Entries for July 27, 2009

ARSENAL

Arshavin backs Gunners over Adebayor exit - ESPN Soccernet

Bendtner the star as Arsenal destroy Szombathelyi Haladas - Goal.com

ASTON VILLA

Villa look to Blackburn's Stephen Warnock as Distin price rises - Birmingham Mail

Why Aston Villa will regret selling Zat Knight - Sunday Mercury

BIRMINGHAM CITY

Joe Hart's focus on Birmingham's season - Birmingham Mail

Birmingham City still wait for first goal of Austria tour - Birmingham Post

BLACKBURN

Rovers eye Pavel Pogrebnyak swoop...

The WPS home page and standings page are afraid to admit it, apparently, but Chicago is out of the playoffs. I'm guessing it's because "See the Sol and Red Stars jog around for two hours!" isn't a recipe for FSC ratings gold.

Nevertheless, we must not quail from the truth. The Red Stars have 17 points, and two games left = maximum of 23 points.

Freedom and Sky Blue play each other = at least four teams with 24 points.

I guess what I'm most annoyed with is Chicago not only failing to take out the Freedom, but giving Abby Wambach another couple of goals....

MLS apparently has a fancy new plan for the playoffs:
...

Well this doesn't sound like a bad thing at all:

I think Baltimore should be a great USL market. I am not sure...

PR isn't supposed to matter this much.

Yet, here I sit, utterly mortified by the United States' utter capitulation to Mexico in the Gold Cup final. No matter how much I keep telling myself it doesn't matter or it hardly counted, I just cannot get over the fact those guys embarrassed themselves and the US program as a whole out there. I think my main takeaways from this match are these:

1. This has become the summer where the US national team became so mainstream that it can no longer afford to send B/C-level teams to tournaments and risk the massive negative PR hit. In the

...

The signs were there, we just didn't want to see them.

Riding high after their success at ConfedCup 09, making it through to the final in the Gold Cup--at home, sort of, in the Meadowlands--and having survived a scoreless first half, the US Fellas collapsed into a smoldering pile of tricolored goo.

The New Jersey board of medicine should check to see if Carlos Vela is licensed to practice surgery, because he spent 45 minutes cutting the American defense into more little pieces than a Milton Bradley puzzle, and we're all scratching our heads over how it all fell apart...

"The empty vessel makes the loudest sound."
William Shakespeare

"Well I guess it all started the first time I went through the second grade. I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking 'Wow, you're ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career.'"
Derek Zoolander


Just finished reading Grant Wahl's 'The Beckham Experiment'. So I'm later than a Paul Scholes...