Vancouver has vastly improved from a last-place finish in 2011, but records won't matter in Saturday's 2 p.m. rivalry game against Seattle at BC Place, the 126th soccer meeting between the cities.

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Records don't matter. Not in rivalry games.

They didn't when Vancouver was the worst team in the Western Conference last year. They don't now that the much improved Whitecaps sit just one place below Sounders FC in the standings.

MONTREAL (AP) – David Beckham bent in a free kick in the 62nd minute to help theLos Angeles Galaxy tie the Montreal Impact 1-1 on Saturday at Olympic Stadium in front of 60,860 fans — the largest crowd for a professional soccer game in Canada.

There was a mix of boos and cheers each time Beckham played the ball, even when he scored on one of his patented free kicks that curled inside the right post from 23 yards.

Beckham's second goal of the season came 6 minutes after he was shown the yellow card for an elbow to the face of Felipe Martins, which might have been embellished by the Brazilian.

Davy Arnaud scored for Montreal in the second minute.

HOUSTON – On the eve of opening their new BBVA Compass Stadium, the Houston Dynamo, their fans, and their city have been looking back at the club’s history. Into the seventh season, it’s not a comparatively long history, but if things had been different, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said on Friday, the Dynamo might have been an MLS original.

“This is a great sports town,” Garber said at a press conference here on Friday afternoon. “If we had a sense of a stadium opportunity when the league was founded in 1996, this team would be going into its 17th season.”

The Dynamo franchise relocated to Houston in 2006 from San Jose and saw tremendous success. They won MLS Cup 2006 and 2007, and reached the playoffs in five of their first six seasons in existence.

MILAN (AP) Alessandro Nesta says he will leave AC Milan at the end of the season and consider a move to Major League Soccer.

Nesta has spent 10 years at Milan but, at age 36, says ''the high pace of the Italian league, the Champions League and the Italian Cup means that I can't play all the time. And I'm not one to sit and wait on the bench.''

May 8, 2012 - You may have heard about this goal Fredy Montero scored last week. The one where he just let one rip from about 35 yards out and placed it in the upper 90? Might just win Major League Soccer's Goal of the Year? Yeah, that one.

Well, if you are the kind of person who watches SportsCenter, you probably expected to see it featured on their nightly Top 10. Of course, you didn't. Two soccer plays did make the list -- Pappis Cisse's physics-defying goal in the Premier League and Lionel Messi's hat trick in La Liga -- but Montero's was nowhere to be found.

HOUSTON — On Saturday, BBVA Compass Stadium will come to life as the Houston Dynamo host D.C. United in the first match at Houston's sparkling new soccer-specific stadium (4:30 pm ET, NBC Sports Network, LIVE CHAT on MLSsoccer.com).

But as everyone comes together in downtown Houston, there will be two men in attendance who will have wider smiles than most on their faces: former Dynamo president Oliver Luck (above left) and his successor Chris Canetti (above right), both of whom played an integral part in bringing a very complex and diverse deal together.

CHESTER, Pa. – As a German resident, Jermaine Jones admits it’s not always easy to keep up on what’s going on in Major League Soccer.

But on Tuesday, a day before his FC Schalke 04 team was set to play the Philadelphia Union in an international friendly at PPL Park, Jones spoke highly of MLS while expressing interest in perhaps one day playing professionally in America.

Jones – who grew up in Germany but whose father is American – has been a key member of the US national team for the past three years.