If you saw the MLS season opener, you saw one of two things, depending on your view of the world’s game:

1. A bunch of whiny Seattle players diving and moaning with pre-existing injuries.

2. A bunch of thuggish Philadelphia players knocking Seattle players to the turf.

We can’t really say Philly coach Peter Nowak, one of the league’s all-time best players, has been on the defensive about it. He’s very much on the offensive. If you can’t take a little bumping and kicking, he says, find another sport. From the Delaware County Daily Times:

“If you want to avoid contact, I would suggest badminton or curling or chess maybe. That’s how we play the game. This is a man’s game. If you want to compete, let’s compete.”

That’s a questionable comment on several levels:

1. Man’s game? Has Nowak ever seen the U.S. women play? No one should ever accuse them of a lack of toughness.

2. Some of us slipped badly the first time we tried curling. Some of us also plan to cover a bit of chess in our shiny new multisports blogs. And Olympic-caliber badminton will make anyone rethink definitions of athleticism. But fine, none of them are “contact” sports.

3. The fouls against Seattle looked like fouls from here, especially the only one that made the highlight video here:

Make no mistake — Nowak knows what he’s doing. He’s a sought-after coach for several reasons, and one is that he’ll stick up for his team. Before the season, he told me the Union supporters, who existed as a group before MLS was even close to awarding an expansion team, wanted to see passion, commitment and fight. His players will bring that, or he’ll yank them off the field. No doubt about that.

But since MLS is a man’s game, he might need to find some men who can play defense without landing a flying knee to the backside. And he knows that, too — he’s already shaking up his backline.