A gutsy goal by Taylor Twellman opened the scoring at Gillette Stadium Saturday night, before the L.A. Galaxy's Landon Donovan answered with back-to-back tallies. Shalrie Joseph equalized for the Revs in the 71st minute--the second time this week that the Joseph has salvaged a match for the Revolution.

Chivas USA, playing a fluid, attacking style reminiscent of last year’s Western Conference Championship-winning squad, moved into playoff position after its come-from-behind victory over Toronto FC. Attiba Harris rolled in the game winner with 30 seconds to play in extra time.

Fabian Espindola scored two goals to lead Real Salt Lake in a 2-0 victory over the Colorado Rapids on Friday night. The win ended a two-game losing streak for RSL, preserved the team's undefeated home record, evened the Rocky Mountain Cup series for the year, and, most critically, kept Salt Lake's playoff aspirations on track.

So far this season Jozy Altidore, Brad Guzan and Maurice Edu have left for the greener pastures pitches of the European leagues. Hunter Freeman will soon follow. Kenny Cooper would if FC Dallas would let him and may yet anyway. That leaves several young Yanks in MLS ranks who have the skills to catch on with a continental power. In some cases there are already rumblings that this will happen. But what do you, the fan think? Vote in the poll below and defend your choice by posting a comment.

Tomorrow night, the New England Revolution host the LA Galaxy and debut Gabriel Badilla, their new Costa Rican defender who just arrived Thursday night. Badilla launches his Major League Soccer career in one of the Revolution’s highest profile games of the year, but coach Steve Nicol thinks it appropriate. “I think if he had choice to play in a first game, it would be in a big game,” the former Liverpool man said of his newest signing. The Revolution have already sold over 35,000 tickets for the Galaxy show that spotlights strikers David Beckham and Landon Donovan, and now former U.S. national and Red Bulls coach Bruce Arena. “I never liked Steve [Nicol] as a kid, because he played for Liverpool,” said Becks, who nevertheless managed some kind words for the Revs head coach. "It’s going to be nice to see him again tomorrow. He’s a very good coach, he’s done great here.” Read the full match preview.

Dutch club FC Twente, which is led by former England national team coach Steve McClaren, is strongly considering a bid for U.S. national team and Chivas USA midfielder Sacha Kljestan., according to Soccer by Ives.

When DC United pasted the New York Red Bulls at home 4-1 in mid-June, it would have been inconceivable to anyone that the two teams would stand tied for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with 31 points heading into their match Saturday night.

The stretch run starts now for DC United where every game could be a season swinger. They will play 16 matches over the next two months including the U.S. Open Cup final against the Charleston Battery (USL1) at home next Wednesday.

On top of the nine remaining league matches, they will travel to Costa Rica and most likely Mexico and either Honduras or El Salvador for CONCACAF Champions League matches.

“I guess every game is important from here on out,” said a subdued Santino Quaranta. “We gotta figure out a way to juggle all of this stuff. When you keep telling yourself it’s a lot (of games) and we are going to be a little tired here and there, you go into games sometimes thinking that you are not going to do as well, so we are trying to stay away from that whole ‘did you see how many games we have coming up in this amount of days’ type of thing.”

United has been riddled with injuries through most of the season forcing head coach Tom Soehn to play several players more minutes than he anticipated. Clyde Simms has played nearly every minute of the team’s 21 league matches this season, while Bryan Namoff has done the same for the 20 in which he was on the roster. Namoff missed one game due to a red card suspension.

“This is our job. We just have to show up and do our job, very simple,” said veteran midfielder Jaime Moreno, who has not gotten the rest during the season that he and Soehn had hoped. “That’s what we train for and a game is a game but Saturday’s game is totally different than Wednesday’s game-they are both important but if we take care of both games, we’ll be fine.”

“We have had many people injured so the same faces have been playing most games so that’s one thing unfortunately we haven’t been too lucky about,” Moreno continued. “If we can have everybody healthy, then some people could have a break and rest a little bit but unfortunately that’s not the case so we just have to stick with it.”

Consequently, United has not found the consistency that has kept them out of this late season predicament for several years.

“The consistency is the biggest thing that we are preaching around here; keeping every performance at least on some type of consistent level,” Quaranta said. “It’s been so up and down-we have had games where we look like the best team in the league and then we’ve had games where we looked like a team that belongs in the reserve division…the points from now, from here on out, are important because if you lose a couple of games, you are not going to make the playoffs.”

The Red Bulls have quickly become the hottest team in the league, winning their last three matches by a combined score of 9-1. They reciprocated the 4-1 score against United at the Meadowlands three weeks ago for the first win in that stretch that also included a sound thumping of the defending MLS Cup Champion Houston Dynamo 3-0 last Sunday.

“Sure, we got embarrassed up there,” said Quaranta referring to the loss at New York. “They are in form right now and it’s going to be difficult. When a team starts winning in this league it seems like they keep going.”

The Red Bulls win against United was preceded by a 6-2 loss in an exhibition match against Barcelona and a 6-game winless streak, including a quiet exit from the U.S. Open Cup, 2-0, to Crystal Palace-Baltimore (USL2).

“They have been the most consistent team over the last month I would say so we just have to find a way to compete and match their intensity like they’ve been doing; they have been coming out faster than every team,” Quaranta continued. “They came out against Houston and they were better, stronger, faster, you name it, and that’s what they did and we have to match that intensity.”

The result was United’s worst loss in their history against the New York franchise with a miserable performance and missed opportunities for some young players to make an impact on the team.

“It was a game where there were some players that had an opportunity to show well in the team and unfortunately it didn’t work for us. We didn’t show up, it’s very simple. We have to show up for those type of games,” said Moreno .

The team that United will face has no resemblance to the team they handled in June. The addition of three South Americans; defender Gabriel Cichero and midfielders Juan Pietravallo and Jorge Rojas, have given the team more bite.

Their presence has upgraded the team’s soccer quality, giving the Red Bulls the opportunity to play at a higher tempo, with better skill which in turn has allowed Juan Pablo Angel to make a bigger impact.

Cichero will be serving the second of a two game red card suspension this Saturday after hitting Toronto’s Danny Dichio in the head in just his second match as a Red Bull. The burly Englishman did not return to that August 17 match, a 2-0 Red Bull win.

Regardless, United still has some lingering emotions from that pasting in New York .

“Yeah. As far as getting paybacks and taking it to them at home definitely,” said Namoff. “The only thing we are not going to repeat is that performance. It’s been forgotten about, swept under the rug but at the same time we are going to keep it in the back of our heads exactly what they did to us. It was one of the worst losses we have ever had.

“It always seems as we get down to the end of the season at some point, somehow we are playing New York whether we are tied for points or in a playoff game. We are really happy we are playing at home on grass instead of their place on the turf.

Quaranta put it in perspective, “I do expect this is in this league. It doesn’t surprise me at all. This league is a lot better. People are so used to DC being superior to everybody all of the time.

“Teams are getting better; the coaching is getting better; a lot of the players are better now. It’s not going to be teams running away with this anymore”.

U.S. Men's National Team head coach Bob Bradley has recalled Ricardo Clark, Michael Orozco and Marvell Wynne in favor of Freddy Adu and Jozy Altidore in his 20 man squad for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago. Orozco, who plies his trade for San Luis in the Mexican league, is probably best known for being sent off in third minute of the U.S.' final game at the Beijing Olympics, when the Yanks succumbed to Nigeria 2-1.

Tonight Real Salt Lake host the Colorado Rapids for the second game of the Rocky Mountain Cup at Rice-Eccles Stadium. The Rapids won the first of three games between the two rivals by 2-0 at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on May 15. With a win tonight, the Cup returns to Colorado and the Rapids move level with RSL at 27 points. A Colorado loss or tie pushes the Cup competition for a decisive game at DSGP on Oct. 25. Previews of tonight’s game are up from both Colorado and Salt Lake correspondents.

As Major League Soccer slips definitively into the final third of its season, it’s hard to tell if the Kansas City Wizards are coming or going. With nine games remaining, there seems to be plenty of time for the Blues to power their way back into the playoff picture but are they getting closer? Are they getting left behind? Regardless of their past performance, one thing becomes increasingly clear the closer the Wizards get to their season’s autumn finale. Kansas City needs wins. What better time to start winning than with a visit to Buck Shaw Stadium for a match with the expansion San Jose Earthquakes?

Then again, the Earthquakes stopped playing like an expansion team a long time ago. After winning only three of their first sixteen games, the Quakes are undefeated in their last seven. Their last home game ended in a rollicking 4-0 victory over the New England Revolution, a team diametrically opposed to last place Kansas City in the Eastern Conference standings. Meanwhile, San Jose’s suddenly stingy defense has allowed multiple goals in a game only once in the last two months. All of which is to say, the Wizards will need to bring their ‘A’ game to California on Saturday if they hope to score many goals or bring home any points.

The question remains, however, whether the Wizards will be up to the task. A certain body of evidence seems to suggest they will be. The Wizards have only lost twice in their last nine games. Twice over that period, the Wizards scored three goals in a match. Perhaps most importantly, Kansas City’s offense seems to have found some stability with Josh Wolff and Davy Arnaud at forward and Claudio Lopez in midfield, all of whom have scored goals recently while feeding off each other’s service and movement.

On the other hand, despite the occasional burst of good form, Kansas City remains mired at the bottom of the East, five points out of playoff contention and unable to make up any ground. They’ve lost two of their last four games, losses that allowed New York Red Bulls to gain ground on KC in the playoff hunt. Furthermore, with only two months left in the regular season, their leading goal scorer is still a center defender and, most ominously for the Wizards, they haven’t won a road game since April 20th. If KC hopes to reverse that trend, they’ll have to do so against a formidable home squad in San Jose.

When the Wizards take the field on Saturday, they’ll find the Earthquakes little changed since their 4-0 romping over New England but considerably reinforced since the beginning of the season. The most notable recent additions to the Earthquakes are all on offense with Darren Huckerby, Arturo Alvarez and former Wizard Scott Sealy all joining the team in the last five weeks and contributing four goals and five assists collectively. Over that span, the Earthquakes have outscored their opponents 8-3 without losing once and garnering three shutouts in the process. With this kind of buzz saw awaiting them in San Jose, it’s entirely possible the Wizards could find themselves another vanquished foe on the Earthquakes’ meteoric rise out of the Western Conference basement.

The Wizards have faced postseason oblivion before, however, and still managed to salvage themselves in time for the playoffs. Last year, Kansas City determined its playoff fate on the last day of the regular season after a string of mediocre results and went on to play in the Western Conference championship. Whether the Wizards are capable of that sort of resurgence this year remains to be seen, as they’ve enjoyed moments of brilliance and collapse in equal measure. One thing seems certain, however, as the playoff field begins to shrink into the distance. The Wizards need to start winning and they really ought to start winning now.