Quality isn't great but these images smuggled out from the satellite feed in Bucharest show that little dustup between C O'B and Super Landon Donovan.

UPDATE: Sideline Views reports that O'Brien gets a two-game suspension and $500 fine. Good stuff also on Goff's Soccer Insider.

Just a reminder that fan voting ends at 11:59 tonight on the name of Seattle's new MLS team.

Backers of the "Sounders" name request that you simply write "Seattle Sounders" in the write-in spot.

Here is a link to the voting booth.

A year from now, we may be discussing the first game ever by FC Seattle Sounders Republic, or whatever they'll be called.

But an MLS season kicked off its final season without a Northwest presence yesterday. There were some interesting results, none more so that Colorado's rout of the LA Galaxy.

Here's an opening day rundown from the MLS site.

Tacoma-slash-Federal Way's Ciaran O'Brien was sent off in his professional debut Saturday night after a strange clash with Los Angeles Galaxy stars Carlos Ruiz and Landon Donovan.

O'Brien came on as a substitute in the 71st minute and was seeing out the Rapids' impressive 4-0 win when, in the 90th minute, things got weird. He made a clumsy sliding challenge on Ruiz, who went down clutching his knee.

Donovan ran in and pushed O'Brien in the chest and put a hand to the rookie's throat before other players intervened and separated the two.

As medics came on to stretcher Ruiz off the pitch, referee Abby Okulaja sent off O'Brien for serious foul play. No sanction for Donovan, the international star and America's all-time leading scorer.

O'Brien was also in the middle of another strange turn in the match just a few minutes earlier. Galaxy defender Abel Xavier, already on a yellow card for dissent, sent O'Brien sprawling with a lunging tackle from behind.

As Okulaja moved in to deal with the foul, Xavier went bonkers and the referee sent him off for abusive language.

=> Read more!

Pacific Lutheran Univeristy coach Lynnette Buffington wants to share this information about a girls soccer camp coming up at PLU:

What: PLU Girls Soccer Clinics
When: April 5th, April 6th and May 4th
Time: 9AM-12PM
Where: PLU Campus - Soccer Field
Ages: Girls 7-12
Price: $40 advance registration or $50 on day of clinic.

To register please visit PLU Women's Soccer Website.
For more information contact Head Coach Lynnette Buffington 253-536-5182 or buffinlr@plu.edu

I know it's not local but it's hard to pass this one up: Paul Gardner's amusing column about the Mascherano sendoff last Sunday in the Man Utd v Liverpool game at Old Traffod.

Evidently Gardner hadn't seen this collection of video evidence when he concluded that referee Steve Bennett was wrong to send off Liverpool's Javier Mascherano for "talking."

Finger in the face. F-bombs. Persisent. Public. Personal. Bennett tried to stay away, even jogged by him with the finger to the lips, "Ssssh."

Good sendoff.

Kids, don't try this at home.

There's an interesting state-of-the-league overview by MLS commissioner Don Garber in this LA Times story.

And it gets extra-interesting toward the bottom where it is hinted that the ambitions of ownership in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle could lead to the kind of big market/small market split that presently exists in Major League Baseball. And Garber points right back to MLB to say that maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.

Not for Seattle fans, it wouldn't be.

The Colorado Rapids web site has Tacoma-slash-Federal Way's Ciaran O'Brien in the first XI for Saturday night's MLS opener v LA Galaxy. It's live on Fox Soccer Channel at 6:30 p.m.

He's starting wide on the left in the Rapids' five-man midfield, which will line him up against some guy named Beckham.

O'Brien played for Sparta, FC United, Decatur High, and for a year at UC Santa Barbara before going as the fifth pick in the MLS Super Draft. His big brother Leighton is the Sounders' fantasista – a role that we can see Ciaran growing into in the big league as well.

Ciaran enjoyed a fiery reputation among local refs. If that occasional F-bomb in my ear hole helped you get to the top, C, we're happy to have done our part!

Count me among those who think this is dubious beyond dubious, but your friends at MLS Rumors (one of my fave sites, btw) say there's possibly something to the talk of Thierry Henry coming to the Sounders next season. (More here.)

I know, I know. ... Rumors.

But dude: Titi will be 31 in August, can't get any love in Barcelona and certainly you've noticed he's been getting some airtime on stateside commercials and print ads lately.

And for an Arsenal guy he's not half bad.

The five-day voting period for determining the name of Seattle's new Major League Soccer team has begun.

Fans can vote for Seattle FC, Seattle Alliance, Seattle Republic or write-in a name (Seattle Sounders, etc.) at the Seattle MLS Web site until the stroke of midnight Monday.

The Seattle Sounders -- that is, the existing USL first division team -- has released information for its soccer camps this summer.

Here's the link to more information.

Seattle's expansion MLS team is going to let fans have a say in picking the team nickname, as you probably know.

However, they have added a twist: In addition to letting fans pick between FC, Alliance and Republic, they also have added a twist: allowing write-in votes.

Here's my story from today's paper.

This seems to me to offer a clear path to this team becoming the Seattle Sounders after all. I assume there is some sentiment for FC, but I can't imagine any real pulse for the other two suggestions. "Sounders" clearly seems to be the name that stirs passion among the highest number of fans likely to vote.

Fan voting begins at 12:01 a.m. Thursday and continues until 11:59 p.m. Monday. Here are the details from the team's official Web site.

The name -- and perhaps the logo and colors -- will be announced April 7.

Welcome to The News Tribune's new soccer blog.

Actually, as you can see, the blog itself has been around for a while. But we're finally letting folks know that it's here with a sort of official announcement in our Wednesday paper.

From here on, we hope to make this a useful spot for Puget Sound soccer fans. We'll be covering the MLS team, and some on the USL Sounders and the PDL Tide. But we also hope to be a useful resource for all levels of the soccer community.

If you're looking for refs for your league, or if your rec team needs a couple of extra players, or even if you're trying to flesh out a weekly coed drop-in game, we hope to create a way for you to put out the call.

Until we do something more proper along those lines, feel free to hop in on the "Comments" section of this post and put out the call or start the discussion.

The MLS in Seattle people announced this morning in an e-mail to season-ticket depositors that they've got three names to vote on.

Sounders isn't one of them.

Perhaps thinking that folks wouldn't notice that, the press release arrives with the subject line, "MLS Seattle Takes Lead with Democracy in Sports."

'Wow,' you think, 'democracy good! That makes me feel really ... empowered!'

And then you read the reported offerings: Seattle FC, Seattle Alliance and Seattle Republic.

One is boring. One sounds like a rental car agency. And one is already taken by a parking company.

More here and here.

Vote by season-ticket depositors will take place March 27-31 on the MLS Seattle site.

Mexico v China April 16, 8 pm.

Figure on a big crowd. Mexico can pack 'em in anywhere en los EE UU.

Best wishes to those five Cuban footballers who defected Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. Clearly the trail blazed by El Duque and others extends to the country's soccer stars as well, as demonstrated by former Sounder Maykel Gallindo and now these guys.

Just one nit: Why couldn't they have done it before helping the nation they would soon flee scratch out a 1-1 draw versus their new refuge?

UPDATE: But wait, there's more: Two more, specifically.

And what does that mean for US chances in the Olympic qualifying tournament?

More now from MLS Rumors about the raging debate over what to name the team.

Whether MLSR's posts truly are straight from inside the mothership or complete bullpucky makes no nevermind to us at the moment – they're just plain entertaining.

Meantime, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Jeff Gammage has a good piece on the name game -- the new franchise there is in the same boat. (Hat Tip: Sideline Views.)

Stars beat Wolves 14-11 in PASL NW playoff Saturday night at Starfire. Play for the regional title Sunday night and a trip to nationals.

Match report at GOALSeattle.com says Destiny City supporters had a few nice choruses in victory. (Or, if you prefer, you can read the same story at GOALTacoma.com.)

Represent.

Cool interview up now at Yahoo Sports with Seattle's Marcus Hahneman, the former Sounders GK who is enjoying personal, if not club, success with Reading in the English Premier League.

We didn't realize he was already 35.

The Royals are currently mired in 18th place with 10 matches to go. Should they take the drop – through no fault of Hahnemann's, of course – what do you figure the odds are that maybe he'd want to chuck it and try his luck with the new MLS side back home?

We figured all along that once and future North Thurston county boy Kasey Keller, age 38 and currently languishing on the bench with likewise relegation-threatened Fulham, would be the one.

But here's Hahnemann so much as putting it out there himself in the walkoff to the Yahoo story:

What about Major League Soccer, especially with a new Seattle franchise joining the league in 2009?

“It would be nice,” he said. “The Seattle thing is interesting – Kasey Keller (also from the Pacific Northwest) and I could be fighting over who is going back.

“But for now I don’t want to think about it too much. The Premiership is a big enough thing to occupy most of my thoughts.”

More Keller: This from the walkoff of Greg Lalas' column yesterday on Goal.com:

The Keeper...A Soliloquy to Kasey Keller

Kasey, Kasey, wherefore art thou, Kasey? Admit it, you are hating life at Fulham right now. Sure, London is nice, but sitting on the bench at Craven Cottage must be demoralizing. And you are dangerously close to adding a second relegation to your C.V. Why not tell Roy Hodgson to go pound sand and come home to help old teammate Chris Henderson build the new Seattle club? You are a Washingtonian, after all. You’ve probably got all the Nirvana CDs. Think of the kids. This new Seattle franchise is going to need someone with your experience, your demeanor, and your discipline if it’s going to overcome the fact that Drew Carey is one of the owners.

So, Seattle supporters: Who would you rather have in goal?

Soccer America's Ridge Mahoney has a piece posted on SI.com yesterday that casts Seattle's MLS prospects in pretty rosy terms. (Apparently this is a story that was published in the February issue of Soccer America and now is reprinted to the web.) (Hat tip: GOALSeattle.com)

It answers a question that many may have pondered these past few months as things have roared off to an impressive start with the franchise: If the league is so hot for Seattle, and Qwest Field will really work for footy, what took MLS so long to give us a franchise? (Don't you remember thinking back in '05, back seat to Salt Lake? WTF?!?)

Answer: Deep pockets not yet fully aligned. Period.

One minor note in the piece that doesn't ring true: that Seattle and Salt Lake will be natural regional rivals.

Um, no.

Only someone from somewhere else would say that. Until Vancouver BC or Portland get a team, there won't be a true rivalry. That said, here's hoping for a tasty draw in the U.S. Open Cup.

It ain't Preki and Zungul and the gang but Tacoma does still have an indoor soccer team, they're named the Stars, and they're in the Premier Arena Soccer League playoffs this Saturday night.

And better still, they're playing Seattle.

Stars v Wolves 7 pm Saturday at Starfire in the PASL Northwest division semifinal. Winner meets the Snohomish-Wenatchee winner in the final with a trip to nationals in Virginia on the line.

Northwest division playoffs for a chance to go to the nationals later this month in Virginia.

Suppose 30-40 of the top high school basketball players skipped the season at the order of their non-school club teams. What a hoot that tournament would've been the past weekend without Avery Bradley, Abdul Gaddy and DeAngelo Casto, to name a few, lighting things up at the Tacoma Dome, eh?

Yet that's just the scenario that Washington boys high school soccer faces as the season begins next week. The Crossfire Premier Soccer Club's two academy teams – U18 and U16 – have forbidden the players from playing with their high school teams.

The Everett Herald had an excellent pair of stories Sunday about the situation – the mainbar here, and a sidebar here.

Crossfire, based in Kirkland, and Washington Premier Football Club from Tacoma each have two teams – U18 and U16 – that compete in a nationwide league pitting the very best youth players in the country. Some of the clubs are junior teams affiliated with MLS teams – Chivas USA, for instance.

The league rules leave it up to the clubs to decide whether the players can play high school. WPFC says yes, Crossfire says no.

These teams are for the best of the best. And there's no argument that the highest levels of club play are superior to what you see in high school. But playing for the school is like playing for your national team – you're representing the kids you grew up with, from the place where you live. It seems a shame to make a kid give that up.

The generally entertaining MLS Rumors site has it today that the high sheriffs have ruled out Sounders as the team's name. Source is an e-mail attributed to "a very credible source," so make of it what you will.

There's also a bit more speculation about colors and so forth.