News: 2018 Other Teams Discussion Thread (spoilers)

They were #6 in the FIFA World Rankings when the World Cup draw seeds were made.

 

That's asinine, they haven't even qualified for a World Cup since Ben Olsen was starring for the USA.

 

I'm guessing making the quarterfinals of Euro 2016 and going 8-1-1 in their World Cup Qualifying group goes a long way to getting to #6.

 

Just glancing at Wikipedia, Belgium was also in the QF of Euro 2016 and went 9-1-0 in qualification. And Spain has won a World Cup in living memory.

 

Belgium is rated higher than Poland.

Spain's World Cup victory in 2010 had nothing to do with world rankings in 2017.

 

I'm pretty sure the FIFA ranking system was devised by the ethics committee.

 

Sorry to hear that.

 

Clearly he was a strong motivational force for his team mates. He did have a few minutes, 300 to be exact https://www.soccer24.com/player/hamid-bill/lC8hdT39/ 90 in league play and 210 in cup play so saying he sat on the bench for a full season is as far off plumb as the tower of Pisa

 

Far from a boring Champions league final with Madrid making it a back to back to back threepeat against Liverpool. Oddly the most prescient prediction came from our own Ray Hudson who said this one was about the keepers.

 

Ah OK, 300 minutes, I see. It must be what he went there for.

 

This evening I went to Frederick to watch FC Frederick vs Virginia Beach; other than a 1.40 hours delay because of a storm, the game was very good and interesting. But undoubtly the best man on the field was the ref; a short, skinny guy who kept in hand a somewhat heated up game, he was always in the right place, he was getting in between fighting players, he distributed yellow cards when needed (I think 7) and took all the right decisions except maybe one. And the more I was watching him, this short, skinny and probably barely paid for this game guy, I was asking myself how can MLS refs still suck so much after all these years.

 

MLS doesn't assign the refs though. USSF/PRO does. If this ref is good, he'll advance to MLS soon enough (hopefully.) Unfortunately, USSF/PRO seem to love the same refs no matter how routinely awful they perform (Toledo, Bazakos, Chapman, and Geiger) and the good ones (Petrescu and Jurisevic) get relegated to USL or VAR jobs. Perhaps I have a different definition of what good refereeing looks like than they do.

I watch a lot of NPSL and the refereeing there makes MLS refs look positively phenomenal.

(At least there's no VAR in the lower leagues. I can totally accept a bad/missed call when it's human error but when they have the luxury of looking at a screen and still screw it up, it just kills me. The problem then is that there's very, very wide discretion of when to look and what to look for. And if you look close enough, you can ALWAYS find some damn foul.)

 

Good debut for Roberto Mancini's new Italian NT, 2-1 vs Saudi Arabia in a friendly played in St Gallen (Switzerland). Nothing special, but Balotelli - back with the NT after 4 years - scored after 20 minutes, and Criscito - one of the best Italian MF's forgotten by the NT for the last 6 years - played a good game too. The goal conceded was a mistake of somebody in the midfield and of Donnarumma as well; but he did produce himself in a miracle save just a few minutes later. Finally out all the old nomenklatura, see De Rossi, Chiellini and ESPECIALLY Buffon, we see a few young players who have done well in this season in serie A (Verdi, Politano) and some other players who were denied second possibilities (Balo, Criscito, Zaza) especially because of the ostracism of the Old Nomenklatura. Now we have more difficult tests, France on friday and Holland on monday, maybe we won't make results then, but I am still happy to see there has been a new beginning.

 

https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/the-other-world-cup.2083784/

By the way, great article here...

 

Earnie Stewart to be named GM of USMNT program -

https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-ea...al-become-u-s-soccers-first-gm-213036066.html

 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeYKWtHX4AUUA6I.jpg

Great picture - guess who's the young boy...

 

With FC Cincinnati joining MLS DC United will drop down another peg next year.

 

Is that move basically saying that the crew are officially gone from Ohio?
I heard people during halftime of the US game saying some team going into MLS was "pretty much a done deal" but I never followed up or rewound to hear where it was.

 

I've heard that too but wouldn't it make more sense if there was a proximate rival for Cincinatti?

 

Honestly? It's Ohio. Anything could happen. It's a theory worth exploring, right?

I have to say, there are a lot of soccer-mad areas of the country that don't have teams, like North Carolina. In light of that, two teams in south-central Ohio seems excessive on the face of it. That's all I got, really.

 

Hamid in Goal for USMNT against Ireland. Looks rusty. He needs a different club next season.

 

shame about Hamid’s performance with the USMNT. Leaving DC seems to have set him back a bit.
Pontius, on the other hand, leaving dc was great for him. Happy to see him doing well with the Galaxians.

 

...or to play with club where he's at. He really shouldn't be called up to the MNT again, unless he is starting for his club side, wherever that may be.

 

Bobby Boswell is in the booth next to Glenn Davis for the Houston broadcast. he sounds pretty good for a rookie.

 

egads - Scotland sucks - why hasn't Mexico score 5 goals on them this half?