Vendredi football: d’attente pour le week-end

Bonjour and welcome to Friday football: waiting for the weekend (French edition).

If you haven’t heard, the beautiful, cosmopolitan (and relatively inexpensive) French-Canadian city of Montreal was awarded the 19th MLS franchise this morning. The team starts play in 2012.

Now, if we can just combine a Galaxy or Chivas USA road trip with the Formula 1 race held there in June.

Updated

A couple of other points about the announcement from the Associated Press:

*Impact chairman Joey Saputo hopes the team will be able to keep its name, logo and blue color in MLS.

*MLS Commissioner Don Garber hopes to add a second New York club as early as 2013. (David Beckham, here’s your chance to own an MLS club).

*Also, here’s Garber on the importance of the Montreal market to MLS:

“It opens up a whole new market in French-speaking Canada, which is important as we position ourselves as a global sports league. There is a whole secondary market here in Canada, particularly in Quebec, represented by the French-speaking population. That gives us business and corporate opportunities. It gives us media opportunities, because there’s French language radio and television both here and nationally.”

Closer to home this weekend, Chivas USA faces Houston Saturday at Home Depot Center (7:30 p.m. KDOC), while the Galaxy concludes their road trip in Seattle (1 p.m. FSN) in front of that boisterous Sounders crowd that alone make the game worth watching (those who you who saw the midweek games in Colorado and/or Boston know exactly what I mean).

Also, defending PDL national champion Ventura County Fusion plays its home opener at 7 p.m. Saturday against the Ogden Outlaws at Buena High School, 5670 Telegraph Rd., Ventura. The Fusion lost seven players from its title-winning team who moved up to a higher caliber of soccer, but still beat the Lancaster Rattlers 5-0 last weekend.

For the rest of the PDL schedule, click here.

Chivas USA faces a problematic time drawing much of a crowd from its Mexican-American fan base: CD Guadalajara kicks off at 5:55 p.m. against Monarcas in the quarterfinals of the Mexican league playoffs live on KVEA.

As for other TV soccer watching this weekend, there’s plenty of meaningful games to take in as the European season comes down to the wire.

Chelsea, for example, can wrap up the EPL title against Wigan Athletic at 8 a.m. Sunday with a win (or perhaps less depending on Manchester United’s result against Stoke) on Fox Soccer Channel.

In Italy, Inter Milan leads Serie A by two points with two games to play; they take on Chievo live at 6 a.m. Sunday on FSC.

As always, click to the top right for an exhaustive run-down of all the televised games.

Enjoy your Mother’s Day weekend and join me back here Saturday night for live updates on the Chivas USA game.

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About Nick Green

South Bay-based Los Angeles News Group soccer columnist and blogger Nick Green writes at the 100 Percent Soccer blog at www.insidesocal.com/soccer and craft beer at the Beer Goggles blog at www.insidesocal.com/beer. Cheers!