Well, check out MLS – split squad games. Nice!

PHOENIX, Ariz. – The silver balls are out at the Colorado Rapids practices. (You know: the champs get to use the special silver balls.)

The sun is out. Spirits are high. The Colorado Rapids scene is teeming with joyness.

If only the damn fields were a little better, the picture would be perfect.

I didn’t get to spend much time with the champs on my first day here in sun-baked Arizona, due to some logistical entanglements. Practice was cut short, so they had to get gone a little earlier than expected. We’ll call it growing pains as Major League Soccer and some interests here in Phoenix attempt to establish their own little cactus league.

Truly, they aren’t far away. And I think it’s going to be a great thing. As I mentioned a couple of days back, there are eight MLS sides here this week, practicing at four different sites. Most are going back and forth between one of three sites; the Galaxy are on their own, practicing somewhere else. Ahem. We’ll just move on.

Take the next 24 hours, for example. Colorado plays Columbus this afternoon. I’m typing fast at the moment so I can get back over to the fields for that one. Tomorrow morning, Houston faces Kansas City while Houston also faces the U.S. under-18s training here in Phoenix. Split squad! Suh-weet!

Meanwhile, just down south in the rural and way-outta-the-way outpost of Casa Grande, Chivas USA faces Real Salt Lake tomorrow morning. So it’s a little buffet of MLS preseason action.

Now … about those fields ...

Yesterday was a patience tester for Gary Smith and his champs. They arrived at one of the complexes to find the field a wee bit on the hardscrabble side. So they moved to a field that had been watered to within an inch of its life. So it was a wee bit on the soggy side. It probably took Smith back to the boggy pitches of his English youth – but it wasn’t exactly what he wanted for a productive preseason workout. “Go have a little stretch over there in the corner, lads,” he advised in that distinctive London lilt as he clogged around looking for dry patches.

That was at the Westside Complex, just down the street from the University of Phoenix Stadium, home to the NFL’s Cardinals. Honestly, in three or four years, as the fields mature, it’s going to be a nice place.

Across town in Scottsdale, the Reach 11 Complex is further along. There are 18 fields. Some are better than others but none are too bad. They could be a little better, but with just a little work here and there, this could be the site of lots MLS preseason action, reaction and stories in the future.

I hope they get it together and make this an annual gathering. This could develop into something that really takes off.