Attendance is down in Major League Soccer, FC Dallas is winning, Landon is back and the kid in Philadelphia is leading the league in scoring.
Georgia native Jack McInerney, a 20-year-old pro, scored a pair of goals before halftime to pace the Philadelphia Union to a 3-2 win over D.C. United and was named the league’s Player of the Week.
McInerney, who grew up in Alpharetta, Ga, has scored in three straight games, and leads MLS scoring with six goals. His three game-winning goals is also league best, and puts him in the early lead for the Budweiser Golden Boot award.
As good as his start to the 2013 season has been, McInerney is cautious about his scoring streak.
“I know I’m not going to continue at this pace the whole year, so I told everyone not to get too excited,” he told reporters after the D.C. United win. “But it feel good. And the goals will keep coming if we’re still winning.”
The Union is tied with the New York Red Bulls for fourth place in the Eastern Conference with 11 points after a 3-2-2 start. Sporting Kansas City leads the conference with 14 points.
Union manager John Hackworth has had a lot of confidence in McInerney, who was selected by Philadelphia in the 2010 MLS SuperDraft right out of the Under-17 National Residency Program.
“Probably the most impressive thing is he slowed the ball up and cut the ball back,” said Hackworth as he spoke about McInerney’s first goal. “On the bench, we were saying, ‘Why is he slowing it up?’ It looked like he had a step on them.
“But Jack is capable of those kind of goals. I know everyone says he’s a tap-in player, but he has a big arsenal in his bag. He can certainly hurt you from distance and hurt you in different ways. And he showed that today.”
The win came in the Union’s first ever victory at RFK Stadium.
And McInterney’s confidence. It’s pretty high.
“It’s as high as it can be,” he said. “We’re winning and I’m scoring, so it can’t get much better.”
The loss left D.C. United with three straight setbacks after dropping a 2-1 decision to Columbus on March 23. That snapped a 17-game unbeaten run at RFK Stadium.
D.C. United has dropped to last in the 10-team Eastern Conference with four points and a 1-5-1 record.
FC Dallas Record Best In MLS
FC Dallas is rolling with 19 points, eight better than the LA Galaxy and Real Salt Lake which share second place in the Western Conference.
Dallas has lost only once this year in fashioning a 6-1-1 start. No one has a batter mark.
Landon Donovan has returned to the Galaxy lineup. He scored his first goal of the game in the win over Kansas City.
He actually put in his first apperance, after a four-month sabbatical, with the Galaxy on March 26 in Washington, DC, when the club visited the White House to commemerate their 2012 MLS Cup championship.
FC Dallas is coming off a 2-0 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps in front of a crowd of 14,900, which is below the league average of 17,329.
Attendance around the league is drown 7.9 peercent from last year’s season average of 18,807. Toronto FC, which played before sold-out crowds during the club’s first seasons, has suffered as losses have caught up with enthusiasm.
The only sellout of the weekend was San Jose’s 1-1 home draw with Portland, but that draw drew only 10,525 at BBVA Compass Stadium.
The Galaxy had the biggest crowd, drawing 25,908 for a 2-0 victory over Sporting Kansas City.
National Team Callup Coming?
Donovan is back, but he isn’t sure when he’ll return to the U.S. Men’s National Team. This time it’s not his decision. That belongs to U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann.
Donovan told the New York Times’ Sam Borden recently, that he’s ready, and ready to play where he’s needed.
“If I can go back in with the national team, and they ask me to play goalie, then I’ll play goalie,” Donovan said, perhaps in jest.
“My job now is to make it so that he wants me back. He has not said anything — he hasn’t said he doesn’t want me to be part of it. He has said the door is open and once I’m playing again, he’ll evalute me like any other players, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Donovan, 31, took a break from soccer for a variety of reasons. He missed the MLS preseason, and he missed the first three games in the very important final round of World Cup qualifying.
An issue for Donovan is how he will be received by his teammates. The return to the Galaxy has apparantly gone well. He isn’t sure about his national team teammates.
“That’s not in my control,” he said. “I can imagine that, just like in any walk of life, some people agree with the decision and some peorple don’t agree with it. You have to earn you way back in. That is no different. That will be my challenge.”