Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Business Card Weekly News

-We got a great email from fab reader Group Of Cake last night. He is a fan of the team that is quickly becoming du Nord's new favorite team, St Pauli! He sent us links to not only the teams homepage, which is very cool and has a few things written in English - like a nice explanation of the teams origins and stadium history - but also to a New York Times story on the city of Hamburg (where St Pauli is located) that features a picture of an apartment building draped in a huge banner that reads "Eat The Rich"! Glory Glory St Pauli! Put your hands up for Hamburg, a lovely city! GOC also is a big fan of two other German clubs: "Kaiserlautern (who have the great FCK emblem on their jerseys) and punk rock Munchen 1860." In actual soccer news, St Pauli sits in 3rd place (top 2 get promoted) of the Regionalia (third) Division. If you remember a few years back, our own Cory Gibbs played for St Pauli, but they got relegated 2 years in a row. Ouch! Hopefully we will hear more St Pauli, Kaiserlautern, and 1860 goodies from Group Of Cake soon.
-One of the clown princes of soccer, Ivan Campo, will miss the rest of the season for his club Bolton after having his foot broken by a terrible tackle. The only good news is that he will have plenty of time to get his hair ready for next season.
-Portsmouth have snapped up Argentine midfielder Andres D'Alessandro from Wolfsburg. Only a few years ago he was considered one of the great young talents, but has fallen way behind fellow Argentines Juan Roman Riquelme, Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi. Maybe this will be a new chance for him.
-BBC is running a live transfer deadline update page.
-Blackburn gets Liverpool striker Florent Sinama Pongolle on loan.
-For the past year or two I have had to listen to fans of The Arse rave about a kid named Quincy Owusu-Abeyie. Well the raving is now offcially over, cuz they sold him to Spartak Moscow. He musta been grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat.
-Yanks Abroad has the news on Lee Nguyen's first appearance in a PSV uniform, playing for the reserve side.
-Remember to tune in on Wednesday night at 9pm central to MTV for the latest episode of Cribs! Its time to see how Landycakes and his babe live! See ya there.
-Crabby Old Ante Razov has been sent packing by Metrostars. All the way to the West Coast and Chivas USA. In the other direction, Chivas USA has shipped striker Thiago Martins to the Mets. Now Ante can play for his fave coach again, Bob Bradley. I think its a good move for Chivas.
-For the last couple of years, US Soccer has been bringing us these fantastic insider video clips of the team at practice, at play, and in the locker room. All excellent. This week they unveiled a new system for showing these videos and its not working very well at all. Its slow, choppy and has poor audio (and that's only IF you can get it to work at all). I have found that sometimes if you wait a very long time, the file will load in and work better, but it never seems to fully load, and most time it never even starts loading. (And just so you know I have a T-3 line. Ultra high speed.) I hope they fix this soon. Cuz its been a fantastic feature, but completely worthless the way it is right now. And let's hope they don't put the same guy in charge of fixing this that was in charge of selling World Cup tickets for the US Soccer Federation.
-Yesterday I said that Jaap Stam was headed from Milan to Ajax. Turns out its not until summer 06.
-I forgot to mention this last week. Sports Illustrated previewed the Ghanain World Cup squad.
-Soccer America wrangles an exclusive, but not all that exciting of an interview with our generalisimo Bruce Arena.
-The also have a profile/interview of Houston coach Dom Kinnear. This one is quite good.
-Last week there was all kinds of excitement among Metrostars fans cuz the team had produced their first player from their youth system to sign with the senior club. Turns out that was all premature. The always quality Ives Galarcep of the North Jersey Herald has the lowdown.
-Luis Bueno on Eddie Pope.
-Rob Hughes writes about the kid at the center of the current war between Manchester United & Chelsea: Sordid twists in tussle over teenager
-In a story that I am very happy about, the Houston Chronicle is reporting that 1836 will play their games on grass as opposed to the turf that was reported earlier. Hooray Grass! Hooray Beer! Hooray 1836! Hooray Mexican-Americans!
-And the Houston Chronicle Week In Review
-A crazy story on Fulham coach Chris Coleman and a quarantine for illness, from Soccernet.
-African Cup of Nations action. Here are the scores and today’s games:
Monday
Tunisia 0-3 Guinea
Zambia 1-0 South Africa
Today's last group stage matches:
Nigeria 2-1 Senegal
Ghana 1-2 Zimbabwe
After today the best 8 teams start the knockout stages. Here are the quarterfinalists:
A1 - Egypt
A2 - Cote D'Ivoire
B1 - Cameroon
B2 - Congo
C1 - Guinea
C2 - Tunisia
D1 - Nigeria
D2 - Senegal
This leaves 3 of the 5 African World Cup teams OUT! Togo, Angola, and Ghana. Not good. The Quarterfinals start Friday. I will list those matches tomorrow.
-The 2006 MLS Cup final will be held again next season at Pizza Hut Park in Dallas. Oh well. Word has it that Bridgeview Stadium in Chicago will host this seasons All-Star Game. Too bad.
-The next three nights will conclude the final round (La Primera Fase) of qualifying for la Copa Libertadores. These are the second games of the two legged playoffs for 12 teams to fill the last 6 spots in the upcoming group stages. Here are those matches:
Tue Jan 31
Universitario v Nacional (PAR) - for group A - tied 2-2
Guadalajara v Colo Colo - for Group D - Guada leads 3-1
Wed Feb 01
Deportivo Tachira v Palmeiras - for group E - Palm leads 2-0
Goias EC - Deportivo Cuenca - for group F - tied 1-1
Thur Feb 2
Independiente Santa Fe - Defensor Sporting - for group B - tied 2-2
Oriente Petrolero - River Plate - for group C - River leads 6-0
The Copa then kicks off next week in full bloom.
-5th Round FA Cup draw (matches will be played Feb 18 & 19):
Preston or Crystal Palace v Coventry or Middlesbrough
Newcastle v Southampton
Aston Villa v Man City
Everton or Chelsea v Colchester
Charlton v Brentford
Liverpool v Man United
Bolton v West Ham
Stoke v Reading or Birmingham
-Very interesting article in the Sacramento Business Journal about a local amateur team called Sacramento Knights being bought by Brazil's Vasco de Gamo. And Vasco has plans.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting comments about U.S. Soccers videos. I used to experiance the same problem you spoke of but now with the new look everything works great. So now if they could fix it for both of us it would be great.

6:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I never had problems under the old US Soccer page but have had problems with the new site.

7:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah, i wrote a letter of complaint to ussoccer.com about that very issue. i had no problems with the old site. tons with the new. i've tried starting it, then pausing, then waiting 5 minutes to give it time to load, then playing, and that works reasonably well, but a super pain in the arse.

7:36 PM  
Blogger brucio said...

other than the streaming issues, what do you all think of the videos from ussf in general?

8:49 PM  

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