, but Tom at Pitch Invasion didn’t. The Portland Timbers, a USL First Division club, drew 15,833 fans to PGE Park for a regular season match against the Charleston Battery last Thursday, topping the stadium record of 15,376 for a Timbers v. Sunderland friendly two years ago.

That’s a huge turnout for a USL-1 match. This is a league which had an average attendance of 4,667 for regular season games last year. Wigan can’t get 15,000 paying customers on a weeknight. Only two first-round Carling Cup matches had five-digit attendance; predictably, those were home games for Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion, two Coca-Cola Championship clubs. That league drew an average of 18,221 paying customers last season.

However, Portland still fell well short of the USL attendance record of 25,515, set by the Seattle Sounders at Qwest Field in 2002. PGE Park only holds about 20,000 for sporting events, so it can’t top Seattle’s record.

Obviously, Portland and Seattle are natural rivals here, and that also applies to their hopes of landing an MLS expansion club. Given the buzz that Seattle got from MLS watchers after drawing a mere 6,619 for a U.S. Open Cup match, you would think that Portland’s buzz would be even bigger now. On the other hand, MLS will be up to 14 franchises in 2008, and it’s only planning on expanding to 16. With Philadelphia and St. Louis also launching strong bids as expansion cities, it seems very likely that either Portland or Seattle (or both) could be left out.

My prediction — if the Open Cup semifinal match between the Sounders and FC Dallas pulls more than 10,000 people, Seattle has to win out over Portland. They’re a bigger media market with a much bigger stadium, and Seattle has a better-quality pedigree when it comes to major sports.

That’s not a knock on the supporters in Portland, though. The Timbers Army deserves its props for backing its local club so well. If MLS bypasses Portland, it won’t be because there aren’t any soccer fans there.

(Photo by Allison Andrews of SoccerCityUSA.com.)

I know it’s hard to get excited about a punter in a preseason NFL game, but seriously, did you see how far Sav Rocca kicked that ball? And did you hear how hard Al Michaels worked to sap that moment of any ounce of excitement? Thank you, Mr. Monotone.

Officially, it’s a 59-yard punt, but from where Rocca was standing to where Willie Reid caught (and dropped) the ball, that thing flew a good 72 yards. The Eagles have a weapon here. If they cut him for Dirk Johnson, they deserve the crappy field position they get all season.

(Spotted on FanHouse.)