Minor site news

Hi everyone! Just a couple of quick notes here as I'm eating a big salad on a Friday night that is about to become F1 catch-up. Nothing major, just some things that I wanted you to know.

Matchday format change

The match report format is not user-friendly! I'm going to change it.

I don't really know what I was thinking in doing it the way I've done it for these first two D.C. United games. I guess this is something we kinda-sorta did at Pro Soccer Wire with live blogs, but that's not what these are. I was probably still spinning a bit after having to change my plans for the subscription tiers, and/or just not thinking at all.

Asking you to come back later makes for bad UX, and it puts the burden on you rather than where it belongs. Even if you wanted to come back, maybe you get distracted, and there's no second email going out to tell you there's 1,000+ more words waiting for you.

So, rather than keep doing a dumb thing that I didn't think through, I'm going to change it. The content is going to be the same, but you're going to get two articles per game now:

• The match report, which will be sent to your inboxes, published live on the home page, and shared on Bluesky as close to full time as I can manage.
• Quick reactions, which will be the bit I've been asking you to come back for a couple of hours after the game. These will be the analysis and post-match quotes. This is probably what most of you are here for.

These changes will apply starting Saturday, and will be for both United and the Spirit. Apologies for not arriving at this sensible conclusion earlier!

Spreadsheets

Those of you that paid for the spreadsheets, I have good news and bad news.

The good news: every year I find myself creating a new spreadsheet because I can't help myself, and this year's edition is week-by-week standings for the NWSL standings and for MLS's Eastern Conference.

You'd be surprised at how rare it's been to find the full standings on a week-by-week basis anywhere, and how often I found myself changing an article because I didn't have time to do it manually. So now, for the Spirit and United, you'll be able to track their place in the table through the whole season.

The bad news is that the spreadsheets are going to take a couple more weeks before I think they're ready to share. Between DCU in Baltimore, media openings at the Spirit's Fan Fest on Sunday, and (spoiler) a Spirit article at an outlet I really respect, the fine-tuning and checking with people I trust hasn't happened yet.

What I have is optimized for my usage, but if I'm asking people to pay for them, I need to make sure they actually make sense to anyone else. I don't want to send you incomprehensible sheets, and then I'm fixing them piecemeal for who knows how long. Measure twice, cut once and all that.

That's it! Vamos Valtteri, and I'll probably see a bunch of you at two unusual venues for soccer events within the next 48 hours.