Chivatown Post: Collecting Captains Edition

Hi folks! Chivas USA may have another bye this week, but the news just keeps coming! Let's take a look at what's going on around Chivatown.

Speaking of the bye, Luis Bueno discusses yet another break in the schedule with Robin Fraser and Danny Califf, in his weekly column on the league website from Tuesday. On one hand, rest is good, but Chivas have shown they can be pretty rusty when they get a break, plus they have a major game against the LA Galaxy in their next match. Hopefully the team can learn from the Real Salt Lake loss to figure out how to deal with the bye better this time around.

Bueno also has an article on Califf's goal last weekend against the Portland Timbers, as well as the importance of getting the season sweep over the Timbers.

What's that? Shalrie Joseph? No, I'm just kidding around. Obviously the trade for the midfielder is the biggest news of the week, and there's been plenty of news coverage. Over at the club's website, Olivia Cervantes has a nice overview of Joseph's accomplishments with the New England Revolution as well as a promotional video he created earlier this season.

From the New England perspective, Kyle McCarthy had an article yesterday on the league website about the trade from the Revolution's front office's perspective. Not surprisingly, official word is pretty generic and the club indicated that the decision to trade Joseph was "tough."

SB Nation Revs blog The Bent Musket was pretty surprised by the move yesterday, but there was an expectation that Joseph was moved in order to make room for another significant move. One of the reported targets, USMNT defender Carlos Bocanegra, doesn't look like he'll be coming to MLS, however, as it was reported today by Greg Seltzer on the league website that he had multiple European teams interested in signing him. For what it's worth, New England is currently atop the Allocation Order, so they'll be in line to grab an available player. Chivas is in 3rd, but after sitting atop the Order nearly all last season and passing on three players, don't expect anything on that front from the Goats for the foreseeable future.

Over at ProSoccerTalk, Steve Davis is surprised about the Shalrie Joseph trade. But he also says he's not. Let's just say the Steve Davis jury is out on this one at the moment.

Also at ProSoccerTalk, Richard Farley notes in the site's Panic Quotient feature that Shalrie Joseph's PQ is "moderate-to-high." It's hard to explain, just go read it and see what he means.

Over at the league website, Jonah Freedman has an article about the changing role of team captains around the league this season. Among other points, Freedman notes that Chivas have traded for two team captains (Joseph and Califf) this season, in addition to JPA (who often served as captain for New York Red Bulls). I think Freedman overstated the captaincy of Heath Pearce while with Chivas, as I think he was captain only once, but nevertheless, it seems that Chivas have looked for more leadership, and gotten it in a major way.

In addition to being nominated for Save of the Week (vote here) Dan Kennedy was ranked number five this past week in the Castrol Weekly Rankings. Califf was also in the Top 20, at number seven. To be fair, Porltand's Kris Boyd ranked at fourth for the week, which is strange considering he didn't score or contribute to a result for his team, so perhaps the rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Here's a video from Chivas' training Wednesday, courtesy of Olivia Cervantes on the club's official website.

Cervantes also has a brief profile on a Chivas USA Youth Academy player: 11 year old Victor Perez. I wonder if there are 16 year olds in the academy jealous that he's getting the attention. I kid, congrats to Victor!

I missed this last week, but here's another video from the club website. Strength and conditioning coach Jim Liston goes over the basic nutritional needs with Jose Correa and Marvin Iraheta outside a Trader Joe's. The best part of the video for me was when Correa picked up a watermelon and did a pose for the camera in the middle of Liston's lecture.

What do you think? Leave a comment below!