I hate visiting a blog-site to find that it has not updated in days, weeks, months, or years.  When this happens, I typically become overly concerned about the blogger.  Immediately, I jump to the worst conclussions possible.

So with that, and with a somewhat heavy heart, I am announcing that after this post Viva La Futbol will no longer be updated.

Some may ask why.  And to those who have cared enough to click on the “Read More” I should give you an answer.

Firstly, this will not be my final blog ever.  In fact, I will be moving on to slightly bigger things.  About a month ago, I was offered a contributing spot to the New England Revolution blog at SBNation, The Bent Musket.  I took the position, which like this one, would allow me to vent, analyze, and cover things I love.  The Bent Musket also offered me, for the first time, a shot at legitimate reporting.

Originally, I was going to write for the Bent Musket and continue updating Viva La Futbol.  However, a few weeks after that, I was offered a staff position at the new soccer news site Soccer Newsday.

After just a few days of writing for Soccer Newsday, many other writing avenues opened for me.  Just since this Monday – the day my first column hit the internet – I have been featured on the New England Revolution‘s main site and done guest writing for Major League Soccer Talk, in addition to having other offers to appear on podcasts and write other guest columns.

So after much thinking, and learning more about Soccer Newsday, I decided that I would serve as a columnist and editor for them.  Due to the amount of time the position at Soccer Newsday requires, in addition to my graduate work, I will no longer be able to write for them, the Bent Musket, and here.  So with a heavy heart, I decided to archive this blog – at Soccer Newsday – and within the next month or so shutdown this site.

What started out as a fun way to produce my own material, ended up with me at Soccer Newsday.  When I started this blog, I never would have imagined that I would be getting over 100 hits daily.  That might not sound like a lot, but to a guy who was used to getting only 5-10 hits a day on other sites, that was mind blowing.

If you are one of my readers, I will have a regular column up on Mondays at Soccer Newsday in addition to, at least, weekly columns at the Bent Musket.  Thanks to everyone for their reading and support.  And remember, even if the site is dead viva la futbol, and viva las blogs!

Sincerely,

Abram Chamberlain

I could have written today’s MLS Playoff wrap up blog in bad Halloween or horror movie puns, but I know you’re better than that. So while MLS has disguised it’s current round of playoffs as a Conference Semi-Finals, we know it is not. We know that until a team located as far east as New Jersey is playing in the Eastern Conference, or a team located as far west as Colorado is playing in the Western Conference, this is the quarter-finals, not a conference semi.

On the bright side, the quarter-finals did show us an ESPN double-header, an insane scoreline with an insane goal, a sloppy game on a sloppy pitch with a sloppy end, a tight fought tightly (read: too many yellows) officiated game, and a game between a defending champ and an upstart that’s score would indicate otherwise.

The final legs kick off mid-week, and with every team -except oddly Seattle- having a chance to move on to the semi-finals (they are not Conference Finals) let’s take a look back at this weekends legs.

Real Salt Lake 3-0 Seattle Sounders FC

What is so different about the MLS Cup Playoffs that has Seattle consistently struggling in them? This team wins in the regular season. This team dominates US Open Cup. This team plays well in CONCACAF Champions League. However, they have yet to win a series in the MLS Cup Playoffs. Before this series even started, the three goals Seattle gave up in the first-leg of this series, was not the three we thought they’d go after. I, amongst others, thought Seattle was almost a lock for three trophies. So, if Seattle’s offseason starts this week, it will be interesting to see how they handle the time between now, the January transfer window, and the quarter-finals of the CONCACAF Champions League.

Meanwhile Real Salt Lake looks back to their old tricks, as apparently neither Kyle Beckerman nor Javier Morales needed that much time to get back their chemistry. Add in a great performance by Alvaro Saborio and a mature Luis Gil and RSL may go from dark-horse to win the Western Conference to a favorite.

Snap Judgment: This one is over

Red Bull New York 0-1 Los Angeles Galaxy

For the most part, minus about twenty mintes, this was a pretty poor game on both sides. The pitch, which had been ravaged by a snow storm, lead to poor balls and bad plays by both sides throughout the game. This was not the centerpiece that MLS and ESPN were hoping for. So while Mike Magee’s goal was nice, New York’s opening barrage in the first ten minutes of the second half was exciting, and the Omar Gonzalez-Luke Rodgers matchup was fascinating, the match did not live up to it’s billing. However, the story that took place after the final whistle with the double red card scuffle (the fight made better, because, according to Univision, it was caused by Landon Donovan talking trash to Marquez), did leave most looking forward to Thirsday.

New York’s troubled Rafa Marquez and Los Angeles’s Juninho were both red carded and will miss the second leg of the series in Los Angeles. Going into Los Angeles, where the whether and pitch will be better, with Los Angeles only holding a one goal aggregate lead, and away goals meaning nothing, this suspension will hurt Los Angeles far more than it will harm New York. Marquez will be replaced by Dax McCarty -a step down, but not a huge one, Jan Gunnar Solli will be on the field for more than a halftime show (by the way, what the hell was that all about?), and the stepdown between Juninho and whoever is pretty big. This second-leg on Thursday could lead to New York upsetting the Supporters Shield winner, or everything reverting to the status quo. ESPN may have lucked out once more.

Snap Judgement: Marquez should do well next year in the FMF.

Philadelphia Union 1-2 Houston Dynamo

The first three minutes of this game told the story. In that time, there was a goal and a yellow card. While the goals did not come as fast and furiously as the first seven minutes might have indicated they would, the yellow cards did. The match was poorly refereed, and Houston showed that they were better -and more experienced/prepared- than Philadelphia. Peter Nowak kept his two game changing pieces -Roger Torres and Freddy Adu- on the bench a little too long. However, Philadelphia did do a decent job limiting Houston’s set piece chances. Regardless, this is now Houston’s series to lose and Philadelphia still looks a year away from truly competing.

Either way, Houston, a team that lives on set pieces, plays good defense, and has a hugely underrated keeper in Tally Hall, is built for the playoff. I picked them as a darkhorse before the playoff started, and watching them hold off a furious Philadelphia attack at the end, I’m not sure that they couldn’t sneak their way out of the East and into the MLS Cup Finals.

Snap Judgement: The Union need either Adu or Torres in the first 11 to unlock Houston’s defense

Colorado 0-2 Sporting Kansas City

There was a point in the season where people where worried about Teal Bunbury. CJ Sapong seemed to have replaced him in the lineup and in the hearts of USMNT supporters. With his brace last night, Bunbury has reestablished himself as a go to goal scorer for his club team. The defending champs, Colorado Rapids, didn’t look to have much of a chance.

At the start of this season, Colorado was rolling and Kansas City was struggling. However, things really changed as the season went further along. With Colorado having made no significant lineup changes since they won MLS Cup last year, they seem to have suffered in regular season play, Champions League play, and now MLS Cup Playoffs. And as a team that is much deeper than Colorado, Kansas City has a chance to still move on to the MLS Cup Finals despite -or perhaps due to- their early season form.

Snap Judgement: Teal Bunbury is ready for more minutes with the USMNT.

Chris Ballard is the host of Around the League Extra and the North East Correspondent for Prost Amerika. Find and follow him on Twitter @chrisjballard.

Abram Chamberlain is a soccer contributor at Front Office Blogs. He is also the founder of Viva La Futbol and (in his own mind) is a well-beloved Twitter personality. Find and follow him on Twitter @achamberlainsc.

Jason Davis, founder of Match Fit USA, doer of things for the culture blog KCKRS, podcaster on The Best Soccer Show, columnist for US Soccer Players, and something of a soccer guy. Find and follow him on Twitter @mfusa.

Daniel Feuerstein is a writer at Major League Soccer Talk and hosts Feuerstein’s Fire, a two-hour weekly podcast on American soccer. Find and follow him on Twitter @dfeuerstein.

Robert Jonas is a writer and reporter covering MLS and the San Jose Earthquakes for Center Line Soccer and co-host of the 2011 Quakes Cast podcast. Find and follow him on Twitter @robertjonas.

Alexi Lalas played soccer for the United States Men’s National Team and Major League Soccer, he is currently an ESPN soccer analyst, proud ginger and lover of Slurpees. Find and follow him on Twitter @alexilalas22.

Jeremiah Oshan is SB Nation‘s MLS Editor and a really swell guy. Find and follow him on Twitter @jeremiahoshan.

Zac Wassink is a soccer geek, a Yahoo Sports contributor, and a Red Bulls, Spurs (Tottenham not San Antonio), and A-League fanatic. Find and follow him on Twitter @zacwassink.

The street is dark and off in the distance three young men are kicking around a cheap plastic soccer ball It cost them eight dollars at Target. There are no goals, not even a pair of cans or rocks to designate the posts, and they just kick it. There is not a pitch. In fact there is not even a patch of grass around for a few miles, but they kick their ball.

Let us take a moment to forget about tactics, about losing to Ecuador –a team that despite travel is still better than the USMNT, about flashes of brilliance from Brek Shea and Juan Agudelo, about flashes of failure from Tim Ream, and focus on the sound of the kick. Thump, thump, thump. The sound of tires roaring by the street every few minutes fills the air. The buzzing of street signs that have come on are entering one ear and flowing out the other. The flash of the moon, through the congestion of smog, shines on the storefront. And they just keep kicking.

Photographs, videos, and stories show us this image in Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, and many other footballing nations worldwide, the image of three boys that are just kicking it. They’re having fun, but they are also preparing for a job. They are hoping that they can one day make vast sums of money playing a game.

Replace the soccer ball with a basketball and the same image plays throughout America.

The United States Soccer Federation has a problem in that soccer is not the only show in town. Nearly every male athlete wants to play one of the big three –four if you include hockey– sports. They spend hours running routes, practicing dribbling drills, hitting pebbles with sticks, playing pickup, or doing whatever the equivalent for hockey is, but not just kicking it.

There is a reason why the best basketball players tend to come from either really poor urban, or equally poor rural, neighborhoods. It is the draw of money to that sport in particular. Basketball, just like soccer, is a ridiculously cheap sport to play, and the payoff –difficult as it is to achieve– is enormous.

Meanwhile, there is no American money in soccer, so the players practice shooting hoops instead of goals. They practice making crossovers instead of nutmegs. They work on posting up instead of riding the offside line. And due to their insistence that basketball or American football –and to a lesser extent baseball and hockey– are the only ways out of their current lifestyle, the USA loses hundreds if not thousands of athletes every day.

A few times a year, usually following a loss for the USMNT, I get into a discussion with people who swear that all the USMNT needs is Kobe Bryant, and players of his ilk, to suit up for them. This is not the argument that I am making. Kobe was always going to play basketball. He is 6’8”. The athletes that are being lost are those secondary athletes. The ones who never make it to the NBA, NHL, MLB, or NFL are the players who may be stopping the USMNT’s progression.

The running back with no scholarship or the 5’6” point guard who never gets off his college’s practice squad or the dynamically fast short stop that is great on defense but hits .082 in the minor leagues could be the soccer players that America is missing, but they never knew it because soccer was never looked at as a profitable option. Perhaps, if someone told them they could make equally good money in soccer may have spent their time kicking it.

The need for money is what drives player to enter professional ranks at lower ages. Oddly enough most American professional sports leagues are moving away from younger players. Currently an NBA rookie must be one year removed from his high school graduation to enter the NBA Draft, but in this lockout they are trying to make it two years removed. An NFL rookie must be three years removed from his high school graduation. In MLB and the NHL players cannot join the leagues until they are 18.

Meanwhile, Major League Soccer has been known to debut kids as young as 14. Being a 16 year-old rookie is no longer extraordinary, it is actually just plain old ordinary now. By the time a player is done with his first league contract –around 18 or 19 if he joined the league at 16– he will be able to go to Europe and sign a more lucrative contract that, if he was playing in the NBA or NFL, he would have had to wait another two to three years to sign.

With MLS Academies producing players at a pretty good clip now –Diego Fagundez, Jack McInerney, Andy Najar, Bill Hamid, Juan Agudelo– the idea of MLS academies producing young professional players is no longer ridiculous. Kids as young as 11 and 12 in some cases are having the opportunity to be affiliated with professional clubs. However, MLS has had a poor history of letting players go –just ask Clint Matthis or Landon Donovan. If MLS wants to attract athletes to look at soccer they need to let them know that they can make good money –though perhaps not in MLS– four years earlier than they could in other sports. Still until MLS allows teams to keep the transfer fees from the players they produce and sell them as they see fit, and for fees that the club find fair, advertising the academies as a reason to kick it will continue to struggle. But tracking down and selling these kids on this sport through academies is a step.

The next time you are driving past your local YMCA, public park, or past a cow field with a basketball net and you hear the “thump, thump, thump” of a kid practicing take a moment to imagine. Imagine the “thump, thump, thump” as a heartbeat of someone trying improve to the point where he can “make it”. Imagine the “thump, thump, thump” being a hammer hopefully forging someone’s career. Imagine the “thump, thump, thump” being the sounds of kids just kicking a soccer ball instead of dribbling a basketball.

When MLS learns just how to sell its academies, and not short-sell its clubs with single-entity transfer rules, the improvement of the game in America will improve just from kids kicking it.