Finally Friday! For a short week, this sure was a long one.
Inter Miami fire coach Phil Neville with team bottom of Eastern Conference (ESPN)
Would’ve preferred if they’d waited until after the weekend.
NWSL’s new expansion franchise to be named Bay Football Club, unveils badge and branding (The Athletic)
The NWSL Bay Area expansion team finally has a name: Bay FC. You may recognize the colors as being strikingly similar to the previous colors of the Washington Spirit and current colors of North Carolina Courage and OL Reign. NWSL teams really need to move past red-white-and-blue, is what I’m saying. The name is similarly boring, but I find the baseball-style crest kind of interesting.
USMNT Nations League training camp roster revealed (Stars and Stripes FC)
Brand new interim coach BJ Callaghan named a 24-player roster for a training camp beginning on June 4. The final, 23-player roster for the Nations League finals needs to be reported to Concacaf the following day, so I assume one of the goalkeepers is just there for some experience, but who knows?
MLS Season Pass price drops for midseason, Apple says service uptake beat its own expectations (9to5Mac)
I think pro-rating the price for a season-long package is very fair! Base price is now $49.
Angel City FC signs Amandine Henry (The Equalizer)
Angel City keeps making splashy signings! Henry is a legend for the French National Team and has played for Lyon since 2007. So much for that Lyon-to-Washington pipeline we were hoping for from Y. Michele Kang’s purchase.
Mourinho waits in parking lot to tell referee he’s a “f—–g disgrace” (Pro Soccer Wire)
Sir! We’ve talked about this! Leave those refs alone. Especially when there is literally no possible benefit to yelling at them, like after your team has already lost.
Finally, because I don’t think we’ve posted it yet, I’ll share this video of Spirit player Anna Heilferty in drag to promote Washington’s upcoming Pride Night game. A halftime drag show is very fun, but I’ve also been so impressed with how the team is keeping Heilferty involved while she’s out with a season-ending injury.
Here are the games for the weekend. I think The Gold Mine is a fun name for a stadium.
| Teams | When | Where | Watch |
| D.C. United vs. Inter Miami | Sat., June 3 at 7:30 p.m. ET | DRV PNK Stadium | Apple TV |
| Washington Spirit vs. Racing Louisville FC | Sat., June 3 at 8 p.m. ET | Audi Field | Paramount+ |
| Loudoun United FC vs. Monterey Bay FC | Sat., June 3 at 10 p.m. ET | Cardinale Stadium | ESPN+ |
| Old Glory DC vs. NOLA Gold | Sat., June 3 at 6 p.m. ET | The Gold Mine | TRN, MASN |
Have a good weekend, everyone!
The Gold Mine is no competition for Buzzard Point.
Buzzard Point loses points for not being the official name, unfortunately
The destination of Metrobus 74 is “Buzzard Point”. I’ll bet the New Orleans bus system doesn’t have a bus whose destination is “The Gold Mine”.
And once again, DCU is on for free this weekend against Miami.
I also wonder if the firing of Neville right now (and appointment of just an interim) is with Messi in mind. Yes, he’s 98% certainly going to Saudi Arabia. But now they’re in a position to make an offer to Messi and say “and we’ll let you pick the coach too!”
I’m more annoyed at how successful the “new coach bump” is. I’d put money on Miami now because of that statistical anomaly.
Ah, for the days when our MO was beating a team and getting their coach fired. Now the coach gets fired right before they play DC. It reinvigorated the Red Bulls. Will it help Miami?
A la Beckham, MLS will have to offer Messi a cut rate for a multi-million dollar 31st or 32nd franchise to be in the discussion.
MLS has suspended O’Brien for the upcoming Miami match.
Yeah, wondered if that might happen. Can’t really argue with it.
I don’t mean to sound like too much of a “homer” but I think I can push back. The play doesn’t look sloppy or have intent. It’s a professional foul to stop a breakaway–so a yellow is justified. The cleats end up showing because the attacker doesn’t go straight down. In short, not a reckless tackle or a sloppy tackle.
Doesn’t have to be reckless or sloppy to be cynical and incredibly dangerous
Who gets the call? Asad, Palsson moved up to CDM, Taxi/KDP/Benteke up front, or Najar inside and Dajome on the wing?
I think a 4-4-2 diamond might be a good look, but Jason Anderson is reporting Rooney isn’t planning to rotate much so that makes me think he’ll probably push Palsson up and bring in Birnbaum at the back.
Bay FC is impressively bland branding. Even “The Bay” would be better, referencing Californians’ love of definite articles. They probably went with the NWSL-standard red/white/blue because they were afraid of alienating SF, East Bay, or South Bay fans by using an established color scheme from a different part of the region, but black (Giants, A’s, formerly Raiders), red (Niners, Stanford), and gold (Cal, Niners) could have been more interesting.
Maybe even switch red out for blue (Warriors, Cal).