Club Deportivo Chivas USA, R.I.P.

Well, friends and neighbors, what has been suspected for quite some time became official on Monday as Major League Soccer announced that the Goats will cease operations immediately.

This is timed with the planned Los Angeles expansion club that is set to start play in 2017.

Also, the Houston Dynamo and Sporting Kansas City will switch to the Western Conference next season to accompany the arrival of the two new expansion clubs, New York City and Orlando City.

Having begun play in the same year as Real Salt Lake (2005), Chivas USA had an awful first year.  Then, under first Bob Bradley, then Preki, the Goats made the playoffs four straight years (2006-09).  They even finished atop the Western Conference standings in 2007.

During that four-year run, the Los Angeles Galaxy failed to make the playoffs in three of those years----including David Beckham's first two seasons with the Galaxy.

But the Goats never advanced beyond the first round of the MLS Cup playoffs and after 2009, never took part in them again.

The club, which had been owned by the owner of Mexico's Chivas de Guadalajara, was purchased by MLS prior to the start of this season but the problems continued. There had been criticisms of the club under the previous management as they operated as nothing more than a minor-league farm club for their more famous Mexican parent club.

At least at the end, the Goats managed to win three of their final four games.

At times this year, attendance for Goats games at the StubHub Center drifted between poor and pitiful.

Maybe "El Chelis"....

Wasn't quite Mexican enough.

Chivas USA----Farm Club Of Chivas de Guadalajara?

It's beginning to look like it. And some in MLS may not be happy.

Hans Won't Be Backe With Red Bulls; Goats Can Coach, Too

Hans Backe won't be back next season as head coach of the New York Red Bulls.

Meanwhile, Chivas USA dropped the axe on their head coach, Robin Frazier

Goats Can Coach

This happened on Wednesday, four days after receiving the dreaded vote of confidence from the front office.  The Goats missed the playoffs in Major League Soccer for the first time since that awful inaugural season of 2005.