It's been a few weeks since we found out that former Colorado Rapids manager Gary Smith was headed to manage League One side Stevenage FC in England. Fantastically, he has been doing a fine job since taking over for Boro and just scored what is likely the biggest result in the history of their club.

Since joining Boro, Smith's side has not allowed a goal to be scored, grabbing a couple of wins and an FA Cup victory as well leading them to a record breaking Fifth Round appearance. Sunday, Boro took on Tottenham Hotspurs and drew them 0-0 at Stevenage, a fantastic result for a League One side against a team that was playing some pretty class guys and not just a gang of 17 year olds.

Looking at the game that Stevenage were playing, it looked like a mirror image of the Rapids 4-4-2 from the last few years. The strikers weren't as talented but they were playing a high pressure, clogged up midfield and a very wide attacking game - though they didn't attack very well at all - based off crossing from the fullbacks and earning set pieces. Pretty cool to see a team playing in the Rapids old style keeping Tottenham on their toes. Though, to be fair that's probably how most teams from League One would play against Tottenham if they wanted anything resembling a result.

If you haven't heard yet, Scottish Premier League's Glasgow Rangers -- one of, you know, the two teams anyone knows the name of in the SPL -- have filed court papers and could enter Administration in the next ten days thanks to a £50 million tax bill. Bad news for fans of the club, but intriguing news for those of us who follow MLS and specifically the USMNT's team captain, Carlos Bocanegra.

It's obviously just a flyer of a rumor and there's always a chance that Rangers escape administration but there's a chance that our captain could come to his home league and play out the rest of his career at the level where he started.

Carlos played over 80 appearances for the Chicago Fire back in 2000-2004 and has 100 caps to his name with the national squad, so he's got connections. At age 32, getting back here after a good career with big clubs like Fulham and Rangers could have been in the cards later, but sooner if Rangers can't afford him any more.

What say you, Rapids fans? Would you like to see Bocanegra standing tall in our back line, perhaps as the club's first ever Designated Player? If this is Pablo Mastroeni's final year with the club, could you think of many other people you'd prefer to take the captain's role over Captain America himself?

It's been floating around the rumor mills for a good while now - we over here first talked about it ten days ago - but it looks like it's been finally confirmed that former Colorado Rapids gaffer Gary Smith will be the new manager for English side Stevenage FC.

After a moderate amount of success in MLS including two playoff appearances and an unlikely run to the MLS Cup final, Smith's resume was impressive enough to get him some looks in his native homeland. Stevenage were promoted from League Two up to League One in England this season, and are putting together a decent campaign for another promotion this season.

Personally, I had fun talking with so many Stevenage fans over the last week and a half discussing the ins and outs of our former manager before the official word came out. Here's one more hearty good luck to Smith out at The Boro!

In the past couple of days I've been notified by a couple of Stevenage FC fans through twitter and email that former Colorado Rapids gaffer Gary Smith is being heavily linked to the vacant managers position at the League One club in England, some of them asking for a simple rating of the man and how he likes his football. (The answer? Rigid as all get out!) There seems to be an article or two floating around the web as well connecting Smith and Stevenage so I'm going to assume it's a legitimate connection. The club's fans would know better than me, after all.

With a job getting back into MLS looking more unlikely every day, it makes sense that Smith would begin to attract attention from some lower tier clubs back in his homeland after a moderately impressive resume and a trophy with the Rapids. Stevenage were promoted last season from League Two and are currently putting together another impressive campaign at 6th in the League One table as of this writing.

Though he's not our manager anymore, a great many of us liked Gary Smith ether as a football tactician or just as a pretty cool dude so it's nice to know that he is getting looked at in his native home of England. Good luck to Gary on getting the job with The Boro!

US Men's National Team manager Jurgen Klinnsman's newest squad for a gang of upcoming friendlies is probably not the strongest or best squad we'll be seeing for a while, but it holds some interest for Colorado Rapids fans with Jeff Larentowicz getting yet another call up. Jeff has been receiving quite a bit of attention from his national squad since being traded from the New England Revolution to the Rapids, resulting in a couple of call ups and two caps in friendlies for the team.

This particular group of 20 players will be doing January training with the national team and will participate in friendlies against Venezuela and Panama, with the Panama match being the first against the Red Tide since the US played them twice in the most recent Gold Cup.

Good luck to Larentowicz as he tries to go for his third and fourth caps in a National Team uniform! The squad of 20 is filled with youth and inexperience at just about every position - along with Ricardo Clark for god knows what reason - so Jeff will have a fantastic chance to get two new caps out of the deal.

Well it's another MLS Cup and another MLS Cup that won't feature the Colorado Rapids. The fantastic feeling of being the reigning MLS Cup champions will last just under another week as either the Los Angeles Galaxy or the Houston Dynamo are going to win their third title, both teams having won twice before. 

Los Angeles were in the final as recently as 2009, when they were shocked by the scrappy Real Salt Lake team that then went on to tear the league apart - albeit without any trophies to show for it - in the next year and a half. That game was the fourth loss in the MLS Cup final by Los Angeles, who finally won in 2002 and 2005 against the New England Revolution to pass off the 'Buffalo Bills of MLS' title to a different team.

The two years after that were both won by the recently moved Houston Dynamo. The former San Jose Earthquakes took on the Revolution twice in a row in 2006 and 2007, with both games coming up Orange in the end despite Taylor Twellman's best attempts at heroics.

In other words, this is basically the 'Teams that beat up on the Revs' bowl.

Without Brad Davis, who injured himself executing a slide tackle against Sporting Kansas City, the Dynamo are going to be hurting for quality. I liken it to when Colorado lost Conor Casey in terms of the importance of the lost player. There are still plenty of guys that can get the job done for Houston, specifically the still occasionally dangerous Brian Ching who has won this thing twice before. Without Davis though, I don't see Houston getting the win, especially since the cup final will be at the Home Depot Center.

My personal prediction is 2-1 Los Angeles as they take home their third MLS Cup. What do you guys think?

Since the 2011 Major League Soccer season ended and the final attendance numbers were released, there has been a bit of excitement from MLS fans. It's excitement well deserved as we've finally broken the 1996 Attendance record as well as shattered the number of people attending games during the season by almost a million and a half fans. These are some great numbers, awesome accomplishments and even more growth from MLS that likely nobody was expecting to see even as recently as five years ago.

There's been a bit of an overzealous boasting from MLS fans about how much better the league has been doing overall than other leagues in America like the NBA and NHL, unfortunately. The stat I heard most often was how MLS's average attendance was 17921 to the NBA's 17318, a stat that I used myself at one point after the numbers were released just because it's cool to look at and a fun talking point for our still growing league. Unfortunately, looking a bit closer at the numbers makes it look a bit less impressive.

The Seattle Sounders 30,000+ per game gives MLS an already unfair advantage since no NBA team can hold more than 21,000 in their stadium. Though the San Jose Earthquakes skew it in the other direction a bit with a maximum of only 11,000 or so, it still doesn't work quite as well as we'd hope. Removing both of the outliers in the situation to give it a more even playing field in attendance sizes gives MLS a 16,794 average. Still not what I'd call a bad clip, but it's nothing to write home about and certainly wouldn't have been noteworthy for breaking any records. That number being smaller than the NBA's average attendance doesn't help the case much either.

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With both games come and gone today involving players from the Colorado Rapids playing today, here's the national team scoop on Stew Ceus and Jeff Larentowicz.

Ceus played for his ancestral home of Haiti today in a clash against the US Virgin Islands in group F of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying. Ceus played the full 90 for his team and pitched a complete game clean sheet, though his efforts hardly mattered much as the Islands lost by a lopsided 6-0 final score. This was Ceus' first ever cap for Haiti, coming soon after his first ever appearance in first team football for the Colorado Rapids.

Jeff Larentowicz couldn't escape the bench today, as he was named to the starting 18 of the United States Men's National team tonight in their friendly against Costa Rica but couldn't crack the starting 11. With Jurgen Klinnsman playing a 4-3-3 formation going heavy on the attack, the midfield was left quite dry when it came to subs for a large portion of the game, though Robbie 'Findley in disguise' Rodgers managed to get a start and flub up the pitch somehow. The US lost to Costa Rica 1-0 on the evening, and the unfortunate ineptitude of the midfield in the second half looked like it sorely needed some ginger ninja action. The second cap for Larentowicz will have to wait, perhaps until the USMNT's next match against Belgium.

(For a complete game recap of the US's loss to Costa Rica check out the official SBnation recap here.)