Rob Stone starts it off asking John Harkes “whats gotten into Beckham that he is showing such thin skin?”, and Harkes goes on to say that Beckham started off on a bad foot by wanting to stay at AC Milan and shouldn’t be surprised at the negative reception from some L.A. fans. Then he starts talking about David “underestimating the passion of the fans in this country.”

He’s joined in this line of thought by Alexei Lalas who goes on about how Beckham should concentrate on the play on the field and not the fans, and then reiterates the “passion” of Galaxy fans.

Julie Foudy then says the big one, “it makes me wonder, is this some sort of exit strategy?”

Perhaps this is some kind of MLS strategy of exiting Beckham while saving face, and big upping the fans for their stubbornness and lack of understanding of football norms all at the same time. The way all the announcers are ganging up on him, all with the same thoughts and ideas, is reminiscent of the way political news organizations attack someone under the false pretense of “news” or “analysis” *(fox news). I’m not particularly fond of Beckham, but I don’t like how they are doing him in this pregame. It will be interesting to see how long Becks lasts in the MLS, right now it looks like neither party is happy, and both may be looking for a way out.

UPDATE:

MLS Commissioner Don Garber was interviewed about Beckham at halftime and was much more level headed (as expected), defending him, saying he’s building the league and trying to bring his team to the championship. He also said that he has heard from Beckham that he wants to go back to Milan and play for England and also that he wants to play the rest of his career in MLS. Well, which one is it? I’m skeptical of the latter, but i’m glad to hear Beckham get a fair shake.

Looks like a sharp kid.

Personally, I was hoping for an all-Mass third round, but it wasn’t to be. The Pioneers looked pretty solid for a division 3 team, however, with two really stand-out players. What bummed me out, though, was the level of fouling that happened. And it wasn’t just from the Pioneers.

Granted, they seemed to start it with weird charges and trips and fists, but the Rhinos seemed to feel right at home throwing it back, too.

I’m waiting on some quotes from the Pioneers on the game and the Revs about facing Rochester. I’ll drop them in here when they arrive. As far as the Rhinos, you can read their side of the story here.

In the meantime, enjoy the full US Open Cup bracket, or get a breakdown of the scores by game.

From a statistics standpoint, the Revs and Rhinos are close with Revs leading slightly 1-0-2 in all meetings, the last meeting seeing the Revs win 4-3 in extra time. The Revs should easily win this one, though, as long as they don’t resort to the kind of charing, bullying football the Rhinos seemed to employ yesterday. In their defense, though, perhaps they played to their opponents level?

Conversationally speaking, I’m going to drop a plug here for the webcasting services provided by USL Live. We watched the game while munching on curry last night, and it was great. The image was really good, sound quality was great, and it was just darned convenient to be watching/listening while working on our computers. I did learn, though, that I need more RAM if I’m going to be doing that more often. I know that some other games had audio streams available, too, through TeamLine which seemed fairly solid, as well.

More on the Revs versus Rhinos as the quotes come in.

“The Western Mass Pioneers are very excited to have the opportunity to take on the Rhinos for the chance to host the Revolution in Round 3. We’re familiar with Rochester’s abilities and their tradition of playing well in the US Open Cup Tournament. It will take a huge effort to defeat a team of this caliber, but we welcome the challenge.” – GM Greg Kolodziey

It’s going to be a touch match for the Pioneers, as the Rhinos have appeared in the Open Cup every year since 1996, winning it once in 1999. The Pioneers for their part have appeared three times, making it as far as round three in 2005 (The Big Table).

Pioneers coach Tom D’agostino said, “Rochester is on a par with many MLS Teams. If you want to win something, you need to get past the best. We understand how difficult our match will be, but we look forward to the Challenge.” He added, “We have players that are capable of playing at a high level. If they are ready, it should be a good match.”

Both teams are looking to unseat the Revs, who have done all right for themselves in the competition, losing to LA Galaxy in 2001, and making it to the fourth round in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

Quotes from the Rochester Rhinos and the New England Revolution were not available in time for this post.

My thoughts? I would love to see an all-Massachusetts round three, but I know better. The Rhinos seem to take this competition very seriously, and have the home field advantage. I’ve seen them play, however, and remain unimpressed with their style. In the U.S., it’s all about the underdog, so I’m rooting for the Pioneers.

If you want to catch the game, head on over to usllive.com: watch the game for free. I’ll be there, and hoping for an upset of the one-horned devils from the north.

New England Head Coach, Steve Nicol, will be managing the MLS all-star team when they play against Celtic FC on July 19th. This will be Nicol’s first time coaching the all-star team.

“It’s a nice piece of irony that it’s Celtic. Obviously, I supported Rangers, so that’s another twist, but it will be nice to see Gordon and the rest of the boys. We played them in their preseason last year and they were a wee bit surprised with what we and D.C. United confronted them with. They’ll know what’s coming this time.” – Steve Nicol in today’s Boston Globe.

To me, this is a huge deal. The Revs came out at the beginning of the year working hard, thinking about results, and really trying to stretch themselves to be better and better. A lot of that, to be sure, is owed to Nicol. He’s got a solid reputation in the MLS, and this is sure to make it more so.

Although, it just occured to me that it would have been really fun to see Toronto FC coach, Mo Johnston, go against Celtic FC. I wonder if they still hold a fondness for him?

In other news:
Matt Reis has been chosen as a candidate for Best MLS Player in the ESPY awards. You can read all about it here.

The news is in, and it looks like the Revs will get Michael Parkhurst and Steve Ralston back on the field after the CONCACAF Gold Cup. For the Revs, this is good, but I think Bob Bradley would be better to keep Parkhurst, at least, for the Copa America competition. The times that he has been on the team, the U.S. seemed to play better, and not break down in the 75th minute.

Also, with Frankie Hejduk not on the roster, it might be better to keep Ralston there, too. I’m not sure anyone else has the crossing ability they’ll need in order to survive the Copa America.

That said, I’m not complaining. The Revs seem to lack concentration, and perhaps with Ralston and Parkhurst back, we’ll see that change a bit. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Matt Reis tends to not get along terribly well with James Riley?

More later.

The link above points to an article about Avery John — filling in for Michael Parkhurst for the next two weeks or so — not being able to play in the CONCACAF Gold Cup this year. Apparently, he and some team mates have been blacklisted from the Trinidad & Tobago team for expecting to be paid what they feel they’re owed for the World Cup 2006 performance.

Well, the blacklisting happened because he and some other players tried to start a players’ union there, and that didn’t go so well.

Near the bottom of the article, there’s a note about a midfielder — as if the Revs need any more — named Cristian Santamaria from Honduras trying out for the team. I googled him a bit, and came up with a little bit about him.

He’s played long enough to be mentioned in an article dated to 1998, but other than that I can’t get much info about him. It also looks like he was on the Honduran CONCACAF team in 2003, as well as the 2002 Honduran World Cup qualification team. There’s also an article from August, 2006 (HERE) that ties him to both Limean and Platense, though I can’t find any direct links other than the article. What he does, how he plays, and other quasi-important stats aren’t available to me — with my limited spanish, anyhow — at the moment. Know anything about this guy? Drop a comment below and help us out.

I do need to expand a bit on the midfielder comment above, though. I think the Revs would be better off with a striker who doesn’t fall over. Adam Cristman is young, sure, but he seems to me a bit too easy to knock off his stride. Maybe as he gets more field time with Pat Noonan over the next couple of weeks, we’ll see something a bit extra from him, but I’ve yet to be sold.

What the Revs certainly don’t need is another 30-something attacking midfielder looking for a retirement cushion.

More on the way …

On a morning where I’m feeling that the Revs need to step up their visibility around the country (why, for instance, does the MLS not feature our jersey in their spammy email?), and make sure we keep our known factors intact (read: pay Shalrie Joseph), it was encouraging to read that an independent source made an analogy between Epstein and Bilello.

Epstein, while controversial, has undoubtedly done more for the Red Sox in the past 4 or so years than anyone prior. If Bilello truly is focusing on bring more fans into the Revolution fold, and is as passionate about his team as Epstein is the Sox, who knows what could happen.

Maybe I’ve just got the pre-season jitters, but my gut’s telling me that something big needs to happen this season if we’re going to be around for the long haul. Can Bilello be part of what makes that happen? I hope so.

In other notes: You’ll notice that Shalrie Joseph is the lead picture in the news section of www.revolutionsoccer.net. Making concessions? Is this a matter of “Shalrie, we need ya”?

1. Shalrie Joseph is a phenomenal player:
He’s a joy to behold, intelligent and powerful, and an un-selfish team players as far as I can tell. To lose him could be detrimental to our season.

2. Joseph is my son’s favorite:
His U8 jersey is proudly emblazoned with the #21 and he makes sure his teammates know why. And with no favorite, the season’s going to seem awfully long sitting in those plastic seats. I mean, he already lost Dempsey and the sock-adjusting. I don’t know if he can take losing Shalrie and the pony tails.

3. Joseph is being a bit of whiner:
When you get right down to it, $25,000 is not a lot of money if you’re talking the difference between $300k and $325k. This sounds more like a stall tactic/ultimatum/etc. than it does a threat. I maybe like him a little less because of this.

4. I bet it’s not about the money:
There must be something else going on the Revs camp for Joseph to come out as this dissatisfied. I don’t know what it is, but I want to keep my ear to the ground and find out.

All-in-all, losing Joseph to another MLS team would not be a good thing for the Revs this year. He’s strong, confident, and unflappable when he’s on the ball. I don’t want to think about us having to play against him. I’m going to have to agree with the other folks out there: Pay him and be done with it. We need him more than the Revs/MLS/Krafts (whomever supplies the salary) need the money. If for no other reason, do it for my son.

It’s good to have company out here. Which brings me to something else: I’ve got my one-man site (It’s a Simple Game) wired to an aggregator called Soccer Blogs (a useful service, by the way). Now I’ve found that when I post general soccer stuff – e.g. when my headline mentions something about, say, U.S. Soccer, or certain players, etc. – I’ll pick up a hit or two. But all the New England posts I do, either now or in the past, they rarely, rarely get hits of any kind.

Just thought that’s interesting, if a little puzzling. To this point, BigSoccer has been the place where Revs fans swap ideas, rumors, and opinion; given that, it seemed a little futile to work a Revs blog, that fans of the team just didn’t have much interest in checking out stand-along blogs so long as they had BigSoccer. There certainly didn’t seem to be the kind of blog presence I see with, say, teams like DC United, who are well-wired through sites of their own. Maybe that’ll change now that there are some options out here. Then again, maybe it won’t. The reading market will, I suppose, do what the reading market does and sort itself out.

I’m not saying this is good or bad. It simply is.