It’s officially the preseason, as Louisville City’s spend the past week working and tanning hard in Bradenton, Florida at IMG Academy. Hopefully they don’t visit the local Chipotle while they are there. Here are the week’s headlines:

I’ll take unfortunate headlines for $400, Alex. FC Cincinnati is also in Bradenton and played their first ever friendly against Icelandic side Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur. If you were up for paying $5.99 for a grainy live stream of the match, you would’ve seen the Soccer Lion Kings draw KR on a pretty crazy equalizer by Corben Bone, but you probably didn’t do that. If you checked out USL’s post-match recap though, you’d have been treated to the headline “Bone Screamer Highlights Cincinnati Opener,” which was as entertaining (for me) as the game might have been.

The old USL to MLS back to USL switcheroo. The Pittsburgh Riverhounds apparently sold leading scorer Rob Vincent to D.C. United last week. Not a huge surprise, as Vincent has been quite good for the Otters and D.C. likes to buy veteran guys on the cheap. However, the ultimate smack in the face over the deal is Chad Hollingsworth’s likely well-informed insinuation that D.C. might just loan him back down to DCU’s affiliate Richmond Kickers without actually training or playing with the MLS squad. I hope he’s at least earning a better paycheck, because Richmond is the worst.

This is an appropriate use of the word “futbol.” Probably the biggest news of the week, the USL announced that it has become the exclusive professional league partner for Alianza de Futbol, “the leading national organization dedicated to the support and development of amateur Hispanic soccer in the United States”. This is obviously a good thing for the league and for soccer in the US, not to mention building relationships with Hispanic communities in USL cities. I’m looking forward to seeing the results.