With less than a month to go before First Kick, Major League Soccer has finally confirmed the new playoff structure for 2011. As hinted by commissioner Don Garber at last year’s MLS Cup in Toronto, the playoffs will expand to 10 teams from eight.

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.

Major League Soccer continually talks about the importance of having its teams succeed in international competition but, once again, the league has placed its All-Star game in direct conflict with the CONCACAF Champions League. MLS announced that it will host its annual All-Star Game July 27 at Red Bull Arena. But, as has been the case with the last two All-Star events, it clashes with the preliminary round of the CONCACAF Champions League. CONCACAF has already slated July 26-28 as the window for the first legs of the opening round.

With the Red Bull Arena being awarded the MLS All-Star Game, not MLS Cup, there is plenty of food for thought about who is going to host the final game of the season. If MLS is to retain its system of awarding the game to a neutral site — something the league reviewed in 2009 but decided to continue on with after Seattle fans packed the house on a rainy Sunday November night to see Real Salt Lake take the title in penalty kicks over the Los Angeles Galaxy — New York is out for 2011. Commissioner Don Garber said the MLS Cup “could be at some point” awarded to the New York area, but he and the league are concerned about the cold November weather. That means the league may have learned something from holding a night game in Toronto last season, where there were thousands of empty seats. Temperatures near the freezing mark and bitter breezes off Lake Ontario made the game a chilly one. MLS Cup was held in cold-weather venues before, such as Foxboro, Mass. and Columbus, but those were day games. And that’s a massive difference.

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 …

FC Edmonton announced Thursday that it will partner with U.S. based marketing firm Playbook Marketing International (PMI) to develop customer-service strategies and spur season-ticket sales.

Heck no, he won’t go. That has to be the message that Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp receives from MLS headquarters and the Los Angeles Galaxy front office in regards to David Beckham’s request to be loaned out… again. Twice, the man who was supposed to be the face of MLS’ Designated Player program was loaned out to AC Milan. The first time, he remained till the end of the Serie A season, which had him miss a large chunk of the 2009 MLS season. While on loan last season, he ruptured his Achilles playing for the Rossoneri, and missed all but the last month of the 2010 MLS season.

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.