Submitted by J., Sep 11, 2007 09:03

Number of times Gardner said, "Latin" or "Latino"…17

Same old Gardner, submitting to the ancient myth of how "latin" players are better and bring out more excitement.

What he fails to mention is that two of the more entertaining teams and better teams in the league the last couple of years have had the least amount of "latins" on their rosters (i.e. Houston & New England.) Dallas, with their 10 latin american player have played good, but not great, and all those additions certainly have not put them over the top, or even really improved a team that has finished in the top 3 or 4 in the league the last few years anyways.

Additionally, MLS has tried plenty of times to cater to the Hispanic market with strongest attempt being Chivas USA. Remember how terrible were in their inaugural year when they fielded a team that was virtually all Hispanic? 2 years later they have built a solid/entertaining team while discovering talent with names like Bornstein, Kljestan and Guzan.

This is the same guy who said Carlos Llamosa brought "latin flair" to the world cup team. Carlos Llamos is/was a defensive workhorse, with nothing flair-ful about him. It just shows that Paul Gardner is definitely not color blind when it comes to talent on the pitch.

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