MLS

Major League Soccer may be a retirement home for some, but David Villa affirmed last week you can still factor into one of the best national teams in the world while plying your trade in MLS.

So why can’t Sebastian Giovinco get a recall from Italy?

Villa earned a spot on the Spanish roster for the two upcoming World Cup qualifiers after starting the season with 19 league goals for New York City FC. These aren’t throw-away qualifiers either; Spain faces Italy for first place in UEFA Group G on Saturday. 

Hey everybody, hop on the hype train, there’s plenty of room. Gianluca Busio is going to be the American Pelé and nothing is going to stop him. He definitely won’t flame out and play for a dozen clubs in a disappointing, prematurely ending career. He won’t, because we’ll force him, Robot Chicken style, to watch Freddy Adu highlights one after another. 

New York City FC striker David Villa has earned a recall to the Spanish national team for crunch World Cup qualifiers against Italy (Sept. 2) and Liechtenstein (Sept. 5). Villa last played for La Furia Roja at the 2014 World Cup, but he retired after the nation’s group stage exit.

Thanks for playing, Los Angeles Galaxy. 

One year before LAFC comes to town, the Galaxy have seemingly given up on the 2017 season with nearly a third of their fixtures remaining. The club announced captain and stalwart defender Jelle Van Damme was sold to Antwerp F.C. for $235,000 on Friday.

We’ve come to understand that VAR is going to get weird. There are going to be suspensions of play that feel strange, there are going to be offenses that are bizarrely non-reviewable, there are going to be goals disallowed for offenses in the buildup that’ll feel mysteriously idiosyncratic. It all comes with the power of time travel.

But the one surreal use of VAR we never expected would be the one ending with the brandishing of a straight red card to the wholesome Kaka, which happened on Saturday. This wasn’t your classic sending off — it was weird as s**t. 

In a World Cup year, it’s only natural that national team regulars are put under the microscope every week. With only 23 spots available on the final World Cup roster, each and every week during the club season is a personal battle and test of merit. In that sense, no USMNT player has been failing as spectacularly as Los Angeles Galaxy forward Gyasi Zardes.

Carlos Vela will soon move to Los Angeles to play for LAFC, where he will play derbies against Mexico teammates Giovani and Jonathan dos Santos, who play for the LA Galaxy. Vela appears to have a healthy competitive attitude regarding the whole thing, which is to say he will stop at nothing to destroy his friends in the name of three points.

FC Dallas' social media team has apparently forgotten the number one rule of Twitter: never tweet.

If they had followed this rule, the world would not have been exposed to this monstrosity:

Photo: @JeffVeillette | Twitter

It’s a fun little quiz that takes less than a minute. Find out if you would be allowed to immigrate to the United States under the Republican-proposed, president-backed, merit-based point system created to slash legal immigration.

Carlos Vela, he of 28 years of age and over a half-century of caps for Mexico, has revealed his ambition to jettison from La Liga’s Real Sociedad in favor of 2018’s Los Angeles Football Club, i.e. a branding person’s wet dream.