Seattle: scene and seen at MLS Cup 2009

Nov 18, 2009, 11:22 PM UTC

Since the players aren’t here yet, may as well eat at Dick’s

SEATTLE – Since it’s mostly going to be an MLS Cup-centric week (after today’s World Cup qualifiers, which Richard Farley told you about in the previous post), we may as well get the Pacific Northwest party started.

Here’s

Bruce McGuire’s MLS Best 11 team from his blog. You’ll have to scroll down to find it. But dig, if you will, the picture, and peruse it slowly; like the Victoria Secret catalog, the DuNord site is worth a slow browse. Bruce follows the league closely and pours his bushy beard and his soul into the exceptional soccer news aggregator "cafe." If it’s about domestic soccer, and it’s not up somewhere on his DuNord site, then save yourself the trouble and just move along, because it’s not worth paying attention to.

Also, check out Shawn Francis’ new MLS insider blog. Shawn is a unique hybrid soccer geek-culture freak, and he manages to get the mix as right as Emmanuelle Chriqui on her best day. (And that’s a D-Cup full of "right," let me tell you.) I’m just sayin’ that if you want to do Seattle the right way, go hang with Shawn. I’ve got a feeling you won’t find him at any boring chain restaurants or ogling shirtless women with that middle-aged, golf-shirted, in-town-for-the yearly-sales-meeting set. I’m thinking he’s gonna dig up cool Seattle the way Rick Steves digs up cheap Europe.

Me? Locals tell me I have to try cheeseburgers from Dicks. Since the cheeseburger is one of my five favorite burgers, "I’m in!"

Meanwhile, my early MLS Cup preview on ESPN Soccernet is up. In it you’ll find Galaxy midfielder Chris Klein clobbering the league choice of holding a final on FieldTurf.

I didn’t have room in the piece to get into what Jason Kreis told me yesterday about playing on the fakey, so I’ll drop in here. He’s a little puzzled about how to manage the week’s prep for the plastic pitch.

"The exact version of FieldTurf they have in Seattle is different than what they have everywhere else," he said. So he thought about training at Rice-Eccles, where the team played for most of its first four seasons.

"But the turf is different there, so I wasn’t sure how much good it would really do," Kreis told me.

Best solution: they’ll just train on grass like usual, then get in light workouts on Friday and Saturday at Qwest.

See More: