Sunil Gulati has done the difficult thing, fired his buddy Jurgen Klinsmann -- someone he had been relying on to open up a bright new era of winning soccer for the national team.

There comes a reminder -- a sad reminder, alas -- from the 1970s. The death of Keith Aqui brings flooding back memories of college soccer, and the exploits of Howard University.

Playoff time always brings with it much discussion of playoff soccer. Which is held to be, in some not fully explicable way, different from regular soccer. The theory behind this notion makes a good deal of sense.