9e: MLS 2007 Starts Today!

At long last, the wait is over: the 2007 Major League Soccer season finally begins today!

I wrote last July that I thought I might be getting hooked on soccer. Well, I was, and I've stayed hooked.

My home team, FC Dallas, only made it to the quarterfinals last year, but are practically a lock to win the MLS Cup this year, as well as the $1 million prize in the brand new U.S.-Mexico tournament: SuperLiga. I had a blast roadtripping to two games at Pizza Hut Park last year, and will go to as many more this year as I can manage.

So I'd have something to follow in the offseason, I picked Liverpool F.C. as my English Premier League (EPL) team. Looks like they won't win the league this year, thanks to a bad start to the season, but they're looking good to advance to the semifinals of the European Cup.

Back to the States, this is Major League Soccer's 12th season, and it is looking very solid as a viable league (as opposed to the doomed previous league, NASL). There's a new expansion team this year (Toronto FC) that sold out all their season tickets months ago, there are brand new soccer-specific stadiums in Toronto and Colorado (you can see the latter in the opening game on ABC, today at 3:30 ET), and there are new TV deals that both have every game televised somewhere, and make money for the league (as opposed to costing it, which TV did last year).

Oh yeah, there's also some famous English guy coming to play for the L.A. Galaxy later this summer. But you already knew that.

Here are a few of the online resources I've enjoyed the most since starting to follow the sport:

MLSLive.tv - online video streaming subscription service. I used this last year, and just signed up for it again this year. Many more games are televised this season, but I still don't have a cable package that includes ESPN, ESPN2, Fox Soccer Channel, etc. Thanks to the deal with Spanish-language Univision, I actually will get to see a few games on their channels. But for the rest, something like ten FC Dallas matches, I'll be watching them online, thanks to MLSLive.

My Soccer Blog - not my soccer blog; somebody else's. Not always consistently posted to, but good info and analysis.

FC Dallas Updates blog - written daily by the staff of FC Dallas, this has been a very interesting view behind the scenes. Also includes occasional posts directly from the coach and the manager.

Kopblog.com - a hardcore Liverpool fan's blog

MLS Radio podcast (iTunes podcast; website) - provided by MLS itself, but still doesn't seem to take itself too seriously

Soccer News I.V. podcast (iTunes podcast; website) - interesting weekly news and roundup.

TheGame podcast (iTunes podcast; website) - covers the EPL, and includes a handful of passionate, colorful commentators that are fun to listen to even if you don't always know what the hell they're talking about.