Carey Talley Fan Club

Really trying to shorten up these things....let's see how I do...

Overall
I think it's fair to say the Columbus Crew outplayed Puerto Rico, even thoroughly (though, ye-owtch!, DC didn't). But the one thing that grabbed me by the pants - say, in the same fashion J.C. de la Garza hoisted his trousers after keeping out Seattle last Saturday (see around 2:52 on the feed...and please explain) - was the way Columbus very subtly dominated this game from start to finish.

Now, I'm not talking possession...

Yes, apparently, and it's pictured at right...at least a version of it from somewhere in California.

It happened quite by accident, but I watched the first game of the Bubble-Boy Era tonight: the CONCACAF Champions’ League semifinal between the Puerto Rico Islanders of the USL-1 and Mexico’s mighty Cruz Azul…or, perhaps once mighty (OK, that last bit’s harsh, but I am sick of watching Mexican players harass the ref after a loss – especially when said ref had a decent night). Speaking of Bubble-Boy, tonight’s game also...

Had you read Bill Archer’s piece on the real/alleged quality gap between Major League Soccer (MLS) and United Soccer Leagues Divsion-1 (USL-1) you couldn’t help but watch this past week’s CONCACAF Champions’ League (CCL) first leg quarterfinals through that lens. And, again, the USL-1 teams out-performed their Big Brothers in our little Champions League (I like to think of it as “regional theater” to Europe’s Great White Way) under similar circumstances – highly similar in the case between the Montreal Impact and the Houston Dynamo. Both Houston and Montreal hosted Mexican clubs struggling through...

I was a boy of 4, angered beyond speaking at something the neighborhood tough had said the day before about my beloved dog, Scamp. Blinded as I was by a crimson mist – and, yes, the sting of tears – I can’t say exactly what happened, but people from the old neighborhood still speak of the sickening thud and unforgettable howls of pain that followed.

Wait. Wrong ball, wrong story…

Tuesday night all owners of the right cable/satellite package and/or residents of Houston, Texas, can witness the first ball kicked in anger by a U.S. soccer club in 2009; subsequent nights...