It’s become obligatory for every sports journalist to provide season previews for the league he or she covers. It’s automatic, and a great space killer! In that vein, The 11 presents its “waited until the last possible second before the regular season” season preview! Why the wait? Because it’s hard to figure out the East. The West? Wow, a lot of power and depth there. As for the East? Last season, New York and Columbus and six other mediocre to bad to awful clubs were in the conference. New York and Columbus left them all in the dust.

On Tuesday night, a preseason game between Sporting Kansas City and Real Salt Lake was abandoned in the second half because of what’s being described as an ugly brawl.

The Vancouver Whitecaps were beaten 2-0 by the Los Angeles Galaxy in a closed-door training game Monday in Arizona.

Chad Barrett scored the second goal of the match as the Galaxy won 2-0, completing a two-game sweep of the Whitecaps in Arizona.

The Los Angeles Galaxy’s draft-day acquisition of former Toronto FC striker Chad Barrett turned out to be nothing more than a back-up plan. The team inked Juan Pablo Angel, who has scored more goals than any other MLS player over the last four seasons, on Wednesday. He will be the Galaxy’s third Designated Player, joining Landon Donovan and David Beckham.

In a stunning move, Toronto FC has sent striker Chad Barrett — who finished second in club scoring last season — to the Los Angeles Galaxy for future considerations. Barrett found the net seven times last season, and had impressed fans with his work rate as he tried to shake the tag of being a striker who missed far more …

Dwayne De Rosario’s trial with Celtic will continue for another week, according to reports by Scottish broadcaster STV. And that will likely mean the vow of silence from Toronto FC’s all-time leading scorer and his agent, David Baldwin, will likely continue for another seven days.

Eleven of the 32 players available, just more than a third, were selected in phase two of the MLS Re-Entry Draft Wednesday afternoon. If all of the 11 players chosen today come to terms, that means a grand total of 13 out-of-contract players were able to find work. Only two — and both were minor deals — were taken in the first round, where players are guaranteed to make in 2011 at least what they did in 2010. The other 11 will likely all go for less money than they did in 2010.

Two players. That’s the grand total of eligible out of-contract players who got new deals with new clubs during Wednesday’s first-ever MLS draft. And neither was what you would call a marquee name — striker Joseph Ngwenya was taken first overall by D.C. United — and defender Aaron Hohlbein, who spent time in second-division soccer last season with Miami FC, was taken by Columbus Crew. The star names, like Designated Player Juan Pablo Angel, were left untouched. Actually, pretty well everyone was left untouched through Stage 1 of the Re-Entry Draft, where teams are required to at least match what the players made last season.

Two names stick out on the list of players who are available for the first-ever Re-Entry Draft, which goes Dec. 8. Juan Pablo Angel currently holds the title as the best Designated Player signing in MLS history. Jeff Cunningham is one goal behind Jaime Moreno for the all-time career lead in goals. Both are on the list of players whose options were not picked up or are out of contract and are eligible to be selected in the Re-Entry Draft. But, when it comes to personality, the two players couldn’t be more different.