2008 MLS Season: March/April Preview

MLS First Kick is now less than 24 hours away...

You are excited, don't lie.

I suppose the appropriate thing to do would be to start off the season with a detailed preview of every team... to be honest, I didn't follow the off season as closely as I would have liked, so I'm not going to go out and make wild predictions just for the heck of it. If you want a couple good previews, check out these from Big Soccer.
- Eastern Conference
- Western Conference

Below is a chart of the games for the first 4 weeks of the MLS season.
All Start times are Central, games are color coded based on TV broadcast clearances.

MLS Week 1:
Games: 6
Bye: San Jose and New York
Multiple Games: None
Game of the Week: Houston @ New England, 6:30 PM, Saturday March 29, on Fox Soccer Channel
Obviously a big game, repeat of the previous 2 MLS cup's...
It's not on National TV, but Toronto/Columbus might be an interesting game, given the invasion of fans from the Great Red North expected.


MLS Week 2:
Games: 7
Bye: None
Multiple Games: None
Game of the Week: San Jose @ Los Angeles, 9:30 PM, Thursday April 3, on ESPN2.
Another made for TV evening... the rebirth of the Earthquakes, the return of Frank Yallop and Joe Cannon, Beckhamania Part Deux... the only question is: Will it be a game? Failing that, the first game of a rare ESPN double-header, New England @ Chicago, should be a great game as well.

MLS Week 3:
Games: 8
Bye: None
Multiple Games: New England and Kansas City
Game of the Week: Chicago @ San Jose, 3:30 PM, Saturday April 12, on Fox Soccer Channel
San Jose's triumphant return to, eh, Oakland, will feature the reborn franchise hosting Blanco and the Fire. Perhaps not the best game ever on paper, but definetely an MLS "benchmark" game... hopefully a large crowd will be on hand to witness the league's second most known DP welcome top flight soccer back to the bay area.

MLS Week 4:
Games: 7
Bye: None
Multiple Games: None
Game of the Week: New England @ New York, 6:30 PM, Saturday April 19, on HDNet
Ok, so nobody is going to actually see this game, but this is one of closer things to a "derby" in MLS, and I'm interested to see (through pirated video, or failing that, through written accounts the next day) how these two teams matchup... I think these will be 2 of the 3 teams in a real tight battle for 2nd place in the east (along with Chicago)