Hassli's Wonder Goal

Is that a beautiful goal or what? Though I haven't been watching or following soccer for very long, that is without a doubt the best goal that I have ever seen. It is without a doubt Goal of the Week and the current top contender for Goal of the Year honors.

What are your thoughts?

Explosive Draw

While not nearly impressive as the one for Portland, the ECS reveals another impressive tifo

Tonight the Seattle Sounders and the Vancouver Whitecaps met for the first time in Major League Soccer, and while Vancouver took the early lead off of a questionable penalty kick a late flurry of goals and emotions ultimately left the match in a stalemate. The action started in the twenty eighth minute when Vancouver striker Camilo made a run into the box and took a total dive off of some phantom contact from Ovsaldo Alonso. Eric Hassli buried the resulting penalty kick to give the Whitecaps the lead. The action picked up again just about fifty minutes later, when Tyson Wahl crossed the ball into the box, Nate Jaqua headed it down and Mauro Rosales tapped it in for the equalizer. The Sounders managed to take the lead only three minutes later. After some chaos at the edge of the penalty box Osvaldo Alonso found the ball at his feet and he sent in a low drive that found it's way into the back of the net. Qwest Field erupted in delirious joy but the Whitecaps quickly put an end to that delirium. A minute later, Alonso made a defensive lapse in the Sounders' penalty area coughing up the ball toEric Hassli who sent in an absolutely beautiful right-footed volley in the far corner of Kasey Keller's goal. Make no mistake, that is without a doubt this weeks Goal of the Week and a top contender for Goal of the Year. Though that was the end of the action, I really can't complain with the end result. It was a match high on energy and high on the emotions, with a great performance from both sides.

Notes

• With tonight's draw against the Whitecaps, the Sounders have now tied both of their rivals in their first meetings at Qwest field and in Major League Soccer in general
• Tonight saw Miguel Montano's first MLS action since his unfortunate ejection in the Sounders' home match against FC Dallas last season
• The San Jose Earthquakes are certainly showing that they're far from dependent upon Chris Wondolowski when it comes to scoring tonight after a 4-2 victory over DC United in which former Columbus Crew striker Steven Lenhart netted a hat trick
• In a complete shock, Toronto FC managed to come from behind and equalize in literally the last minute of stoppage time with what will surely be a Goal of the Week nominee courtesy of Alan Gordon against the league-leading LA Galaxy
• Colorado managed to hand Portland their third straight loss, and second straight loss at home, thanks to a stoppage time goal from Drew Moor

MLS Week 13 Predictions

Thursday, June 9th
Kansas City - Chicago Fire: Up until this week Kanas City has been on a ten game road trip, and their results certainly showed it. The Fire haven't been doing so well either, but with new head coach Frank Klopas they're playing with newfound motivation. This is definitely a hard one to call, but I'm gonna favor with Kansas City and hope they finally start to get their season on track with their much belated home opener.

Saturday, June 11th
Philadelphia Union - Real Salt Lake: After an unsuccessful first season in MLS, Philadelphia has really picked things up. Currently they sit at first in the eastern conference, and there is definitely a reason for that. While they haven't exactly had the best goal production, their defense has been solid to make up for it. Meanwhile Real Salt Lake, while still definitely a powerhouse to be reckoned with, have been struggling lately at the hands of injury and Gold Cup duty. They managed to cough up a lead earlier this evening at Crew Stadium, and lost their home unbeaten streak a couple weeks back to the Sounders. This is another close one so I'll settle with a tie.

Portland Timbers - Colorado Rapids: The Timbers' first match this season was against the Rapids, and they fell to the Cup champions 3-0. Being at home and having lost two straight now certainly seems motivation for the Timbers to win this one.

LA Galaxy - Toronto FC: Honestly, not much prediction is involved on this one. LA Galaxy have continued to the beast that they are and Toronto has done nothing so far this year but struggle. Not only that, but the Galaxy has the home advantage as well. I'm calling the Galaxy.

Seattle Sounders - Vancouver Whitecaps: There is plenty of excitement around this game, the Sounders and the Whitecaps being historic rivals. Just like Chicago last week, Vancouver recently dismissed their head coach and their technical director has assumed coaching duties. So far, unfortunately for Vancouver, the change has proven to have any impact on the team's ability to get a result. With that, the Sounders recent good run of play, and the Sounders victory against the Whitecaps in the reserves league earlier this week factored in, I'm going to side with the Sounders.

Volkswagen's Sacrifice for it's Lofty Goals

Last year Volkswagen managed to sell 256,830 cars. Do you know what their sales goal here in US by 2018 is? At 800,000 units it's just over three times that number. Seems like the folks over at Volkswagen are a little delirious doesn't it?

So, the question now is how exactly do they plan on achieving that lofty goal? By making an attempt to raise appeal in the US market, primarily through cutting prices, sizing up and getting rid of any hint of style or personality in their cars. This trend could be seen with the recently released sixth generation Jetta, as depicted below:

Now, in terms of styling the Jetta is terrible. It is in fact quite decent looking, but that does little to cover the conservative nature of the design. Volkswagen took things a step further with the new Passat, making it even more bland and arguably anonymous. Check it out below:

Once again, the design doesn't offend, although that is the exact point. Summed up, this is the epitome of please-everyone styling. Unfortunately for Volkswagen, they took the blandness a little too far, because, honestly, both the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry are far more visually engaging and interesting than this thing and they aren't exactly what you would consider the most exciting cars to begin. This issue of styling is exacerbated even further with the presence of the flowing lines of the Hyundai Sonata and the top notch styling of the Kia Optima. Certainly Volkswagen may achieve they're goal of increased sales with this Passar, but to a tasteless audience.

Nintendo Continues the Innovation

At last years E3 Nintendo revealed the 3DS, revolutionizing 3D gaming by allowing for glasses free 3D. This year Nintendo continues their trend of innovation with the next iteration of the Wii console, the Wii U. The controller is the main focus of this new console, it is far from the typical game console controller. Now in addition to the typical buttons, analog pads, and triggers a 6.2 inch touch screen and front facing camera are now added into the mix. Now if you are playing a game on the television and a family member walks in wanting to watch something, you can transition to the controller's screen and continue playing from there. Not only that, but the second screen is also being implemented in fantastic ways within the games themselves. In a couple Mii-related games, one player plays through the controller either running and finding a place to hide or controlling a space craft while the other player use the television screen and Wii remote and try to find or attack that other player. The possibilities with this new controller are game-changing and endless, it's absolutely fantastic.

The 3DS wasn't completely left out of the presentation, though, seeing several new game announcements from Nintendo. Those new games include: Super Mario, MarioKart, and a new Luigi's Mansion.

Apple Reveals Great Things at WWDC

Today was the first day of Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, and in the company's keynote key details were revealed and discussed about OS X Lion, iOS 5 and their new cloud service iCloud.

OS X Lion
Unfortunately not much more was revealed about Lion than what Apple had already shown off at the Back to the Mac event or in the later update to the preview page on their website. The discussion of Lion during the keynote was more of a recap and a demo of those already-known key features (as can be found here). The real new and juicy details came at the end of the presentation of Lion, the price and release date. Only $29.99 through the Mac App Store and in the month of July. While it was simply a recap, another look at all of the key features has really risen my level of excitement for the new operating system. Not only that but the fact that it will be so inexpensive and available in roughly a month sent my excitement through the roof. The only issue I have is the fact that it is available exclusively through the Mac App Store. If something were to go wrong and I needed to re-install the operating system, I'd be a little stuck without any sort of DVD holding it.

iOS 5
While I don't have the same level of investment with iOS as I do with OS X, the reveal of iOS 5 and several of it's new features was certainly worthy of excitement. The most notable changes and updates include:

• PC Free - With version 5, iOS will become completely independent of the computer. Now OS updates will be pushed straight to the device itself and media will be synchronized and updated via either possibly Wi-Fi or iCloud (more on that later)
• Twitter will get full integration into iOS into many key apps such as, Camera, Photos and Safari
• A new messaging service exclusively for iOS users, iMessage. The service allows users to send text and multimedia messages via both Wi-Fi and 3G
• Game Center receives further enhancements, such as profile avatars and in app game purchases
• A new Reminders app
• The Camera app receives minor editing tools, such as crop and red-eye correction

iCloud
The final reveal of the keynote was Apple's new cloud service, iCloud. With it you can store multimedia (music, photos, documents, etc.) in the cloud and wirelessly and effortlessly sync it across all of your devices. Also, now in the iTunes store on iOS devices you can view a purchase history where you can download any previously purchased songs that you do not have on it.

High Energy Draw

Tonight's match against the Sounders was the Chicago Fire's first after the dismissal of Carlos de Los Cobos and with new head coach Frank Klopas. While the match ultimately ended in a nil-nil draw, both sides had excellent chances on goal and in these chances both keepers Kasey Keller and Sean Johnson really showed their skill as keepers. The Sounders first chance came in the sixth minute, when Mauro Rosales crossed to an open Lamar Neagle who headed the ball towards the goal, but was easily saved by Johnson. Neagle found himself another opportunity just three minuts later, but Johnson parried his shot over the crossbar. The Fire's best chance came in the twenty seventh minute, when Daniel Paladini was fed the ball from Corben Bone and he cracked off a shot from distance that Keller had to dive and knock away from goal. Next up the Sounders face fellow Pacific Northwest club and rival the Vancouver Whitecaps at Qwest Field.

Notes

• After last weekend's surge in goal-scoring, this weekend was relatively quiet, seeing only two games where a team scored more than once
• Portland continued their winless streak on the road, falling to Chivas USA in the seventieth minute on a goal by Marcos Mondaini
• Unsurprisingly Real Salt Lake made a comeback after last weekend's loss against the Sounders and topped the Vancouver Whitecaps 2-0