Plenty of News Today

Lots of small bits of news already going down today. First the sod for Livestrong Sporting Park arrived during the night from Colorado and is currently being laid out at the new stadium. Watch the progress on the webcam and enjoy as we get one more "visual" step closer to completion. The next visual step, seats. Which should be going in soon enough themselves.

The team has this morning confirmed the friendly with Newcastle United that Robb Heineman tweeted about yesterday. The good news is that the game is scheduled for July 20th, a Wednesday night, which means no moving of a regular season game to accommodate the friendly. The bad news is that the friendly is still right in the middle of a congested schedule and right before the start of the team's 9 straight home games.

Shavar Thomas and Jamaica are set to play their rescheduled friendly down in San Salvador against El Salvador tonight. After that Thomas should be returning to KC. Hopefully he comes back fit as it seems he could be back in the starting lineup if Julio Cesar hasn't recovered enough from getting stitches in his leg.

Finally, Chad Ochocinco won't be getting a contract with Sporting KC it appears. Instead Ochocinco's been invited to remain with the team and train as an "honorary member." Not an overly surprising conclusion in the end things seemed to work well enough between the team and Ochocinco and if he's willing to stick around and train more power to him.