Can’t wait to start talking about players

By: Melissa | November 14th, 2007

I don’t really know the details but I guess it doesn’t really matter because the Interliga matches previously scheduled to take place in the Bay Area are now moving to Houston and Los Angeles. The plan was to have these games at the Oakland Coliseum but those negotiations fell through. Bit of a bummer because I was seriously thinking of going to a game. Whats a girl gotta do to see some decent professional soccer round these parts? And don’t answer that with get up at 5am and go to The Mad Dog and The Fog because I am not a morning person.

Speaking of venues, the more I read about the progress of the Buck Shaw retrofits, the more I’m convinced that come April, the stadium will not be ready. The very very noble intent here is for the Quakes organization to give back to the highly regarded sports department at Santa Clara University by extending the 6,500 seater to 11,000, fixing up the sound and lights, adding a snazzy new video board (ooh, I hope someone uses it to propose next season), and bringing in lots more bathrooms in the form of portables. Ok, nothing screams hooptie more than rows upon rows of port-a-potties so I know I’ll be spending the next two years of my MLS fandom life defending the legitimacy of soccer in this country to all of the casual observer friends I manage to drag down to The Shaw with me.

But the best part of this retrofit story is the fact that the Quakes organization and the city still haven’t figured out how to handle the inevitable parking mess on match day. There is already no parking in the area and it seems there isn’t a sizable parking lot nearby to handle the influx of cars. The Quakes are trying to devise a plan to bogart various parking structures and even bus in some of the fans from outside areas. Whoa… what a clusterf*ck. This brings me to add a very good point here; Caltrains is one block from the stadium so – I’m not even joking people – take public transportation! Make your game day experience as pleasant as possible since you already know you are going to have to spend part of it dealing with crappy portable bathrooms (yuck). Man, the beer better be dirt cheap at this thing.

I think thats about it. All is quiet on the Quakes news front. I’m guessing this is the calm before the expansion draft storm next week when we will finally have real players to speculate on… or trade.