English midfielder Westlake to move to MLS with Impact 5 Dec 2011 English veteran Ian Westlake is returning to Montreal. The Impact announced that the midfielder, who joined the club during the 2011 NASL season, is the 19th player be signed to the side’s roster for the 2012 MLS season. Westlake was named the team’s newcomer of the year at the end of the NASL campaign.
Whitecaps give new deals to Thorrington, Cannon; trade Nolly to Chicago 5 Dec 2011 Early Monday morning, the Whitecaps announced that the club had re-signed goalkeeper Joe Cannon and defender John Thorrington, while it had traded opening-day keeper Jay Nolly to the Chicago Fire in exchange for a first-round pick in the, ahem, MLS Supplemental Draft. That is, a pick which has a minute chance of actually cracking the Whitecaps’ lineup — as anything after round two of the MLS SuperDraft proper is a crapshoot.
Does Australia’s radical soccer reform hold lessons for Canada? 5 Dec 2011 Like CONCACAF, Asia has a couple of big dogs on the block — South Korea and Japan — who are considered to be automatics to qualify for World Cups. And, Australia, like Canada, has still show itself to be wildly inconsistent in qualifying. But Australia isn’t waiting. It doesn’t see reform as a long-term, long-tail process. There’s a recognition that if you have a talented generation of footballers, you need to develop them, post-haste. It’s an exceptionally ballsy, lay-it-on-the-line goal to say that you want to be a top-10 FIFA nation... in just a little over three years.
After Borman move, it’s now De Rosario for Iro and a draft pick 5 Dec 2011 Both of the players Toronto FC originally acquired in exchange for later-to-become MVP Dwayne De Rosario are no longer Reds. Danleigh Borman was selected by the New England Revolution in phase one of the MLS Re-Entry Draft process. Borman was the only player TFC made available for the draft.