indy soccer is dead, long live indy soccer

I've had it with the state of soccer in Indianapolis. I recently attempted to reach a bunch of teams through the Central Indiana Amateur Soccer Association, and even though I managed to come up with like 10 contact email addresses (for teams spread all over the place - I was willing to drive pretty much anywhere), only 4 responded, and none of them had any room on their teams. At least they responded though.

So what's a guy to do? I don't know 15 people in the city who play soccer, or at least I don't know 15 reliable people who play soccer, who would be willing to fork over the initial cash outlay to put together a team. I even considered throwing the money out myself in order to have a team to play with forever and ever. But I still don't know 15 reliable people.

I'm discouraged. I'd say at this point I'm almost completely beaten. I'm going to attempt to forget it ever happened.

* * * * *

Oh, Fulham lost to Man U this weekend by way of a Christiano Ronaldo goal somewhere around the 87th minute of a game that Fulham really probably deserved to win. Brian McBride scored. Of course. Clint Dempsey came on in the 70th minute and failed to impress. It really appears that he's not up to speed, or maybe that he's sort of stuck in slow motion. I don't expect much out of him yet this year, to be honest. I wasn't that familiar with him (aside from his World Cup performance) before the transfer to Fulham, and I thought he was probably going to be in a fight to get in games. Fulham has faster and more aggresive options out wide (the Canadian Tomas Radzinski), so Mr. Dempsey is going to have to be awfully creative to get work in. He hasn't started a game since coming over.

I've only watched 10 minutes of the Newcastle match, so I don't know how Gooch played. I've been trying to catch all his games now. I do know he started.

Is it April yet? I'm ready for MLS action.