Are too many MLS games being decided by bizarre, or outright bad, disciplinary decisions on and off the field?

A few of my cousins played soccer, and while we were growing in Northern California and got together for holidays and other social occasions, I'd be the target of barbs and snide remarks regarding goalkeepers as a breed far inferior to those in the field.

I'm disappointed that MLS has tacked on just one match to the automatic suspension meted out to Red Bulls midfielder Jorge Rojas for deliberately slamming his elbow into Brian Mullan's face in a league match last week.

No quite one-third of the way through the season, yet with a busy summer of international competitions and callups on the horizon, these are a few of the impressions taken of what has transpired so far in MLS:

For every player who heads over to Europe from MLS and makes it, a la Carlos Bocanegra or Clint Dempsey, another dozen or so come back, some to great fanfare, some to barely a murmur.

How can a team that has missed the playoffs the past three years and won just one of eight games this season be construed as on the right track, more or less?

So virulent is the friction between competing political parties during the past decade or so that "compromise," the process once heralded as vital to the democratic process, is practically an epithet these days.

At some point, the MLS coaching career of John Carver careened off-course, and whether anyone might have foreseen it happening is no longer an issue.

I loathe announcers, be they soccer or otherwise, whose top-shelf method of conveying excitement or drama or surprise is to loudly wail the latest and lamest buzz-bellow, as in, "ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE!?"