Atlanta native and Chicago Fire goalkeeper Sean Johnson is training with Hull City in England’s Premier League through Saturday.
The Fire didn’t qualify for the MLS playoffs, though Johnson was named the team’s MVP after starting 33 games and making 96 saves. He had a goals-against average of 1.48.
Johnson has four caps with the U.S. men’s national team. He has previously trained with Stoke City and Everton.
Many MLS players have gone overseas to train during the offseason.
Doing so can provide numerous advantages: exposure to Premier League clubs in first-person settings, should the player desire a move abroad; different coaching styles and techniques, which should always be helpful; and the overall experience itself.
Johnson is in an interesting position in MLS and with the U.S. men’s national team.
Whether fair or not – and he hasn’t complained — Johnson seems stuck as at best the fourth-best choice as goalkeeper for manager Jurgen Klinsmann’s side, behind Tim Howard, Brad Guzan and Nick Rimando.
That’s training with Hull could be very important for Johnson’s future.
Klinsmann’s desire to see players challenges themselves is well chronicled.
Also well chronicled are the success that U.S. goalkeepers have had in England, going back to Kasey Keller and Brad Freidel (who is still with Tottenham but rarely plays) and continuing with Howard at Manchester United and Everton, and Guzan at Aston Villa.
Johnson, who has consistently played well in MLS, may have to take the initiative to move up the pecking order on the U.S. men’s naational team by testing himself in the Premier League, where the world’s best talent plays.
Training with a team like Hull isn’t a guarantee that the club is even interested in purchasing him. But going over there and playing well may plant a seed that could lead to Johnson moving overseas and improving his chances of making the U.S. World Cup roster for the World Cup in Russia in 2018.
Attendance record: MLS set an attendance record during the 2014 regular season with 19,151 tickets sold per game.
While that is good news for the league and its fans, the odd part of the average is that Seattle (43,374) had twice as many attendees as the next best club, Toronto (22,086).
Chivas USA averaged a paltry 7,063, so it didn’t drag down the average as much as Seattle pulled it up.
The previous record of 18,807 was set in 2012.
Speaking of Los Angeles: A new Los Angeles franchise was announced last week to replace Chivas USA, which will be scuppered after this season.
The team has several big names in its ownership group, including Mia Hamm and husband Nomar Garciaparra and Magic Johnson, among others. It will start in 2017, the same as Atlanta.
Further illustrating Arthur Blank’s business interest in soccer, the ownership group reportedly paid more than $100 million for the rights to the club, which is roughly the same as the owners of New York’s new club paid and $30 million more than Blank paid for MLS Atlanta.
MLS Atlanta sales: To put into context the pledges of more than 16,250 received by MLS Atlanta for season tickets for the 2017 season, neither Orlando nor New York City, which start next year, have surpassed 12,000 season-tickets sold as of last week.
MLS playoffs: The opening games were either full of fireworks or flatlines.
Dallas edged Vancouver 2-1 in its single-game meeting on a controversial penalty with six minutes remaining.
The was followed by New York knocking out defending champ Sporting KC 2-1 on a goal in the 90th minute.
Up next was New England, which took apart Columbus 4-2 in the home-and-home series. They will meet again on Sunday.
Los Angeles and Real Salt Lake opened with a 0-0 tie in the first game of their home-and-home series.
Behind Thierry Henry, New York defeated Eastern champ D.C. United 2-0 on Sunday, while Dallas and Western champ Seattle tied at 1 in their home-and-home series.
World Cup: A FIFA spokesman said the organization is close to announcing when the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will be played. Because the tournament is played in the summer, when temperatures in Qatar can exceed 100 degrees, FIFA has been deliberating whether to keep the tournament in the summer, move it to the winter (either January/February November/December or) or move it to the spring in May. Either choice would interrupt most of the leagues in Europe.
Americans Abroad: The website soccerbyives.com does a fantastic job rounding up how Americans performed in leagues around the world. Here's this week's recap.
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