What is it? It's it.

The preliminary round of the 2024 Canadian Championship concludes this week, beginning with a trio of matches tomorrow night from Ottawa in the East to Vancouver Island in the West. The two midnight kick-offs (all times BST) from Ontario are all-Canadian Premier League affairs, with Atletico Ottawa facing Valour FC , and Forge FC hosting York United . Forge currently top the CPL table after three rounds with a perfect record, having defeated Cavalry, Valour, and York, the latter a 3-0 win in Toronto that rarely saw the visitors troubled. York, though, saw off previously unbeaten Vancouver FC at the weekend with a 3-0 win of their own and will look to restore some pride and hopefully land a plum, two-legged tie against MLS club CF Montreal in the quarterfinals. Ottawa are one of two teams sitting in second, with two wins and a draw so far and will expect to sweep aside the challenge of Valour, last year's bottom side who are yet to earn a point in 2024. The winners of the Atletico-V

US soccer's newest competition - the USL Jägermeister Cup - got underway at the weekend, with five games featuring USL League One sides organised into regional groups. Strangely, the West Group from first to get underway as expansion side Spokane Velocity welcomed Central Valley Fuego to One Spokane Stadium for a 3pm local time kick-off. An impressive crowd of over four thousand saw the home side take the lead through Pierre Reedy, finishing off a smart move that also involved Josh Dolling, controlling the game through half-time and well into the second-half. In fact, some among the Velocity faithful may have already left to beat the traffic by the time Fuego's Qudus Lawal fell after minimal contact from Spokane defender Marcelo Lage, the referee awarding a penalty that was converted by Robert Coronado. That sent the match to penalties, with two points on offer for the victorious side and one point for the losers, and it was the visitors who triumphed 4-2. The two matches in th

The USL Championship weekend started on Friday night in Providence, where a sell-out crowd of 4,000 came to see 2023 champions Phoenix Rising play expansion side Rhode Island FC . Neither side has been pulling up trees so far in 2024, with the home side recording just one win - away at Las Vegas Lights last weekend - to Rising's two. It was the champions, though, who drew first blood when Remi Cabral scored from close range in the seventh minute, and they doubled that advantage on 34 minutes through Cabral again, this time following a fast break. At that point, Rhode Island had managed just one shot on target but they were given a chance to get back in the game when Renzo Zambrano was adjudged to have handballed in the Phoenix box, last year's MVP Albert Dikwa stepping up to take the penalty kick. Rising 'keeper Rocco Rios Novo guessed right, though, and saved his defender's blushes, keeping the score at 2-0 going into the half. The home side were much more adventurous

After weeks of struggle, Austin FC finally look to have gotten things right for 2024, grinding out another good win, this time against one of this year's form teams in Los Angeles Galaxy . A sell-out crowd at Q2 Stadium would have been apprehensive before kick-off, with Galaxy scoring freely this season, but their nerves were settled when the excellent Diego Rubio latched onto a Jader Obrian through-ball to put the Verde 1-0 in the seventh minute.  A contretemps between Rubio and Martin Caceres in the Austin box while waiting for a corner led to the Galaxy man earning a yellow card, Joseph Paintsil going close for the visitors afterwards. After another fast break, this time engineered by Alexander Ring, Austin scored again, Obrian finding the net with a well-taken shot past John McCarthy in the Galaxy goal, and from there the hosts shut up shop, negating the DP trio of Paintsil, Gabriel Pec, and Riqui Puig, while having chances of their own through Rubio and Sebastian Driussi. Pec

A brand new USL League One cup competition gets underway this weekend when the first matches in the 2024 Jägermeister Cup are held. The cup was announced in December 2023, when it was explained that it was hoped that they would also include another league in the competition in the future, but for now it is a round-robin competition of three groups of four teams, regionally organised to increase local competition, and with the group winners and top scoring runners-up moving forward to the semi-finals. The competition gets underway in eastern Washington state at 11pm (all times BST) when Spokane Velocity welcome Central Valley Fuego to One Spokane Stadium, a clash of second top versus second bottom in USL-1 this season. Expansion side Velocity have settled well so far, something which can't be said of Jermaine Jones's new look Fuego side, who have just one win to their credit so far in 2024. That game is followed at midnight by Richmond Kickers ' visit to league leaders  Gree

News broke ahead of the USL Championship weekend that the Mayor of Indianapolis, having previously agreed to back a publicly-funded stadium for the USL-C's Indy Eleven, met with MLS chief Don Garber and took the bait of a possible MLS expansion team for the city, unilaterally deciding that the proposed stadium will be for that hypothetical team rather than the eleven-year-old club that currently plays in the city. Needless to say, the position of this writer is always FUCK DON GARBER and now also FUCK JOE HOGSETT. Ahem. The USL Championship weekend gets off to an intriguing start tonight, with a 0.30am (all times BST) kick-off in Providence between expansion side Rhode Island FC and 2023 champions Phoenix Rising . The Seals won their first ever game away at Las Vegas Lights last week and are still yet to see the best of 2023 USl-C MVP Albert Dikwa since his move from Pittsburgh Riverhounds; will this be the week he clicks and will Phoenix, hardly pulling up tress in their defence o

The MLS weekend kicks off in Texas where  Austin FC  take on 2024's surprise package  Los Angeles Galaxy  at Q2 Stadium. It kicks-off at 6.45pm (all times BST) and it's available for free on AppleTV if you don't have an MLS Season Pass. After a shaky start, Austin have won three out of their last four matches but are still short some quality up front, while the arrival of Joseph Paintsil at Galaxy has proved to be a catalyst for some exciting, attacking soccer that is impressing neutrals everywhere. The TV game is followed at 0.30am by an octet of games that also features the weekend's other free TV game, the visit of  CF Montreal  to  Columbus Crew . Crew, the last MLS club standing in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, won in that competition in midweek and have looked solid so far this season, as they have ever since head coach Wilfred Nancy arrived at the start of last season. The visit of his former club will add a little spice to the encounter but it's hard to see pa

The preliminary round of the 2024 Canadian Championship got underway on Tuesday with an all-Canadian Premier League clash between Cavalry FC and Vancouver FC . The winners knew they would be playing Vancouver Whitecaps from MLS in the quarterfinals and so the tie took on added impetus for those wanting to impress on a bigger stage, and - of course - a possible local derby for the visitors. Almost 2,000 fans came out to ATCO Field in Calgary to cheer on the home side, and a scoreless first-half was not without its chances. The game fired into life just past the hour, though, when Cavalry's Shamit Shome was shown a straight red card. What could have been a fatal blow seemed to charge up the home side and they took the lead five minutes later when Tobias Warschewski got his head on the end of a deflected cross. This was the fifth time Vancouver and Cavalry have met, with the Eagles still yet to win. Wednesday's match between Toronto FC of MLS and Simcoe County Rovers , 2023 winner

This week's midweek action starts in the CONCACAF Champions Cup, where Club America face Pachuca in an all-Liga MX tie on Tuesday night. Wednesday night sees last MLS club standing Columbus Crew take the field for their home tie at Lower.com Field against Monterrey, also of Liga MX. A US club has only won the title three times in its 62-year history and Crew will face a tough test, Monterrey having already eliminated Inter Miami and FC Cincinnati to get to the semi-finals. The Nuevo Leon club currently sit fourth in Liga MX and are five-times former winners of the Champions Cup. The 2024 Canadian Championship gets underway with a pair of preliminary round ties on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesay's match is an all-Canadian Premier League affair, with Cavalry FC hosting Vancouver FC at ATCO Field in Calgary. Vancouver sit top of the CPL after two rounds, having defeated both Valour FC and HFX Wanderers so far, while Cavalry lost away at Forge and drew away at Atletico Ottawa. Neithe

Tracing its history back to 2008, the Canadian Championship was the first serious attempt to run a competition that would encompass all of Canada's top clubs. Although the Challenge Trophy has been in existence since 1913, it is purely for amateur sides, and it wasn't until 2003 that the Open Canada Cup was established. Growing from the Canadian Professional Soccer League Cup, which ran from 1993 to 2002, the Open Cup included all the top semi-professional sides north of the border, even if those playing in the US professional leagues were neither invited nor interested in competing (save for USL First Division outfit Toronto Lynx, runners-up on their sole entry in 2006). Both the CPSL Cup and the Open Cup were dominated by teams from Ontario, with clubs from British Columbia only enterting for the first time in 2007, the final year of the Open Cup. No clubs from Alberta, Manitoba, or elsewhere were involved, despite varying levels of semi-professionalism operating in Calgary,

  The goalkeepers were the stars as  Union Omaha and Charlotte Independence got the USL League One weekend off to a scoreless start on Saturday afternoon in Nebraska, 2,461 fans witnessing a stalemate that nevertheless saw both Rashid Nuhu and Austin Pack make numerous saves at Werner Park. There were more goals in the next game, all of them scored by the away side as expansion team Spokane Velocity won in front of the weekend's biggest crowd of 5,368 at City Park, home of Richmond Kickers . Kimani Smith almost put the visitors ahead when he rounded the 'keeper early on but Velocity had to wait until the half-hour mark, when Romain Metanire took advantage of a defensive slip to score the first goal. Kickers had more of the game in the second-half but only managed one shot on target, and it was Spokane who made sure of the points by scoring the second in the 72nd minute, Andre Lewis on the mark with his first of the season. Saturday's third game saw Chattanooga Red Wolves fi