Major Links Soccer: Dominic Kinnear is out in San Jose

Seattle

Former Sounders Academy player Kaleb Karlek passed away last week; thoughts are with his family.

Two things, one Bryce National Park is an amazing place and two, how could anyone run 100 miles there? One of our readers did and met up with Roger Levesque mid-race.

MLS

With the Cascadia rivalry being a three-team rivalry, MLS had to pick who the third wheel was and they chose the Whitecaps. Who else makes the “third wheel list” for rivalry weekend?

MLS still plans to get to 28 and fast but as stadiums and bids fizzle, are there even four viable bids for MLS expansion?

In a decision that I probably would’ve made months ago (like in the off-season), San Jose has fired Dominic Kinnear and assistant coach John Spencer.

Do you know who Haris Medunjanin is? If not, he’s not a bad fantasy pick up. Ignoring that part thought, he’s a great guy. He got a red card rescinded for the other other team. Intentionally!

I know you don’t go to MLS stadiums just for their video boards, but it is a great reason to go to the road match (we should have) in Atlanta next year.

USA

Israeli and American dual national Kenny Saief finalized his one-time switch to the US and made the Gold Cup roster for 2017.

Best friends made the Gold Cup roster because THEY ARE BEST FRIENDS SO OF COURSE THEY DID!!!

Roldan is perfect, so he doesn’t have to prove anything when he’s at the gold cup, but a handful of players do including the trio of strikers that were called up.

World

Germany won Group B of the Confederations Cup. They won 3-1 and had some VAR help but hey, all they actually needed was a draw. Chile grabbed the other Group B spot in the semi-finals.

In the Group A side of the coin, Portugal and Mexico advanced by beating New Zealand and Russia respectively.

Russia has a lot of potential problems with the World Cup both on and off the field, but looking back now has a problem as well; the entire 2014 World Cup team is being investigated for doping by FIFA.

After a serious heart condition kept Alhaji Kamara out of the game since part way through 2015, while he was with DC United, he’s now coming back to the field with Saudi side, Al-Taawoun FC.

VAR has been controversial since it started, and, even though having it is just what we wanted, it isn’t working how we wanted.