USA

Landon Donovan, the all-time leader in scoring, assists and second most capped player in USMNT history, to go along with MLS’ all-time top scorer, assists leader and playoff goals leader has added another distinction to his legacy: he’s now MLS’ all-time leader in playoff assists with 15.

The Galaxy mercilessly ended a careening Real Salt Lake season, the Claret and Cobalt having limped into the playoffs after collecting only three points from their final seven regular season games.

For a long-suffering Toronto FC fan base, it was history. For Sebastian Giovinco, it was about time. Toronto FC scored its first playoff goal in franchise history and advanced past the knockout round for the first time. Toronto will now face New York City FC in the conference semifinals in a match pitting a large majority of the league’s major star power.

It's easy to forget Julian Green is only 21 years old. He's earned a spot in Bayern Munich's first team, been dropped from Bayern's first team, rejected moves away from Bayern, scored in a World Cup knockout game and started in the Champions League. This season Green is trying to carve out a spot in Bayern's rotation, and his play in his first start for the senior side since 2015 will certainly help his case.

Green scored his first competitive goal for the first team against Augsburg Wednesday with a wonderful header.

Building off a record breaking 2015 season that saw an average attendance of 21,558, the 2016 MLS season managed to set another landmark by edging that total with an average attendance of 21,692 fans per game.

The growth of MLS is exemplified by this being the third consecutive season that the record has been broken. Leading the way for MLS is the Seattle Sounders (42,636 fans per game), Orlando City (31,324) and New York City FC (27,196).

Cameron Carter-Vickers, an 18-year-old American center back, made his second appearance for Tottenham Tuesday. It did not go well. His debut came in the EFL Cup against Gillingham and he played well in a win. Tuesday, though, the likes of Gillingham were nowhere to be seen. Tottenham played Liverpool.

Mauricio Pochettino continued the time-honored tradition of playing his second-string in the EFL Cup because who cares it's the EFL Cup, so Carter-Vickers got the nod. 

Liverpool also trotted out a fairly inexperienced side except for, um, the strikers.

Two Portland Timbers performed teamwork in maybe the worst way possible Monday. Goalkeeper Jake Gleeson crashed his BMW into the back of another car and called his teammate, team captain Liam Ridgewell (hey, what are captains for?) to come help him.

This seems like normal teammate behavior until you learn they the pair were reportedly both drunk and were arrested for Driving Under the Influence of Intoxicants (DUII).

Bobby Wood scored a brace for Hamburg SV and Fabian Johnson scored the goal of the day for Borussia Monchengladbach as the USMNT members helped their respective sides to the round of 16 in the DFB-Pokal.

Johnson’s Gladbach took on German second division side VfB Stuttgart, and the American winger got the home side off to a dream start in front of 40,452 at Borussia-Park. Collecting the ball off an exquisite back heel pass from Andre Hahn, Johnson scored his second goal in all competitions for the club.

Eight months after the kick off to the 2016 campaign, the MLS season has finally reached the playoff stage. In a case of switching identifies, last year’s champions, the Portland Timbers, failed to make the knockout round, while typical basement dwellers Colorado were a pacesetting team from start to finish. San Jose, Houston and Vancouver join Portland on the outside looking in, all hoping to be next year’s Rapids. 

After yet another impressive season, FC Dallas finish top of the Western Conference and MLS, winning the 2016 Supporters’ Shield. 

Is there a diversity problem in women’s soccer? As other sports have made strides to include players of all ethnicities, most youth, college and professional women’s soccer teams in the USA are still mainly comprised of white players.

This lack of diversity has led organizations to try and overcome the problem, and over the past few years, strides have been made to make the sport more inclusive, but it just doesn’t seem to have come far enough.

Barriers To Diversity

After 34 matches, the MLS Eastern Conference gave us exactly what we expected in some cases and major surprises for other clubs. The 2015 Eastern semi-finalists, the New York Red Bulls (first on 57 points) and the Columbus Crew (36 points and in 9th place), going in wildly different directions.