Major League Soccer - Week 1 Update

The 20th season of Major League Soccer kicked off this weekend and I made a promise to myself that I would pay attention to the league than I have for some time. So, I'll be updating league play at the beginning of each week. This season sees two new expansion teams - New York FC who will play their games at Yankee Stadium and Orlando City who are connected to Man Citeh. Each have new marquee players - US international Mix Diskerud for NY and Brazilian World Cup winner Kaka for Orlando. Both were on the scoresheet in the opener between them on Sunday.

That helped what was a relatively quiet start for the league, with the sell-out crowds seeing a lot of close, low scoring matches. 8 of the 10 matches were goal-less at half-time and there were two 0-0 draws in the end. But the stars showed up big. Joey Altidore is back in the MLS and he steered his new club Toronto FC to a 1-3 victory, including a "Panenka" penalty that was on all the highlight reels. And Clint Dempsey helped Seattle roll over my beloved Revolution 3-0. Gooner's DC were off to a winning start over Montreal Impact with a debut goal from Jairo Arrieta, as were MLS champions LA Galaxy who won 2-0 over Chicago Fire.

The Western conference still looks stronger than the Eastern conference, with LA, Seattle, all Houston all instant favorites. Here are the results from the first weekend:

Vancouver Whitecaps 1 Toronto FC 3
Seattle Sounders 3 New England Revolution 0
Orlando City 1 New York FC 1
Sporting KC 1 New York Red Bulls 1
Houston Dynamo 1 Columbus Crew SC 0
LA Galaxy 2 Chicago Fire 0
Portland Timbers 0 Real Salt Lake 0
Philadelphia Union 0 Colorado Rapids 0
DC United 1 Montreal Impact 0
FC Dallas 1 San Jose Earthquakes 0

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the league's opening and if you enjoyed any of the first weekend matches.