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Two CONCACAF Champions Cup games back to back ushered in the end of the week along with winter’s (plausibly) final spat of the season. It made for a messy match in DC, while in Houston it might as well have been June (the referee is getting cramps?). I’ve found the Cup to be interjecting some feverish anticipation for the MLS season, but I can’t help but wonder what these games would be like had this been scheduled at some time other than MLS pre-season. I want nothing more than to be able to form some opinion on MLS versus the world, but the pretext of these games makes that difficult. Suffice it to say, however, I want an Omar Bravo on my team. His tenacity, non-stop engine, and larger-than-his-size-would-have-you-assume formability leaves me without a MLS comparison. DC has its work cut out for them, and I find it hard to believe two more weeks of training is going to polish the (lack)luster by the second leg. Though, one can hope. Houston, on the other hand, did what they needed to do at home against Pachuca, and now we have American soccer heading back to the Mexico City vacinity, which is always a fun (and thin) atmosphere.

The week’s other top stories and best writing are after the jump.

Bob Bradley announced his roster for the games against Ecuador and Guatemala in two weeks time, while their female counterparts keep marching toward the World Cup.

MLS has forged another “relationship” with a European entity, this time with the Bundesliga, and as with similar deals, there is nothing to report except MLS found a new friend – awww shucks, you really think we have potential. Any steps taken toward weaving MLS into the fabric of the foreign game, however lacking in concreteness the announcement was, is always a positive for me.

And tick tick tick… we’re only a few buzzer-beating weeks away from Grant Wahl getting back where he belongs, even if it is for an outfit which has something called The Cheerleader of the Week. Just because College Humor et al has made a boatload of money, doesn’t mean every Website has to have pictures of scantily clad women. It’s disgraceful, whether or not you have a Swimsuit “issue” or not, or whether you think Cheerleading is a sport.

The Grant Wahl link above is to a story he wrote about Materazzi’s life after the head-butt, and the piece reflects the issue I wrote about a few weeks back regarding the present state of soccer journalism. The Materazzi piece is a feature article, featuring not just facts, but a story. A story I’d rather sit down with in my free time instead of the poor crop of sitcoms or American Idol. But because I can’t show that 40 million people agree with me, feature writing is an endangered species, and we need to make saving it a priority.

When I win the lottery, the money is all going into turning TIAS into the one-stop literary shop for soccer journalism. Grant, start thinking of a figure, because I’m coming after you like Madrid president Ramon Calderon on the trail of Ronaldo. And Hirshey, TIAS will never have you promise, as your present internet relationship apparently did, to “go light on the thinking and heavy on the drinking.” That’s how you write a warrant, not a story.