Featured Links

67 Fun Soccer Drills For Coaches, Easy To Teach. Click Here to Download

Play Great Soccer - #1 Instructional Program - Coerver Coaching DVDs

MLS Players Tweet

Conan does a funny piece on the ridiculousness of twitter, his celebrity twitter tracker. Some big name stars, two NBA players, and once teammates but I think no more, Shaq and Steve Nash are big tweeters. They seem to use it to their advantage, updating fans on charities or events they’re involved in, or as a way to bypass the media. And now MLS players are getting in on the tweeting trend, or American professional soccer players I should say, if you include Adu and Altidore.

Surprisingly, Houston has the most MLS players with twitter accounts, with a total of six. You’d think Dominic Kinnear would crack down on this. Couldn’t they be doing better and more productive things? Perhaps training. But they could be doing worse and there's not much to do in Texas anyway.

Really though, you’d think the team with the Twitter accounts might come from San Jose, since they're so near Silicon Valley, or a city like New York, and not the hot Texas City of Houston, where it seems Ching posts regularly about how hot it is.

Twitter is an odd thing in general. There have always been blogs; players could have just have easily written short tweet like posts year ago. But I guess Twitter made things simpler and easier. They set some rules – you only have 140 characteristics to say what you want to say.

And twitter is an odd thing for professional sports figures to be using. It’s really a marketing tool. Shouldn’t their agent hire some kid to post tweets for them? For instance, how hard is it to write: “Just ate my pre-game meal of pasta. Ready to rumble.” That sample tweet could be used for 90% of the professional players out there, and for any professional sport.

In truth though, I think of the true fan or young kid who idolizes a player. They want to do whatever their idol is doing. They want to emulate their idol. Twitter is just another way to follow that player – their idol. But when most tweets have no importance or insight what so ever, what is it all worth? Again, it’s about marketing and fan base and brand and money.

Twitter does give some genuineness to the sports world though. Rather than the tried and true cliché chirped out to reporters after a win, ‘I couldn’t have done it without my teammates,’ we get some fresh and authentic thoughts from a player. And even if it’s nearly indecipherable slang at times, it is real. It’s not like some Bull Durham line: I’m-just-trying-to-do-my-best-for-the-team.

Plus, Twitter tweets are fast. Reactions from a player are nearly immediate, sometimes even before a news story is released. Right after a game we can find out how happy or tired or sore or hungry a player is. Isn't that important?

Houston Dynamo

Brian Ching

Michael Chabala

Stu Holden

Keikamara

Boswell

Danny Cruz

New York Red Bulls

Mike Petke

Toronto FC

Dwayne DeRosario

Rohan Ricketts

Jimmy Brennan

Danny Dichio

Kansas City Wizards

Jimmy Conrad

San Jose Earthquakes

Joseph Cannon

Kelly Gray

Chivas USA

Sacha Kljestan

Dan Kennedy

DC United

Brian Namoff

Columbus Crew

Robbie Rogers

Los Angeles Galaxy

Landon Donovan

Bryan Jordan

Edson Buddle

New England Revolution

Chris Tierney

Real Salt Lake

Chris Wingert

Andy Williams

Other American Professional Players

Bobby Rhine

Charlie Davies

Jozy Altidore

Joseph Ingwenya

Freddy Adu

Brad Guzan

Hunter Freeman

Extra: Don’t think this is the real David Beckham's Twitter account, but he already has over 36,000 followers: Beckham. I'm guessing Beckham takes this account over at some point.