Only shooting stars break the mold

Hey, look, it's my favorite defender who thinks he's a striker, plonked down on the All*Star list to gave EPL great Chelsea a hard time -- DC's Facundo Erpen is replacing Eddie Pope on the roster. That's yet another USMNT player, including Landon Donovan and Pablo Mastroeni, who won't be on the Bridgeview pitch. It kind of looks like my plan to keep USMNT players off the All*Star team is inadvertently working out. Yeah, Chris Albright, Jimmy Conrad and Brian Ching will play, but since I only saw Conrad play for about a second and didn't see the others at all, I'll let them slide.

Well, I can't complain, as the All*Star roster is just overloaded with DC United deliciousness, although at this point I'm wondering if we can really call it an All*Star team and just call it DC vs. Chelsea, to put it with all "world futbol comes to the US" action that's happening this season. I have to say, I'm not much of an EPL fan and would actually prefer to see FC Barcelona play in any one of their spots this month. And if I had the money and could stand the 100+ heat, I'd definately had made it to Houston to watch.

But, here we are on the waning side of the season, all hail the All*Star game to give MLS that little extra bit on oomph to gets us into the fall. I have to work tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure I can comandeer the office TV to watch the game. After our rather lackluster World Cup appearance and all the blame slinging people threw at MLS, I'd like the the team to do well and show the US and the world that MLS isn't a training ground or a retirement home. We did pretty nicely against Fulham last year -- yeah, I know, big difference between Chelsea and Fulham -- but still. We're with ya, DC ... er, I mean, All*Stars!