Don't You Just Love Those Little Insider Jokes They Tell On Local News
Our USA boys took on Angola in Hamburg today. It was a scrimmage more than a match, with unlimited substitutions and no scoreboard or tally supposedly being kept track of. The Associated Press says the USA won 1-0. But there are virtually no details available. Even Angola didn't know who played or scored for the US cuz the team didn't wear any numbers or names on their shirts. Crafty bastards.
~ ~ ~ ~
Thursday on ESPN Classic you can watch the USA beat Portugal and Mexico all over again from the 2002 World Cup. USA v Port at 1pm & USA v Mex at 3pm, both central time. This is some glorious viewing.
~ ~ ~ ~
US Soccer has photos, video and audio of all the team action in Germany
~ ~ ~ ~
The New York Times Sunday paper had an insert magazine yesterday called Play which features "Little Ronaldo" on the cover, and several more good stories on the World Cup.
~ ~ ~ ~
This whole thing with people being upset that the Team USA bus is the only official team bus without its countries flag on it for security reasons is a little weird to me. As you can see in this picture, there is a giant slogan on the bus which says, "United we play, United we win." So I guess it's not much of a mystery whose bus it is.
-On the other hand, look at the frickin escort they get on the roadway.
-And here is the street in front of the team hotel in Hamburg.
-Cherundolo and Reyna sure look happy to be in Germany again.
~ ~ ~ ~
John Powers of the Boston Globe with a feature on our savior, Landycakes O'Donovan.
~ ~ ~ ~
Andrea Canales writes about the new young Americans who will "make the scene" at this World Cup, for Soccernet.
~ ~ ~ ~
LA Daily News feature on oft-injured Johnny O'Brien.
~ ~ ~ ~
New York Times feature by Jere Longman on USA & Reading superwinger Bobby Convey.
~ ~ ~ ~
Steve Goff of the Washington Post with a feature story on Deuce Dempsey.
~ ~ ~ ~
And Deuce's home town paper, the Nacogdoches Daily Nacho (or something like that), has a feature on their favorite son too.
~ ~ ~ ~
USA Today with an Eddie Pope feature by Andy Gardiner.
~ ~ ~ ~
And another by Gardiner on Convey and Dempsey, aka The Backstreet Boys & Dem Franchise Boyz.
~ ~ ~ ~
Steve Davis of the Dallas Morning News talks about the infamous attitude of US "manager" Bruce Arena.
~ ~ ~ ~
Like injured fellow USA defender Cory Gibbs signing to English team Charlton, the rumors around England have Oguchi Onyewu all set to sign with Middlesbrough. And like Gibbs and Charlton, Middlesbrough have no manager yet, so signing Onyewu makes no sense at all to me. -And now that Gibbs has injured his knee, will he get his work permit to play in England at all?
~ ~ ~ ~
And American Soccer News is reporting that American defender Jonathan Spector is going to leave Manchester United and sign with West Ham in England.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Arizona Republic has a feature story on their home-state boy and USA & Colorado midfielder Pablo Mastroeni.
~ ~ ~ ~
Business Week looks at America's "Stars".
~ ~ ~ ~
This dude in Salt Lake is a convert. He was once one of those crabby ass sports writers. Now, he gets it. Hooray Beer. Hooray crabby guy.
~ ~ ~ ~
Andrew Winner of Soccernet writes about one the next generation of great Americans, Lee Nguyen, who plays most excellently for PSV. Lee rules!
~ ~ ~ ~
Ghana beat South Korea 3-1 in Edinburgh Scotland on Saturday.
~ ~ ~ ~
Things are getting messier for Italian keeper Buffon with the Italian investigations into corruption and gambling.
~ ~ ~ ~
And two Italian defenders Zambrotta and Nesta are hurting physically.
~ ~ ~ ~
Giant freakish Czech Republic striker Jan Koller has left his German club team Borussia Dortmund and signed a deal to play next season for Monaco in the French top division.
~ ~ ~ ~
LA Times writer Graham Jones on Mexican coach Smokes LaVolpe.
-And that's just the tip of the old iceberg for the LA Times World Cup coverage - they exploded over the weekend with tons of really great articles. I am not going to link to all of them, I'm just sending you to the site with all the headlines and let you sort them out.
~ ~ ~ ~
If you go to this page at the French Open Tennis Tournament site and click on "Video Interview" (near the top) you can see American tennis player James Blake sporting his US Soccer jacket. He wore it everywhere he went at Roland Garros.
~ ~ ~ ~
Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger of Soccernet welcomes his fairly unaware American friend to Germany. The poor sap is in for a shock.
~ ~ ~ ~
MLS matches last Saturday:
DC 1-0 New England - Moreno bags #101 in a fantastic opening 30 minutes, then DC settles in to take the 3 points from a team that was supposed to be the best this season, and is instead floundering badly. Pat Noonan also got hurt about 10 minutes into the match (looked like the same hamstring he has had tons of trouble with this spring) and really seemed to kill New England's spirit (he had looked ready to rock in his first 2 or 3 touches).
Dallas 1-2 Columbus - A snoozer til the last 15 minutes. I almost stopped watching it, but Demko told me not to and he was right. Sigi's boyz did what they had to do and made up for that horrible loss to DC last Wednesday. The Little Fish scored Dallas's goal, which was his 6th game in a row on the score sheet. Amazing.
Houston 2-1 Los Angeles - Hey, at least LA scored! Not much consolation though when you lose again. And like most other teams, LA has no idea who to stop the second best player in the league, DDR, (Shalrie is #1), who just takes the LA defenders to school and scores a beauty. When John Wolnyiec scores for LA to end their scoreless streak at around 525 minutes announcers Max Bretos blurts out this odd call: "It's over! All creatures great and small, it's over!" But of course Houston finds a way to sink the ship again as my favorite defender in the league Eddie Robinson heads home for victory.
Kansas City 1-1 New York - For the second week in a row a referee called a PK for a foul that happened outside the box, and this time KC gets the goal to tie the score. You really outta see the shot Chris Henderson makes for the Red Bulls goal, cuz KC keeper Osoniyi initially makes a great save with his hands only to have it go off his own foot and kick back into the net for a score.
Salt Lake 3-1 Chicago - Holy shit did Brian Plotkin unleash a bomb of a goal for Chicago, but Jeff Cunningham had two really nice goals of his own, and forced an own goal with a third attempt, to wipe that out. Cunningham also was cool enough to climb into the stands and celebrate with the fans. Nice to see Salt Lake getting it together. John Ellinger saved his bacon for a few more weeks with this decent home stand.
Chivas 4-1 Colorado - Some really nice team work leads to all 4 goals for Chivas even though one of them had Razov a good 2 to 3 yards offside right in front of the side judge (so who knows what that was all about). My guy Dedi Ben Dayan scored the lone goal for the lame Colorado. (Why they are lame I don't know cuz I think they have the players to be decent.)
~ ~ ~ ~
The MLS single table standings:
24 DC United
21 FC Dallas
17 Houston Dynamo
14 Kansas City Wizards
14 Columbus Crew
14 Colorado Rapids
11 New England Revolution
11 Real Salt Lake
10 Chicago Fire
10 Chivas USA
9 New York Red Bulls
7 Los Angeles Galaxy
~ ~ ~ ~
And the leagues top 5 goal scorers:
7 Carlos Ruiz
7 Brian Ching
7 Jeff Cunningham
7 Jaime Moreno
6 Ante Razov
~ ~ ~ ~
Carlos Ruiz of Dallas was named MLS Player of the Month for May. Not surprising as the man scored 5 goals, one in each of the teams games during May.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Chicago Daily Southtown talks to Fire defender Jim Curtain about his teams brand new home stadium that opens this weekend! What does the string bean think of the new place: "Amazing!"
~ ~ ~ ~
Dylan Hernandez of the San Jose Mercury News quotes MLS #2 Ivan Gazidis on the plans for all MLS teams to have youth teams set up ASAP.
~ ~ ~ ~
The ugly story of trying to build a stadium in New Jersey for the Metrostars/Red Bulls will not die. The Jersey Journal reports that a mayoral candidate in the town of Harrison has made it his platform to stop the building of a new stadium in that town if he wins the election. The run off is tomorrow. He needs 20% of the vote to continue toward the general election in November.
~ ~ ~ ~
First Division last weekend:
Seattle 0-0 Portland
Minnesota 1-1 Vancouver
Atlanta 3-2 Charleston - Atlanta's new home stadium opened with capacity limited to around 3000 plus a few extras who bought standing-room-only tickets, then rauceously cheered their team to victory. (Some people were even apparently turned away at the gate. I know its not a big place, but at least the enthusiasm was there.)
Rochester 2-2 Virginia Beach - It poured down rain and they still packed the place with nearly 14,000, which was also a sellout. But Rochester got burned at the buzzer by VB after trailing 1-0 late, then taking a miraculous 2-1 lead, yet settling for a draw in the final moments.
Portland 3-1 Seattle
Montreal 1-0 Puerto Rico
Toronto 0-0 Virginia Beach
~ ~ ~ ~
He's no oil painting, but damn is he a handsome devil - A Wayne Rooney homage from the heavily deluded English. (Thanks Sean!)
~ ~ ~ ~
Thursday on ESPN Classic you can watch the USA beat Portugal and Mexico all over again from the 2002 World Cup. USA v Port at 1pm & USA v Mex at 3pm, both central time. This is some glorious viewing.
~ ~ ~ ~
US Soccer has photos, video and audio of all the team action in Germany
~ ~ ~ ~
The New York Times Sunday paper had an insert magazine yesterday called Play which features "Little Ronaldo" on the cover, and several more good stories on the World Cup.
~ ~ ~ ~
This whole thing with people being upset that the Team USA bus is the only official team bus without its countries flag on it for security reasons is a little weird to me. As you can see in this picture, there is a giant slogan on the bus which says, "United we play, United we win." So I guess it's not much of a mystery whose bus it is.
-On the other hand, look at the frickin escort they get on the roadway.
-And here is the street in front of the team hotel in Hamburg.
-Cherundolo and Reyna sure look happy to be in Germany again.
~ ~ ~ ~
John Powers of the Boston Globe with a feature on our savior, Landycakes O'Donovan.
~ ~ ~ ~
Andrea Canales writes about the new young Americans who will "make the scene" at this World Cup, for Soccernet.
~ ~ ~ ~
LA Daily News feature on oft-injured Johnny O'Brien.
~ ~ ~ ~
New York Times feature by Jere Longman on USA & Reading superwinger Bobby Convey.
~ ~ ~ ~
Steve Goff of the Washington Post with a feature story on Deuce Dempsey.
~ ~ ~ ~
And Deuce's home town paper, the Nacogdoches Daily Nacho (or something like that), has a feature on their favorite son too.
~ ~ ~ ~
USA Today with an Eddie Pope feature by Andy Gardiner.
~ ~ ~ ~
And another by Gardiner on Convey and Dempsey, aka The Backstreet Boys & Dem Franchise Boyz.
~ ~ ~ ~
Steve Davis of the Dallas Morning News talks about the infamous attitude of US "manager" Bruce Arena.
~ ~ ~ ~
Like injured fellow USA defender Cory Gibbs signing to English team Charlton, the rumors around England have Oguchi Onyewu all set to sign with Middlesbrough. And like Gibbs and Charlton, Middlesbrough have no manager yet, so signing Onyewu makes no sense at all to me. -And now that Gibbs has injured his knee, will he get his work permit to play in England at all?
~ ~ ~ ~
And American Soccer News is reporting that American defender Jonathan Spector is going to leave Manchester United and sign with West Ham in England.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Arizona Republic has a feature story on their home-state boy and USA & Colorado midfielder Pablo Mastroeni.
~ ~ ~ ~
Business Week looks at America's "Stars".
~ ~ ~ ~
This dude in Salt Lake is a convert. He was once one of those crabby ass sports writers. Now, he gets it. Hooray Beer. Hooray crabby guy.
~ ~ ~ ~
Andrew Winner of Soccernet writes about one the next generation of great Americans, Lee Nguyen, who plays most excellently for PSV. Lee rules!
~ ~ ~ ~
Ghana beat South Korea 3-1 in Edinburgh Scotland on Saturday.
~ ~ ~ ~
Things are getting messier for Italian keeper Buffon with the Italian investigations into corruption and gambling.
~ ~ ~ ~
And two Italian defenders Zambrotta and Nesta are hurting physically.
~ ~ ~ ~
Giant freakish Czech Republic striker Jan Koller has left his German club team Borussia Dortmund and signed a deal to play next season for Monaco in the French top division.
~ ~ ~ ~
LA Times writer Graham Jones on Mexican coach Smokes LaVolpe.
-And that's just the tip of the old iceberg for the LA Times World Cup coverage - they exploded over the weekend with tons of really great articles. I am not going to link to all of them, I'm just sending you to the site with all the headlines and let you sort them out.
~ ~ ~ ~
If you go to this page at the French Open Tennis Tournament site and click on "Video Interview" (near the top) you can see American tennis player James Blake sporting his US Soccer jacket. He wore it everywhere he went at Roland Garros.
~ ~ ~ ~
Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger of Soccernet welcomes his fairly unaware American friend to Germany. The poor sap is in for a shock.
~ ~ ~ ~
MLS matches last Saturday:
DC 1-0 New England - Moreno bags #101 in a fantastic opening 30 minutes, then DC settles in to take the 3 points from a team that was supposed to be the best this season, and is instead floundering badly. Pat Noonan also got hurt about 10 minutes into the match (looked like the same hamstring he has had tons of trouble with this spring) and really seemed to kill New England's spirit (he had looked ready to rock in his first 2 or 3 touches).
Dallas 1-2 Columbus - A snoozer til the last 15 minutes. I almost stopped watching it, but Demko told me not to and he was right. Sigi's boyz did what they had to do and made up for that horrible loss to DC last Wednesday. The Little Fish scored Dallas's goal, which was his 6th game in a row on the score sheet. Amazing.
Houston 2-1 Los Angeles - Hey, at least LA scored! Not much consolation though when you lose again. And like most other teams, LA has no idea who to stop the second best player in the league, DDR, (Shalrie is #1), who just takes the LA defenders to school and scores a beauty. When John Wolnyiec scores for LA to end their scoreless streak at around 525 minutes announcers Max Bretos blurts out this odd call: "It's over! All creatures great and small, it's over!" But of course Houston finds a way to sink the ship again as my favorite defender in the league Eddie Robinson heads home for victory.
Kansas City 1-1 New York - For the second week in a row a referee called a PK for a foul that happened outside the box, and this time KC gets the goal to tie the score. You really outta see the shot Chris Henderson makes for the Red Bulls goal, cuz KC keeper Osoniyi initially makes a great save with his hands only to have it go off his own foot and kick back into the net for a score.
Salt Lake 3-1 Chicago - Holy shit did Brian Plotkin unleash a bomb of a goal for Chicago, but Jeff Cunningham had two really nice goals of his own, and forced an own goal with a third attempt, to wipe that out. Cunningham also was cool enough to climb into the stands and celebrate with the fans. Nice to see Salt Lake getting it together. John Ellinger saved his bacon for a few more weeks with this decent home stand.
Chivas 4-1 Colorado - Some really nice team work leads to all 4 goals for Chivas even though one of them had Razov a good 2 to 3 yards offside right in front of the side judge (so who knows what that was all about). My guy Dedi Ben Dayan scored the lone goal for the lame Colorado. (Why they are lame I don't know cuz I think they have the players to be decent.)
~ ~ ~ ~
The MLS single table standings:
24 DC United
21 FC Dallas
17 Houston Dynamo
14 Kansas City Wizards
14 Columbus Crew
14 Colorado Rapids
11 New England Revolution
11 Real Salt Lake
10 Chicago Fire
10 Chivas USA
9 New York Red Bulls
7 Los Angeles Galaxy
~ ~ ~ ~
And the leagues top 5 goal scorers:
7 Carlos Ruiz
7 Brian Ching
7 Jeff Cunningham
7 Jaime Moreno
6 Ante Razov
~ ~ ~ ~
Carlos Ruiz of Dallas was named MLS Player of the Month for May. Not surprising as the man scored 5 goals, one in each of the teams games during May.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Chicago Daily Southtown talks to Fire defender Jim Curtain about his teams brand new home stadium that opens this weekend! What does the string bean think of the new place: "Amazing!"
~ ~ ~ ~
Dylan Hernandez of the San Jose Mercury News quotes MLS #2 Ivan Gazidis on the plans for all MLS teams to have youth teams set up ASAP.
~ ~ ~ ~
The ugly story of trying to build a stadium in New Jersey for the Metrostars/Red Bulls will not die. The Jersey Journal reports that a mayoral candidate in the town of Harrison has made it his platform to stop the building of a new stadium in that town if he wins the election. The run off is tomorrow. He needs 20% of the vote to continue toward the general election in November.
~ ~ ~ ~
First Division last weekend:
Seattle 0-0 Portland
Minnesota 1-1 Vancouver
Atlanta 3-2 Charleston - Atlanta's new home stadium opened with capacity limited to around 3000 plus a few extras who bought standing-room-only tickets, then rauceously cheered their team to victory. (Some people were even apparently turned away at the gate. I know its not a big place, but at least the enthusiasm was there.)
Rochester 2-2 Virginia Beach - It poured down rain and they still packed the place with nearly 14,000, which was also a sellout. But Rochester got burned at the buzzer by VB after trailing 1-0 late, then taking a miraculous 2-1 lead, yet settling for a draw in the final moments.
Portland 3-1 Seattle
Montreal 1-0 Puerto Rico
Toronto 0-0 Virginia Beach
~ ~ ~ ~
He's no oil painting, but damn is he a handsome devil - A Wayne Rooney homage from the heavily deluded English. (Thanks Sean!)
posted by brucio at 16:10
2 Comments:
Keep up the great work on the blog. I check it every day and it's an invaluable resource.
I heard something on the radio (NPR, that is) that mentioned your favorite Ace Nstoelengoe. Here's a link for you. Hope you enjoy!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5452258
I emailed that guy Kurt Kragthorpe before the US-CRC game last year. He wrote an article bitching about the game, and I told him to keep an open mind go see it (it's the second most important competitive USNT fixture of the cycle behind Mexico), and he did. I feel vindicated, hahaha.
And another interesting thing to point out, is the 4 bottom feeders in the MLS standings are comprised of the 4 teams who reside in the country's biggest markets. LA x 2, NY, and Chicago....
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