Ready, Set, Action! Thank you Soccer Gods, it’s almost over–the MLS All-Star game is done and dusted (hopefully forever) and the Grant Hill-like suspense of will-he-or-won’t-he-play in regards to tomorrow’s mid-season Galaxy/Chelsea friendly for David Beckham. It will soon be back to the modest grindstone of MLS league season matches on Sunday.

Objective oversight and biased generalizations are always on the tips of the tongues of US Soccer Administrators when it comes down to justifying soccer decisions in the US. Yet, when it comes down to the Nickelodeon-style marketing campaigns like the MLS All-Star Game, I guess one can see their need for words.

With the mere appearance of David Beckham to promote a mid-season friendly, a half-time show that smacked of budget constraints, or inept production, and an average European opponent in the historic, yet limited, Celtic United, MLS must really be grasping at straws when they continually have to remind the public that the league is producing top quality ball.

Don’t they know not to call a mule a donkey by now (or something like that)? Unfortunately, in all the uproar of hype, it seems the marketing geniuses actually forgot to remind the public of the game (a Thursday night?).

The necessity for the league to turn out a baseball- or basketball-style format to the season is an enigma. Who ever heard of an All-Star game that played a team outside the league anyway? And does anybody really believe that Celtic connotes “all-star” status? (No offense to the Celtic faithful!)

With everybody always raving about the progress of MLS soccer, I guess they have forgotten to sit down and actually watch a match. The best thing for everybody to do is to catch every minute of the game this Sunday between New England and Houston (as the leaders of their respective conferences) and ask themselves “is it really worth watching?”

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Soccer World, USA, MLS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.