With a day to look at the schedule and a calendarized version that includes things like the USOC dates, the schedule looks pretty good.
The usual opening road trip is down to four games this season (at Miami, Portland, Austin, and Minnesota).
There are fewer two games in three nights type situations. Although, they do have some with games on July 22, 24, and 26 and a couple Wednesday-Saturday weeks in August.
The upside is a nice little bye week in late August/early November with a gap in games from August 27 and September 11. That should give the team some time off to heal up for the final four regular season games and the playoffs.
News & Notes:
- AC St. Louis's second signing played for the Rhinos in 2009: Tim Velten.
- Portland has lined up friendlies versus Seattle and San Jose of MLS for this season.
- The Austin Aztex will face the Houston Dynamo in a friendly as well.
- There is a report from a fan blog in St. Louis that the Edmonton NASL franchise for 2011 will be announced tomorrow. This shouldn't be surprising as there have been reports during the whole NASL-USL tug of war that Edmonton would become the home of the Vancouver Whitecaps' NASL franchise once they move to MLS in 2011.
- The Red Bulls are targetting a DP forward for the Post-World Cup time frame. Cue the Thierry Henry to NY rumors!
- Not only will the Houston Dynamo not have Stuart Holden this year, they won't even have his younger brother Euan , either.
- Look, it's the amazing shrinking roof of the new home of the Philadelphia Union! It's too bad, really.
- The David Beckham Academy at The Home Depot Center in Carson, CA has closed.
- Are the NY Cosmos coming back?
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to news@soccersam.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
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