Drilling down into Round 25 of MLS

At any rate, here's the 411 on what went down during Round 25.

Player of the week: Kansas City striker Josh Wolff has always been one of the best in the league at timing his runs and getting into the right spots. He's Taylor Twellman-esque in that regard. His two well-time runs permitted two goals as Kansas City kept an itty-bitty inkling of playoff hope alive with a 4-2 win at New England. Runners-up: Claudio Lopez appeared only once on the scoresheet for Kansas City, but he was lively and productive as the Wizards finally scored under interim manager Peter Vermes. (It just took four games under Vermes for the Midwesterners to finally find goal.) Also, both Drew Moor and Julien Baudet had terrific matches in Colorado's central defense.

Best goal: An easier call will never be made. It was Edgaras Jankauskas' crackjack volley for New England against KC.

Ref report: Jasen Anno easily had the worst refereeing performance of the weekend with a wildly inconsistent night at Gillette. A few minutes after Shalrie Joseph was sent off in a highly questionable decision, Emmanuel Osei managed to kick Davy Arnaud in the back of the head without consequence. No whistle. Later, what Herculez Gomez did to Jay Heaps was just this side of criminal, as he loaded up and put a big knee into the New England fullback's ribs. No card.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the performance scale, Terry Vaughn managed matters well in Colorado's 1-0 win over Toronto. He got an early PK call for Colorado right -- even if the Rapids got it all wrong on the attempt. Conor Casey banged it off the crossbar, becoming the second player this year to miss two spot shots. Dallas' Jeff Cunningham is the other.

At any rate, Vaughn was correct when he issued a second yellow to Amadou Sanyang. He's just 18, and he has a bright future ahead. (If you haven't seen the young Gambian holding middie, do so. But you won't get to see him next week as he serves the mandatory one game suspension for a silly, late whack at Jacob Peterson. The straight red on Adrian Serioux may have been a little harsh; but the tough guy TFC center back's shoulder charge away from the ball was so ridiculous that he deserved the red for sheer brainlessness, if nothing else.

Funny broadcast moment of the weekend: After one of the field microphones caught some language heard most often in biker bars, Chris Sullivan up in the FSC booth could only manage to say: "Oh, goodness."

Playing with fire: FC Dallas provided D.C. United's Marc Burch with -- count 'em -- one, two, three chances to strike free kicks from dangerous places in the first half Saturday. Sure enough, Burch connected on his third bite off the set-piece apple, after putting two previously on goal that Dario Sala could only parry. Here's an idea for Dallas: don't foul in dangerous places. (And here's another idea for the Pizza Hut Park bunch: find a goalkeeper who can hold shots, not just parry them back into bad spots. Sala looks past his sell-by date right now.)

Weekend irony: Young New England backup Brad Knighton looks like a good, young goalkeeper. But he now has been in the nets for a six-spot and a four-spot, the latter at home. Two words: not good.

Double dip of the weekend: Thomas Rongen is the analyst on D.C. United broadcasts. He's also the U.S. under-20 coach. This weekend he called the game in Dallas, where United was visiting. Pizza Hut Park also happens to be home to five of his under-20 players, including U.S. captain Kyle Davies, who started at center back for FCD.

For more on Round 25 of MLS matches, including tactical tidbits and a review of the league’s "cans" and "cannots" in terms of service providers, see my weekly roundup on MLSnet.com.

Team of the week:

GK: Stefan Frei

DF: Drew Moor, Julien Gaudet, Marc Burch

MF: Josh LaBrocca, Jaime Moreno, David Ferreira, Claudio Lopez,

FW: Josh Wolff, Conor Casey, Omar Cummings