Take a look at the way Carlos Bocanegra’s team rolls in France. With there being a big difference in travel because of the amount of distance between teams in Europe and teams in Major League Soccer, clubs like Ligue 1 side Rennes are able to customize their buses to the point that we see above, murdered out and pretty ridiculous in the look / comfortability factor.

When Beans was over in Holland playing for Fortuna Sittard, playing under current Dutch National Team Head Coach Bert van Marwijk after being signed by current Australian Head Coach Pim Verbeek and playing alongside guys like Mark van Bommel and Kevin Hofland, he’d send me letters via Euro Snail Mail (in the days before E-mail) telling me about these incredible buses they’d be rolling around to games in. And after qualifying for Europe for the very first time in club history, the club dropped even more for a brand new cruiser (something that was huge difference than the 10 person passenger vans we cruised around California in with Cal St Fullerton).

With MLS teams’ traveling by commercial flights, having to make layovers on trips (to and from places like Kansas City and Columbus) because of the lack of direct flights and the chances of flights being delayed or canceled after hours spent going through check in / security, players dealing with fatigue, injury or recovery often have more of a difficult time physically during the lead up to a match. And this is another reasons you hear about teams with more than a 4 hour trip ahead of them heading out two full days early for the recovery side of the travel.

One of the biggest shocks to the system for player’s coming over from Europe is the amount of mileage that they’re bodies start to rack up during the course of a season and is one of the main reasons you see the other major sports in the United States traveling in their own Chartered Airplanes.