MatchNight - R.I.P.

Though I discovered MatchNight only recently - and though I never referred to it all that often since finding it - I have to confess to some shock and, well, sadness at reading that the site will shut down on March 31.

Some of their affiliates - UnitedMania and 3rd Degree, though not the little corner of MatchNight I visit most often - have mournfully noted the passing and each have vowed to carry on, but the best bit of this wake I've seen so far on this came from Andrea Canales, which she posted on her team blog, Sideline Views. Here's the part I noted:

"I'm happy about the increased profile of U.S. soccer, but I'm not kidding myself that there are no drawbacks. Nor am I confident that the ones who know best the American game are going to stay involved, either at the media level or elsewhere. The way British press suddenly descended on Los Angeles after Beckham signed made that abundantly clear. You'd think the Galaxy never existed before."

I followed the political side of this world for a couple of years and saw some people graduate up the ranks, though most of that was professional-to-professional, as when a writer for a publication like Reason (to name a favorite) moves up to the Los Angeles Times. MLS Underground noted a similar migration of former Matchnight writers up the soccer-world food chain. One has to wonder what this migration will look like with more and more mainstream media sites now running blogs of their own; in other words, the pros are moving down, to put it crassly, so where do us bottom-feeders go?

For all that, it's not such a bad thing. The pros have the resources...and they can't pull the kind of crap I'm pulling - e.g. writing about a team from across the country.