MLS Commissioner Don Garber and his right hand man Nelson Rodriguez, plus Peter Walton, the chief of the newly minted U.S. referee body, PRO, might be expected to issue an explanatory statement this week.

For a while there, it was called the European Cup, then the European Champions League, and now it's the UEFA Champions League, the UCL.

So England produced a lethargic performance against Poland last Wednesday because the players had been taking sleeping pills. Sounds quite possible -- after all, that's what sleeping pills are supposed to do. Make you sleepy.

Wednesday night we got a spicy taste of what MLS playoff soccer should be. It wasn't exactly a playoff game, but Seattle vs. Real Salt Lake had plenty going for it in terms of gaining home-field advantage when the playoffs do start, and a growing and intense rivalry between the two teams.

Two recent examples of important soccer guys doing things they shouldn't be doing -- guys who should certainly know better.

There is, evidently, to be no end to the sheer nonsense that the English witch hunt on diving continues to spew forth.

LONDON -- Spending time among the English nowadays -- talking soccer, watching EPL games, reading the sports pages, listening to the army of TV experts, discussing the sport with fans -- always leaves me with the uneasy feeling that I have been mingling with people who really don't care that much about the sport.