We reflect on a busy year of soccer in north America, from USA's World Cup qualification to Sporting Kansas City's MLS Cup triumph, from Robbie Rogers coming out as gay to Clint Dempsey's move from Spurs to Seattle.

USA

The USA started the season with the traditional MLS-heavy January team camp — one that culminated with a tepid draw against Canada and then defeat in their opening game of the Hex in Honduras. With Landon Donovan out of the team for a needed rest and the opening wobble in World Cup qualifying, Klinsmann's methods were then the subject of a critical article by the then Sporting News reporter Brian Straus, who cited various disgruntled anonymous sources within the team camp. The story caused a flurry of controversy before the USA's next game vs Costa Rica, though that was nothing to the flurries of snow that fell in Colorado for said game, which was played out in frankly farcical circumstances, with teams of groundstaff shovelling out ever more wobbly field markings, en route to a US victory.

That victory proved to be a turning point for the US, who went on a march that ended with them topping their qualifying group — even finding time to first beat Mexico in Columbus by the now traditional dos a cero, then helping their rivals scrape a route to Brazil by a late, late Graham Zusi header in Panama. Zusi was just one of a number of MLS players who consolidated their claim for a place in next year's squad with his performances this year, making the most of Donovan's initial absence. Sporting KC's Matt Besler joined Omar Gonzalez as an unlikely first choice central defensive partnership, while Seattle's Brad Evans made the most of Klinsmann's vision of him as an answer at the problem right back spot — popping up with an important goal on the road in Jamaica in qualifying.

In the summer, the USA truly hit their stride, with striker Jozy Altidore in particular hitting a streak of goalscoring form that saw him net crucial World Cup qualifying goals alongside a confidence-boosting outing against Germany to mark the USA centenary. Donovan too returned in ebullient form and drove the USA to an emphatic Gold Cup win, after a run that also included a cameo burst of group stage goals by San Jose's Chris Wondolowski, who played most of the year with a foot injury, but kept his squad hopes alive for 2014.

The World Cup draw, when it came, was one of the toughest imaginable, with the USA up against Germany, Portugal and Ghana — all of whom they have significant and not altogether successful World Cup history with. But Klinsmann seemed unperturbed and his policy of setting up tough friendly games for his side whenever possible certainly looked vindicated by the sanguine manner in which his players received the draw. US Soccer too seem confident that they have the right leader in the German — securing him on a four year contract extension just last week. Whatever happens in Brazil, it seems Sunil Gulati wants the USA's top-to-bottom structural overhaul under Klinsmann to continue apace.

MLS

What ended in December on a frozen field outside Kansas City, began in the heat of Fort Lauderdale in January, as all the MLS coaches, including new faces such as Caleb Porter at Portland, "Chelis" at Chivas USA (whose entertaining reign would last only briefly but leave some great quotes), and the then interim coach of New York, Mike Petke, gathered to run the rule over the hopefuls at the combine. The combine is also the only time of the year the head coaches actually get to be together, and this is where the league tends to reveal the various rule changes to the assembled teams — changes that fans tend to find out about by accident 9 months later, after falling foul of them. More on that in a moment.

When the season began, defending champions LA started cautiously, if more solidly than their poor start the previous season, but the loss of David Beckham and the early absence of Landon Donovan on his infamous sabbatical, told on a side in transitional mode. Robbie Keane was his usual threat and a good call for MVP, but the surprise was the start made by playoff specialist Mike Magee, who launched the early scoring streak that would end up with him dragging Chicago to the brink of the playoffs, and himself winning the league MVP award, following his mid-season trade to the Fire.

That trade was the result of a reshuffle that brought in Robbie Rogers in mid-season. Rogers, a former US international, came out as gay early in the year, took a break from the game and then returned to train with his hometown Galaxy side, before signing for them and making his debut as the first openly gay active professional soccer player. The jury is still doubt on the soccer merits of the move, despite the undoubted social significance of Rogers' return. Certainly, as Rogers initially struggled for fitness and form, the career year exploits of Magee in Chicago put additional pressure on him and his coach. Rogers began to show signs of settling towards the end of the year, but it wasn't enough to see the Galaxy go deep in the playoffs — RSL eliminating them at Rio Tinto stadium in the Western Conference semis.

Ah yes, RSL. In what turned out to be head coach Jason Kreis's final season, RSL went close on many fronts despite ending up empty-handed. In doing so, they demonstrated what was a particular achilles heel for them this year — the inability to close out games having put themselves in winning positions. The win over Galaxy was the exception, as they found a late goal from the ever more promising Chris Schuler to progress at the champions' expense, en route to the final. There they took a second half lead against Sporting KC in MLS Cup, rattled the woodwork a couple of times and looked to have confounded the hosts, only to concede an equalizer and then lose on the tenth penalty of a shootout that at one point had them a kick from the title.

It was the second final RSL had lost that year — having been stunned at home in the Open Cup by DC United (whose disastrous regular season in MLS had been the subject of a running #sadstats gag on Twitter). And in the Supporters Shield race too, Salt Lake were in the running until the final couple of weeks, but ended up finishing behind New York, Sporting and the Western Conference winners Portland Timbers. Still, as coach Jason Kreis was fond of pointing out, this was a team that continuously put themselves into important games with their consistency, and given that significant personnel had left RSL in a cap-enforced turnover in the off-season (and indeed gone on to significantly enhance the campaigns of Shield rivals such as the Red Bulls and the Timbers), this was still a remarkable season for a team who will now miss a formidable coach.

Speaking of formidable coaches, Portland Timbers were one of the turnarounds of the season under Caleb Porter. Remarkably consistent, their back to back defeats in the Western Conference final — to an RSL side who were the one team Porter didn't figure out all year — were the only consecutive losses of their season. They played a compact attacking game, with new leases of life for the likes of Rodney Wallace, and exponential improvements from Diego Chara and Darlington Nagbe. Diego Valeri had some inspired touches as the Designated Player playmaker, and Will Johnson was a rock in midfield.

If the Timbers had a weakness it was a central defense bailed out by Johnson, Chara, and goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts on occasions, and one that was more than good enough to see off the rival Seattle Sounders attack in a blustery conference semi-final series, but which was found out by the rather more polished diamond midfield counters of Salt Lake in the Western final. But despite missing out on an MLS Cup appearance, the Timbers look on a solid footing on the field for the first time in their MLS lifetime, and Porter had long silenced those doubting his ability to step up from the college game by the end of the year.

Portland's Cascadia rivals Seattle will want to forget 2013 as soon as possible. A ten game summer run with only one loss saw the Sounders with the Supporters' Shield being theirs to lose in the run in. They duly lost it on the run in. A home draw against eventual winners New York was followed by a humiliating road defeat to an improving Colorado side who should be better again next year, then a 4-1 embarrassment against Vancouver. Seattle never recovered, and despite the much-celebrated arrival of Clint Dempsey, he was never integrated into the side in time to be either fit, or a key player in the run-in, even with Sigi Schmid reshuffling the team around him. By the time Shalrie Joseph was sent out as a nominal center forward in the game at Portland that ended Seattle's season, the Sounders knew the game was up. Schmid held on to his job, just about, but this was another post-season disappointment for Seattle, made worse by the coup de grace being delivered by the suddenly muscular little brothers from Portland.

In the East, Montreal raced out into an early lead with eye-catching road wins in Cascadia (including what would turn out to be a very rare win in Portland), before seeing a stretched squad stumble on the run-in. Marco di Vaio showed his scoring class throughout the year, and will be back to torment defensive lines and offside adjudicators next season, but the Impact faded badly in the second half of the season and despite scraping into the playoffs they ended the season in a chaos of red cards, as they were comfortably dispatched by a Houston team on their usual post-season run into form.

Despite getting past New York in the conference semi-finals, Houston couldn't reach a third consecutive final however, as Sporting KC brought some hard-won game management experience to bear to ease them out at Sporting Park. Sporting had gone close to the regular season title yet again — leaving New York needing a final day win to take the Shield, but with the Red Bulls eliminated from the playoffs the path was clear for Sporting's excellent stadium to finally host an MLS Cup, in the year it had already seen an All-Star game.

Sporting duly delivered — and what was most notable about their achievement was that in each series of the playoffs, including the final, they had to come from behind to win — and never panicked in doing so. This was a team that matched coach Peter Vermes's belief that they were finally ready to learn the lessons from disappointments past. It means they'll repeat the Champions League experience next year, having already secured a place in the quarter-finals of this season's competition with a perfect group stage.

Joining Sporting in next year's Champions League will be Open Cup winners DC United, Western Conference winners Portland Timbers (replacing MLS Cup runners up RSL in one of those surprise rule changes we mentioned)...and New York Red Bulls. Yes, after 18 seasons of being nearly men, New York finally delivered, winning the Supporters Shield under former player and first year head coach Mike Petke.

The Red Bulls had started slow, but gradually shaped into a competitive team in Petke's image, with defensive steel courtesy of Jamison Olave and goalkeeper Luis Robles, and as the season went on, the increasingly significant presence of midfielder (and occasional clutch attacker) Tim Cahill. Cahill's role as Petke's avatar on the field saw the New York team go from easy marks against determined opposition, to determined opposition themselves. They fell short again in the playoffs, but the cultural change, let alone the silverware, was part of a remarkable season for New York, who also ended up in the game of the season — coming from behind (of course) to beat Real Salt Lake (giving up a late lead of course) for the result that was eventually the difference between these sides for the Shield.

Women's Soccer

It was one of those years between major tournaments for the women's team, where the disparity between the national team's tournament popularity and the struggles of domestic soccer are usually at their most pronounced. But there were more than a few signs of life on the latter front this year — the new National Womens Soccer League (NWSL) got underway as the latest attempt to establish a credible and sustainable women's soccer league in the USA. A joint venture between the US, Canadian and Mexican federations, and featuring an allocation system for international players, the league also featured one team adopting a model many have called for as a possible solution to sustainability — the Portland Thorns team were operated by Merritt Paulsen's Portland Timbers and drew large crowds from the start.

It did no harm that the Thorns were led by the marketable strikeforce of USA star Alex Morgan and Canadian veteran Christine Sinclair, but the team still had to perform on the field and did so — winning the inaugural title and beating Abby Wambach's Western New York Flash in the final.

Wambach would still have a year to remember — breaking Mia Hamm's international goalscoring record in June. Later in the year, Wambach's 2011 World Cup quarter final 122nd minute equalizer against Brazil would be voted the most iconic moment of US Soccer's first century — beating out such moments as Landon Donovan's late winner against Algeria and the Larry Gaetjens winner over England from the 1950 World Cup.

Wambach is still hoping for a World Cup appearance in 2015 in Canada, but she'd be one of the first to acknowledge that the weight of the USWNT's attacking threat is increasingly being distributed to the likes of Alex Morgan or even the increasingly important Sydney Leroux, as Tom Sermanni juggles the task of bringing through another generation while not trying to fix what isn't broken.

Other moments

New York was a busy place this year, apart from brief breaks for #Henrying. The Shield-winning exploits of the New York Red Bulls came just in time for the famously trophyless MLS originals to get a head start on their soon-to-be-rivals. After what looked like a rather generous interpretation of their own guidelines on not awarding franchises to teams without stadiums, MLS announced New York City FC as the 20th MLS franchise, before backpedalling on the site they had identified for the new team to play at. The team will start play in the 2015 season under new head coach Jason Kreis, but will be looking to get into their own stadium sooner rather than later. At time of writing a possible deal for a site adjacent to NYCFC partners, the Yankees, is looking close, but partly dependent on what Mayor Bloomberg can force through in his last-ditch flurry of large legacy projects, before the more cautious Bill di Blasio comes into office.

Meanwhile on Long Island, the side many had at one time thought a natural fit to be the second New York team, the Cosmos, made their competitive return for the second half of the split NASL season, and turned out to be very competitive indeed — winning the Fall title and then the NASL Soccerbowl.

They'll not be in MLS any time soon though — unlike Orlando City, who won the USL Pro title in a year that had already seen them go on a mini run in the US Open Cup (including a victory over the holders, their own affiliate club Kansas City). They were duly confirmed as joining MLS alongside NYCFC in 2015, and may not be the last Floridian team to be confirmed soon. David Beckham's interest in bringing a Miami team to the league has hardened into identifying a stadium site and winning a council vote authorizing the mayor to begin negotiations over a stadium. Watch this space...

…or watch TV. NBC made a big investment into bringing Premier League soccer to US screens and so far have been rewarded with decent viewing figures. Their move, and the potential knock on effects for their MLS coverage has left ESPN and Fox in an interesting position in a year when the next TV deal (as well as the players Collective Bargaining Agreement with the league) will be negotiated. MLS Cup week may have been geared round the action on the field, but there were many significant meetings taking place between executives at Kansas City hotels in the week beforehand. World Cups aside, 2014 is shaping up to be an intriguing year for the future landscape of US and Canadian soccer and its place in the wider landscape of the game.