Mystery Man

As Major League Soccer continues its growth in this, its 10th season, one way I tend to track its progress is through the media coverage. In cities with MLS teams, coverage in the sports page for the home team (and soccer in general) is usually pretty good. Take a look at the paper in a non-MLS city though, and you’re usually lucky to find a standings table on the next-to-last page below the local high school scores. So as an American soccer fan so often does, I turn to the internet to get my fix. ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the offical site for MLS are my main sources. Marc Connolly, Grant Wahl, and Jeff Bradley generally provide the bulk of the writing, offering insightful columns and interviews. But the stable of knowledgeable writers is beginning to grow. Ives Galarcep, Jeff Carlisle, Frank Dell'Apa, Jen Chang, Michael Lewis, Jamie Trecker and Robert Wagman also tackle MLS and US Soccer from time to time with varying degrees of quality and criticism. But the sign that the coverage is starting to mature is that there are now humorous columns that bring you MLS news with equal parts smack talk, sarcasm, and self-deprecating humor. Former MLS player Greg Lalas is beginning to find his voice, but much like ESPN.com’s Sports Guy column on Page 2, MLSNet has The Clean Sheet, written by a guy who calls himself Tino Palace. This is most definitely a pseudonym (if you look at his photo on MLSNet, you'll see he’s taken pains to disguise himself), and rumors of his true identity range from Drew Carey (celeb soccer fan) to Jim Rome (card-carrying soccer-basher) to Don Garber (MLS Commissioner). Whoever he is, the man can write. Granted, you’ll need a fair amount of soccer and pop culture knowledge to understand his jokes, but I take it as a good sign that a column like this can find a following. It speaks well for the development of MLS and soccer fandom in this country.

And then there's Heather Mitts. She may have a long way to go as a writer, but after looking at the faces of all these balding, paunchy sportswriters, she gives one heck of a headshot.