Thank you, Rory Smith. Thank you for making my job so damn easy. Not only do you seem genuinely smug about discovering a "point" (Landon Donovan is a good player, and probably better than Davey Becks) to which any number of American fans could have saved you time and the Telegraph lots of money and said "no shit, Sherlock," you did it in a way that is quite frankly, insulting towards and almost willfully ignorant about, an entire league, its players, and its fans.


One of your central arguments against MLS, Rory, seems to be about how MLS is a "farce," a competition run on rules different to those that have sufficed perfectly well everywhere else for more than 100 years." To which I would like to give you two numbers, eight and three. Eight is the number of different clubs to have won the MLS Cup since it was first contested. Three is the number of clubs who have won the Premier League in that same time frame. And guess what? Those three clubs are sitting one-two-three in the table right now. How exciting. Maybe there's something to this whole "parity" deal, eh? I'd be willing to bet good money that Toronto FC makes the playoffs before Stoke City qualifies for the Champions League.


And just once in the history of MLS, only five years into its existence, has the league had to fold clubs. And that was an eternity ago, when patience was short and funds were shorter. The English Premier League, the richest domestic sporting league in the world, has Portsmouth currently failing before our very eyes, and others, like Leeds and Newcastle, have come perilously close. I'd hardly call that sufficing "perfectly well." Maybe the long-term stability and growth model of MLS is something your league can learn from, Rory.


Now, Rory, I'm not some blind MLS Homer. I know it's not the highest quality of play, and some of the rules can seem counter-intuitive at times. But to dismiss MLS as a group of amateurs and retirees is unfair to serious professionals who have devoted their lives to the game and a disrespectful slight to quality veterans like Juan Pablo Angel, Youri Djorkaeff, and Cuauhtémoc Blanco. The fact is, MLS has produced a good deal of players who have "made it" in Europe. Not only American players like Bryan McBride and Brad Friedel (And don't tell me England wouldn't kill to have a keeper the quality of Friedel or Tim Howard), but foreign players too, like Stern John and Ryan Nelsen have cut their teeth in the American League.


So, Rory, here's the bottom line. Feel free to praise Landon Donovan. Feel free to fairly criticize MLS. But there's no need for this snobby, arrogant, backhanded anti-Americanism. Because that's what it is. There are no columns reexamining the perceived quality Belgian League because of the successes of Kolo Toure and Vincent Kompany. Leave it in the last century, Rory.