Today at 2:00 p.m. ET, MLS Commissioner Don Garber will deliver his State of the League address live from Google’s New York City office as a part of MLS Cup Week, followed immediately by a Q&A and the reveal of the 2013 MLS Best XI squad. Earlier this year, Garber announced the League’s intention to expand to 24 teams by the 2020 season. The live stream can be viewed on MLS’s YouTube page or on TheCrew.com.
Over the past two seasons Crew defender Josh Williams has become a mainstay on the Crew back line – logging 52 starts and more than 4,700 minutes played for the Black & Gold during that span. After Williams’ contract expired at the end of the regular-season, it is no wonder why Crew Sporting Director and Head Coach Gregg Berhalter saw it a priority to re-sign the Copley, Ohio native. As TheCrew.com’s Cody Sharrett writes, the ‘Ohio-born and Ohio-bred’ Williams really liked the vision Berhalter has for the club and moving forward Williams saw it a priority to ‘see this city win a championship.’
If U.S. Men’s National Team Head Coach Jurgen Klinsmann has anything in common with Luiz Felipe Scolari – the manager of the Brazilian National Team – it is the familiarity of being in the ‘hot seat’ as a manager of a host team in a FIFA World Cup. Ahead of hosting the 2006 FIFA World Cup, when Klinsmann was at the helm of Germany’s National Team, he encountered a similar amount of pressure for his club to perform on soccer’s biggest stage. The New York Times’s Sam Borden draws comparisons between the experiences of both of Klinsmann and Scolari leading up to next year’s 2014 FIFA World Cup and suggests why anything but a trophy for Brazil would be considered ‘an abstract failure’ considering the pressures of being a host club.
