In the last several weeks, New York has made some major headlines across the MLS and the entire global soccer world by signing Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez. It was an interesting move to bring these two players from Barcelona F.C. to an American club.

Henry is one of the greatest French strikers of all time, while Marquez is the star of the Mexican national team. These two international stars promise to fill up the new Red Bull Arena almost to capacity. It is expected that more than 20,000 fans will show up at Red Bull Arena to watch Henry’s and Marquez’s second home game appearances. All of this talk about the new arrivals has overshadowed Red Bulls true star, Juan Pablo Angel. In fact, Angel has proved his striking abilities this season once again by scoring more than 10 goals in less than 20 games so far.

The clash of Los Angeles and New York will be a fight between the league’s best teams. The Galaxy come in with the best MLS record so far, while the Red Bulls are the second best in the Eastern conference. There are plenty of expectations on Landon Donovan and Edson Buddle to lead Los Angeles to a victory against New York. However, the question remains can the Galaxy handle the pressure of facing some of the biggest names in MLS?

Houston and New York played earlier this season, on June 2nd. In that game, New York walked away victorious by a score of 2-1. However, past results are not indicative of the future, and Houston has the advantage of playing at home. In order to walk away with a win, Houston needs Pat Onstad, their goalkeeper, to have a great game. He currently has 32 saves on the season. They also need Brad Davis and Brian Ching, who each have 3 goals on the year, to have a big game.

New York, on the other hand, needs their goalkeeper, Bouna Coundoul, to keep playing like he has been. He has 50 saves on the year. They also need Juan Pablo Angel to keep doing what he does best, which is scoring goals. He already has 9 goals on the year.

If their last game, which ended up 2-1, is any indication, Saturday’s MLS match between Houston and New York will be exciting. Despite one team being higher in the standings than the other, all signs point to a close, hard-fought game. Tune in on Saturday night to see who walks away victorious.

They met in Washington and discussed different agreements but it is apparent that no deal has been made. This could lead to a possible soccer strike since the deadline is coming up quickly and the two parties did not meet this Tuesday. Here are few notes on the progress of the talks so far.

The first thing to note is that negotiations thrive on last minute pressure and small windows of opportunity. Many of these kinds of talks go down to the last minute where the differing parties start compromising. This does not mean that agreements always come before the deadline, so there is still a chance that a work stoppage could happen.

The facts are that the players union needs to either make a deal or get ready for a long strike. The pressure is on the union right now to be strong and resolved over the next two days. If they choose to make a deal they need to make the MLS give up some meaningful ground somewhere along the lines.

If no collective bargaining agreement can be reached then the union needs to be prepared to have a lengthy strike and not budge. They do this until MLS decides to finally give in somewhere. Anything less than this and the players union will be in trouble for future agreements and bargains that are to be reached.

In years past, the off-season has always been a time of problems and uncertainty for this soccer team. However, they finally seem to have reached a point of stability in their team’s roster.

There have only been five players total that are not coming back to the Galaxy after last season. One of the Los Angeles Galaxy’s veterans, Alan Gordon, talked about the coming together of their soccer team. He said that he felt relieved that there were not a lot of offseason changes because now they are all familiar with each others style of play, and have created quite a bit of chemistry. He said that they are off to a faster start, and now it’s just about getting back into shape. He talked about how other good soccer teams have remained good because they have kept their nucleus together and not made a ton of changes. If what he says is correct then the Galaxy should be ready to roll come next season and be even bettor for some online betting action.

The coach of the team made a lot of changes when he first arrived, and helped the Galaxy to reach the playoffs again after five years of lackluster performance. If the team continues to play together and get comfortable with each other, there is no telling what they can do this coming year.

RSL barely made it into the playoffs last year and had a woeful road record of 2-11-2. The good news is there is no place to go but up as far as away games go. Real Salt Lake opens the season on the road March 27 at San Jose. Four of their first five games are on the road, so they need to start out on a winning note.

Real Salt Lake made few changes in the off season. They are returning 12 of 14 players from the championship team including Nick Rimando (MLS Cup MVP), Robbie Findley (2009 RSL Golden Boot winner) and Kyle Beckerman (team captain).

Vying for spots on the RSL team are first-round draft pick Collen Warner out of the University of Portland, Justin Davis a defender from UNM, Chris Schuler from Creighton University, and Kris Banghart from Denver University.

The rookies will start training camp a week early to get to know Jason Kreis and the rest of the coaching staff.

RSL fans are pumped to have the MLS Cup winners in town and are hoping for a repeat of last season’s success.