Tottenham center back Micky Van de Ven scored an incredible goal today against Copenhagen in the Champions League, picking the ball up at his own 18 yard line and then running 90 yards past a half dozen defenders to slot home in brilliant fashion. Sorry I couldn’t find a link I could post. Van de Ven is one of the fastest players in the Premier League, and his goal is reminiscent of a goal Son scored a few years ago that won GOTY.
Reminds me of this one. This isn't quite 90 yards, but Arturo Alvarez started the sequence from the top of our own box and ran it from our own half all the way to score. My memory was that he had only the keeper to beat but he had to split 2 defenders, who were dumb enough not to take away his left foot. That was a totally stolen W. Philly was absolutely pounding our goal and looked certain to score and win when Arturo made that run.
I always believed Tata would go back to Atlanta...... Former Inter Miami Boss ‘Tata’ Martino Set to Take Over MLS Rival—Report
It’s official. Marko Mitrović has left U.S. Soccer to become a new coach of MLS side New England Revolution. Mitrović recently took charge of the U.S. in the U-20 World Cup, where he helped the team beat Italy and France 3-0. They fell in the quarterfinal to Morocco. He also took charge of the U.S. in the Olympics last summer. His team back then also fell to Morocco in the quarterfinal. Mitrović started off as the U.S. U-19 coach back in 2022. After years with youth soccer, he’s now ready to step up and take charge of a club team. New England Revolution sacked Caleb Porter in September after a poor season. They ended up 11th in the Eastern Conference. Let’s see how the new chapter looks with Mitrović.
Congratulations to @PhilaUnion head coach Bradley Carnell on being named the 2025 Sigi Schmid MLS Coach of the Year! In his first season with the Union, he guided the club to the Supporters’ Shield, a tremendous achievement and well-deserved recognition for an outstanding season. -Don Garber
That was pathetic - to give up 2 goals in the 2nd half up a man. Matt Doyle is gonna have to eat crow - he's been ragging on Minnesota all year about their "we're just gonna wind with set pieces" style of play. Seattle is a better team IMO, but they screwed up tonight. I think Columbus is better than Cincinnati also but they blew a lead also. Miami - Nashville still going but I could see how that one was gonna go after watching the first few minutes.
Turned off Miami-Nashville, though it was a pretty game, with the pink and yellow uniforms reminding me of Peeps.
For a Peeps game, I prefer Miami-Orlando - pink / purple. All the teams I wanted to win today lost - Seattle (yes, Seattle - I kind of like Schmetz - more so than the cocky Minnesota coach), Columbus (they play nice soccer), and Nashville (always fun if Miami gets knocked out of a championship). Tomorrow I will root for San Diego so that we can send the incredible obnoxiously hysterical yelling coach, Neville, back home for the offseason. And I hope Pellegrino scores because the irony is kind of fun.
Rooting for San Diego for sure, the only California team that made it to this point. Humiliating Neville would just be the cherry on top.
Ostensibly Pellegrino is playing the same position that he played for us most of the time - wide left forward in a 4-3-3. But the way they use him is different. They have him making central runs and they play him thru the defense a lot. He has the speed to run past if he has a nice runup. Don't pass him the ball out on the wing and expect him to attack with the ball 1v1. That's not gonna happen. I've been saying this since about the time we got him. Here's a post from April, 2024: Also, if you look at Pellegrino's incredibly successful run in Norway, he played on a really good team. He might be a "good good team player" and a "bad bad team player". He needs service and he needs to play with good players. He's now got 5g, 3a in his last 5 games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mikey Varas is a great coach. They are getting it done with cast-offs from other teams, like Corey Baird and Pellegrino. It would have been the ultimate statement in our own ineptitude if Pellegrino, Godoy, and Verhoeven all started and starred tonight. Two out of three ain't bad. Verhoeven has been out a long time with injury but was a starter for several games. In the meantime Varas has no problem putting the likes like Chucky and De La Torre on the bench if they are being outplayed. Oh, and I forgot to mention. Good riddance to Phil Neville for this season. You could hear him screaming like a banshee almost constantly in the 1st half, even above the drums and chants and crowd noise. Just an absolute maniac.
This year he kind of got the yips when he played for us, but also we failed to play to his strengths, as I’ve been pointing out for a couple of years now, and also we’re just a much more inept team.
It may say more about how coaches build up players rather than tear them down (though I thought player management is what Bruce excelled at... it certainly isn't tactics).
As I recall Bruce gave Pellegrino a few more opportunities after his howler against Portland(?) in the USOC. But he still missed some shots. With Bruce I think it was more that he didn't fit when you have Chicho and Josef (and Espinoza much of the time) occupying the front line. So it was hard for him to get playing time. Bruce tried to play him as a sort of CAM a few times but that clearly didn't work either, and it was never gonna work. With Luchi he played a lot but I think he was just misused. We didn't play to his strengths, which is to have him drift centrally and to play him through. He still scored 7 goals and wasn't bad. But too many times we'd pass him the ball on the wing and expect he's gonna take his man on 1v1 like he's Cade Cowell. That's not gonna happen. With San Diego, they have weak center forwards and Pellegrino has free license to cut in and occupy those spaces. Plus they try to play him through constantly, and Dreyer provides great service. San Diego fans were as down as we were on Pellegrino at first. He got a slow start. But then he got hot and now of course they love him. Along with all of the other analyses there's just the plain old "he got a hot hand" explanation.
To back up my assertion that we didn't play Pellegrino in the right way / position, he basically says that here (2nd question - at about 12:56 in the video). He lines up kind of in the same way but his role in SD is a lot different than it was here. But he just says point blank that we played him out of position. And he says the reason he struggled when he first came to SD is that he had hardly played in 3-4 months and that playing in games is much different than training.