Ready for the weekend

We’re feeling buoyant at the solar-powered soccer blog this morning. The Galaxy got trounced last night by Chicago, the atrocious-on-the-road team from Utah is coming to town tomorrow, and the Quakes have to be salivating at the chance to make a move in the playoff race. They’ve had a week off to prepare, and the last time that happened they thrashed New England 4-0. Let the games begin! The Quakes’ “just the facts, ma’am” preview is online here.

Over on MLSnet.com, Jeff Bradley is making a big deal out of his pre-season prediction that the Salt Lake Royals would make the playoffs this year. Considering how tight the race is in the Western Conference, it’s a bit premature, but that’s not why we’re bringing this up here. We looked at the original column that contained his prediction, published back in February, and it contains these words of praise for Fabian Espindola, the Argentine who severely sprained his ankle recently while celebrating a goal which was eventually ruled offside:

One of the more exciting additions to the league last year was Fabian Espindola, who joined RSL late, but still managed two goals and two assists in just eight starts… Kreis has to love Fabian’s goal celebration, too. If you haven’t seen it, you’ll have to check the highlights and you’ll see what I mean.

Oh, the irony.

But as long as we’re making fun of the man we think of as “the foremost soccer journalist who is also the brother of a U.S. coach,” we’ll give him props for predicting that the Quakes would be “the best MLS expansion team since the 1998 Chicago Fire.”  Good call on that one. Oh, and say what you will about Salt Lake, but their new stadium, which opens next month, is going to be a remarkable improvement over Rice-Eccles.

- Doing the research for the Frank Yallop story currently gracing the homepage, we ran across this bit under “Family Abroad” in Dominic Kinnear’s Wikipedia entry, undoubtedly penned by one of his Scottish relatives (probably someone named Desmond):

Dominic Kinnear has many family members living in Scotland. So far noone has realised these family members even exist. No newspapers or news channels have investigated about these people and they are mentioned nowhere as members of the same family. Here are their names and relations to Dominic Kinnear: Catherine Henaghen (Auntie), Desmond Peter Henaghen I (Uncle), Desmond Peter Henaghen II, Damian Henaghen and Claire Robertson (all cousins). There are more relations but at the moment am not able to name them all. The name of his cousins children and partners are: Casey, Konnor and Kenny Robertson (Claire) and Jaimie, Liam and Elainne Henaghen (Damian). His third cousin, Desmond I have saved for last as he is his favourite cousin, Dominic visits Desmond (or Des as he is liked to be known) and his family every couple of years and has a great bond with both him and his family. He visited Christmas 2007 and stayed with them and went to see Celtic v St.Mirren as he is a Celtic fan through and through. Here are the names of Desmonds family: Desmond Peter Henaghen III aged 13 (another Desmond!!), Emily Henaghen aged 9, Orla Henaghen aged 5 and Mary Henaghen aged 37 (she isn’t one of the kids!!). Dominic may be a great manager, but is terrible at Wii Sports! I hope that the world now nows of the unknown relatives of Dominic Kinnear and will acknowledge this fact more often.

Consider it acknowledged.