I continue not to understand the negativity that pervades -- though possibly less than it used to -- referee thinking.

Mark Lawrenson was once a top defender. He played for the Republic of Ireland, even though he was born and grew up in England. And he had a seven-year stint with Liverpool. Which puts him up there among the stars, at least in British eyes

I have a problem with Jurgen Klopp: I find it difficult to take anything he says seriously. His demented sideline antics have more or less forced me to view him as an overgrown child -- so why listen?

Commissioner Don Garber sounded off recently on the subject of respect, and how he feels that MLS doesn't get enough of it. Maybe "sounded off" is exaggerating Garber's position. He wasn't exactly ranting. It was more of a gentle nudge, suggesting to the American media that MLS "deserves more attention than we get."

I'm suspicious. Playing the College Division I final on a gloomy damp Sunday afternoon in Kansas City sounds like an NCAA conspiracy -- a continued conspiracy, I might say -- to belittle the sport.

I detect signs -- long-awaited signs -- that things are changing in English soccer. I mean real fundamental change. Not the glossy superficial marketing tripe that is constantly fed to us as evidence that something, anything, is new, and therefore must be an improvement. Usually it is just the packaging that is new, gaudily disguising the fact that the product itself hasn't changed at all.

No, it wasn't a dream final -- these days we don't see many of them -- but it was a game with plenty of drama and enough good soccer to prevent it from ever lapsing into banality.

You have to wonder -- is Dax McCarty looking to leave the Red Bulls? His postgame comments after the Bulls lost their playoff series to Columbus certainly invite that thought. He told the New York Post: "We just didn't play well the entire series. We were outplayed, out-hustled and out-coached."