RSL eyes top spot in league against Seattle

Soccer Betting Lines

09/08/2010 - Seattle, WA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Real Salt Lake entered this season as defending Major League Soccer champions, and according to midfielder Andy Williams, they also had a few goals in mind.

"At the beginning of the year, we had our goals where we had four trophies to play for," Williams told mlssoccer.com. "Unfortunately, we got knocked out of the Open Cup, and so we have three [goals] right now."

One of those goals is to retain the MLS Cup title the team won last season, while the club is also involved in the CONCACAF Champions League.

But the third goal is not as easy to recognize because it is for RSL to win the Supporters' Shield, which is something they hope to move closer to with a win over Seattle Sounders FC at Qwest Field on Thursday.

Real enters the match one point back of both the Columbus Crew and the Los Angeles Galaxy for the most points in MLS, and according to defender Nat Borchers, winning the Supporters' Shield would be a big accomplishment for his team.

"To win the Supporters' Shield would be a fantastic thing to put in our trophy case," he said. "It's one of the toughest things in sports to do: to say that you were the best team over the entire season."

RSL has put together a good run of form that has helped them pull to within a point of the Galaxy in the West, and they bring not only a seven-game unbeaten streak into the contest, but a streak of three successive clean sheets spanning 352 minutes.

Seattle is more concerned with just making the playoffs as opposed to finishing the regular season with the most points, and after losing 3-1 to the New England Revolution last time out, which snapped a seven-game unbeaten streak, the club is in need of three points.

The Sounders are currently in sixth place in the Western Conference table, but they sit only two points back of fourth-place Colorado with six games still remaining after Thursday's contest.

Hitboz Soccer Betting News

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.