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I am a Sounder. We are Sounders. If you like another team, we'll try to help you out though.

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I am a Sounder.

I discovered this a couple decades ago. Back when I lived in CA, GA, TX, AZ, MO, TN, KY, NC, and Kuwait. I didn't want to live anywhere else. I wanted to be a Sounder. I am a Sounder at Heart. It is my passion. Not just for the team, but for the life I live.

I can't root for a team with which I don't have a strong connection.

But if you want EPL news, this network has a ton of great stuff for you.

It starts at the top at SBNation.com/soccer where Richard will hook you up with a ton of general interest articles on the league that most call the best. He's got predictions, players to watch, and who ended the season on high notes as we enter week one.

Graham just launched the Chelsea blog, if you appreciate a team that pulls in trophies without history.

Aston Villa gets love from Aaron, Kirsten and Gareth. They're doing great work on the lower leagues of England as well.

Everton, that team that once had Donovan, has their Royal Blue flying on SBN.

Bitter but Blue, in Manchester's "other" team? We hook you up as well.

John Rooney's older brother plays for the more well known Manchester, and you can follow him too.

Kasey Keller and Brian McBride both use to play at the Cottage, for a team once known as Fulham USA. And if you are into a team with a great connect to America, check out Fulham.

I'm the kind of guy that likes style over substance, so I'll always be partial to Arsenal. Where the short fuse threatens to go off at any moment.

General thoughts on Europe and England wind up going off the bar and out, in a snark filled yet passionate manner.

So as the European and English seasons get started, if that's your passion (or your second passion) show the blog of your favorite team some love. If you like one of those teams, help us build that community. If you like another team, I know the guy in charge of filling out that roster (its not me). We'll keep adding soccer blogs.

The season is right around the corner in that part of the world.

Here at Sounder at Heart, myself, Jeremiah, Carlos and others will continue to bring you up to date on the Rave Green's attempts at a Double or more. And the chances seem to keep getting better as the SBN bloggers have Seattle actually getting first tier votes this week.

The Forbes Sports 50/50 list just came out, and Manchester United was at the top of the list. Real Madrid and Arsenal are also in the top 10. So of course MLS should follow that model right? I mean 2 EPL teams in the top 10 and worth more than a billion dollars seems like the system is working.

Except that EVERY SINGLE NFL team is in the top 50 teams in the world for valuation. Certainly not all of that is due to the parity model. A lot of it has to do with the league wide TV contracts (4 Networks + their own), and some of it has to do with the fact that if you like that style of football there are only 32 pro teams that play it.

The Seattle Seahawks were the last NFL team to break the billion dollar valuation mark. They are nestled in-between Barcelona and Bayern Munich. There are more than a dozen NFL sides worth more than they are. So when a league that was founded by NFL owners (Hunt, Kraft) acts like the NFL realize they do so because they see a league worth tens of billions of dollars under that model.

Here's the list of soccer teams that made the 50

Teams in bold are worth more than a billion dollars. I find it notable that Italy has as many teams in the top 50 as the NBA, Spain as well, though theirs are not in the same valuation range. Germany with one, and England with 4 teams.

As I said before, the NFL has advantages that these leagues do not. Some of them are advantages that MLS has that these other soccer leagues do not. Some of them MLS can never have.

But this is a nice snapshot of WHY  MLS does what it does.

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Good enough to play in Armenia? Apparently not.

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While you would expect Major League Soccer to be behind the giants of Europe and South America in the race for strongest league in the world, the folks at the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) may have taken things a little too far. MLS is behind the usual suspects: La Liga, the Premier League, Serie A - no surprises there. What is perhaps a little more strange is to see the league ranked behind (and this is by no means exhaustive) the national leagues from Angola, Botswana, Armenia, and India, 88th overall out of 115. Something seems a little odd here.

The top of the table paints a similar story. While nobody would really begrudge La Liga its spot as #1 overall despite fairly middling success in the Champion's League last year, when the next two leagues are from Brazil and Argentina, something has gone rather seriously amiss. Chile (9th) is also nine places higher than Holland (18th) - and while I don't mean to be a Eurosnob, I simply cannot see the likes of Universidad taking on Ajax and PSV with any great success.

Perhaps their methodology would provide some insight as to how reliable the rankings are before we pass judgment on this apparently bizarre listing? Let's get that from the source.

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First, hattip to my friend Richard over at www.SBNation.com/Soccer where he's taken over as the editor of the soccer portal on SBNation. Second, on a day when Castrol announces that they will be adding Major League Soccer to their Castrol Index (I said it twice does that mean that Castrol will pay me for saying Castrol?) he discovers that Fabio Capello made up his own index.

And by made up, I mean made up.

Because is this an index or a game? Is there any kind of statistical rigor at all?

The Capello Index will measure and evaluate the performances of players in the five leading European leagues and across the major football competitions, including the UEFA Champions League and Europa League. The first tournament to be covered by the Capello Index will be the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ which starts next month in South Africa.
 
The World Cup will also see the launch a new fantasy football game showcasing the Capello Index. The ‘Capello XI’ represents a new era for fantasy football. Not only will the players be measured by the most comprehensive scoring system of any fantasy game, the Capello XI is the most interactive game yet as fans will be able to follow the performance of their players in real time. The format of the game is also unique; participants can select a different set of players each match day, picking their preferred XI without limitation except for the number of players selected from each team.
 
Chicco Merighi, co-founder of the Capello Index, said: "The Capello XI fantasy football game is a great way to showcase the Capello Index and its flexibility means that football fans will have a range of options so that they can choose how they participate.

That reads kind of like both. It is a game, based off of what at best seem like an arbitrary system of scoring that Capello has designed and later trained a few choice people to apply. Except that since Capello will be busy actually coaching teams he won't be rating players. This creates drift, and in this case it is uncorrectable drift.

How will his trained personnel recalibrate? Will Fabio really take time away from watching tape of England v USA to help the Capello Index people rate Mexico v Uraguay?

Now, I work in a field where we take subjective data and objectify it. We do the same thing as a scout in any sport. We take an item that really only we can know and place it on a scale. But in our case we know that there isn't a lot of drift as we interact every day, to include doing calibration exercises between offices in 3 different countries. Every person on the team takes part in that.

Any one want to take a bet that Capello re-calibrates his observers?

Some times you really can make this stuff up.

FIFA.com had a chance to sit down with future Sounders forward Blaise N'kufo. The story details his early struggles with the Swiss national team, and how he resurrected his career with Dutch pro side Twente Enschede.

"In Switzerland, people often didn’t recognise my true potential. Then when I went to the German 2nd division, the move was misinterpreted. That was primarily a springboard to get to the Bundesliga, which was my objective. Finally, I moved to the Netherlands, where my performances are properly appreciated," said Nkufo in an exclusive interview with FIFA.com.

It's a nice story and details just how good N'kufo has been recently. Far from a fading star, he appears to be just hitting his stride as he prepares for the World Cup, and then his move here.

An odd headline right after the sides agree on the new CBA (details please!), but one thing that was clear during the ordeal is that Single-Entity is here to stay, now we get that confirmed for the next five years. This post is not about the new CBA, but instead is about how the lack of tradition should help MLS compete with global soccer leagues/clubs, or it could be titled

Soccernomics isn't about statistics

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Blaise returned to Twente's active roster just in time for the biggest matches of the season. PSV Eindhoven in League action on the 20th and Feyenoord Rotterdam on the 24th to advance to the Dutch Cup Final.

Here's how the Sounders PR staff announced his return

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I had the great fortune to spend a week in Mexico; Cabo San Lucas down in Baja Sur. No, this was not a soccer trip, I leave those to Steve Davis. This was about sun, and family. So posting slowed down a bit here. You may have noticed, or not. But I did do some soccer reading (Soccernomics), and had conversations with locals about the game they love - which is hard because I don't speak Spanish.

Mostly I did a totally non-scientific survey, because I was curious about how pure the fanbase of a teamless state would be. By teamless, I mean no pro side. And no real amateur side either, not of significance. Sure, there are some local branches of Universities - where I was had one from Tijuana. In all though, this state of less than 1 Million people is 32nd of 32 by population. So why would I think there would be a decent team? Why would I think that the people here would love soccer?

Well, because its Mexico. And like so many things in soccer there is this tradition that everyone in Mexico loves soccer. The reality isn't quite so pure.

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