As 2012 winds down, there's all manner of speculation and twittering and regurgitated nothing circulating about 2013, and it's all getting tiresome.

Of the many moves MLS teams have taken since the end of the regular season, more than a few stand out, either because of the names involved or their abrupt shift from the past.

There wasn't lot of buzz generated by news this week that former New England defender Michael Parkhurst had left Danish club FC Nordsjaelland for Augsburg of the German Bundesliga, and that's a shame.

The acumen and decisiveness by which Bruce Arena conducts his business has manifested itself once again.

Thursday's draw will determine the UEFA Champions League's matchups for the knockout round, which begins in February with the round of 16. Here's our Best XI from group play of the world's most prestigious club competition.

A dominant performance that included the tying goal in the Galaxy’s MLS Cup 2012 triumph over Houston certainly boosted the stock of 24-year-old defender Omar Gonzalez.

It's not often a team comes out ahead by cutting its losses but the New England Revolution may have done just that by shipping out Benny Feilhaber.

Every year or so, it seems, comes time to write about the new direction taken by Chivas USA.

The final important date of MLS 2012 is Friday, when Stage 2 of the Re-Entry Draft will be conducted by a conference call. Don't look now, but 2013 is only a few weeks away.

If this is supposed to be the quiet period in MLS, I'm guessing a lot of teams never got the memo

Not many foreign keepers have been signed in the history of MLS, yet the top two spots this year were taken by a Dane and an Austrian

It might seem strange for a coach-less team to shake up its roster drastically but in Red Bull Land, nothing is unusual

The land of left backs is a forbidding place, since just about every team has at least one good right-sided attacker that has to be contained.

The expansion of international slots has encouraged teams to seek out foreign players to play in the back as well as in midfield and up front, but Americans continue to fill out the top tier.

Pierre Barrieu served as the U.S. national team fitness coach for nearly a decade, serving Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley at three World Cups. After Bradley was replaced by Jurgen Klinsmann, Barrieu was hired by the United Arab Emirates as fitness trainer and assistant coach.