Thursday, November 30, 2006

Paint Chip News

Fulham manager Chris Coleman on his teams 2-1 win over Arsenal last night: "That's the best performance since I have been here."

Remember that big rumor of a press conference today....? Well, it's happened. But it was just to announce locations for Gold Cup matches next summer. Here are the details on which stadiums will host games June 6-24:
Chicago - Soldier Field (final)
Gillette Stadium - Foxborough
Reliant Stadium - Houston
Giants Stadium - East Rutherford
Home Depot Center - Carson
Orange Bowl - Miami
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Soccer365 has a Q & A with Kansas City striker Scott Sealy.
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There is a really strong new soccer blog dedicated exclusively to Toronto. It's called Toronto MLS FC, and it's packed with lots of good rumors and leads and info. Excellent stuff! I have encouraged them to pep up that name though.
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Frank Dell'apa at Soccernet says that the growing number of MLS team playing on fake turf is "disturbing". I guess. I'm always more curious as to what the players think (and all we ever really get from them is second hand opinions, never direct quotes), than mustacheod writers.
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Chivas USA will play Necaxa on Friday night in Mexico. The game will also be the farewell match for Necaxa coach Hugo Sanchez who has taken over the Mexican national team head spot.
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A group of select MLS youngsters will journey to England starting this weekend for a series of friendly's against English reserve teams. Despite this being a fantastic idea, MLSnet has decided that the best way to announce this story is to use the most retarded picture of Chivas USA midfielder Sacha Klejsten they can find. Good job gang. He looks like an early member of Black Flag. Maybe that look is an LA thing.
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Yesterday I ran a link from the Salt Lake Tribune saying things were moving forward on the stadium front for Real Salt Lake. Today that city's other newspaper the Deseret Morning News says the stadium deal is going nowhere, fast.
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More dribblings on a potential stadium being built in suburban Cleveland. From the Plain Dealer.
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NCAA Semifinals. Single elimidation. Here are the match-ups for Friday in St Louis:
UCLA v Virginia - 5pm central - shown live on ESPN2
UC Santa Barbara v Wake Forest - 7:30pm central - shown delayed at 1am central Saturday morning on ESPNU.
-The final, also played in St Louis, on Sun Dec 3, will be shown live Sunday the 3rd at 2pm central on ESPN2.
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Rumors swirling that the USA is going to line up matches in May with both Scotland and Ireland here in the states.
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Our great loyal reader and friend BQ sent me a note the other day pointing out that if you go to the official EPL homepage the banner across the top features the images of 6 players and 2 of them are Americans - Tim Howard and Brian McBride! Cheers mates!
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Some of our favorite Americans had mid-week league matches in England . Let's check in and see how they did:
-DaMarcus Beasley - Manchester City - out with injury, team beat Villa 1-3.
-Carlos Bocanegra - Fulham - Did not get to play, due to a hamstring strain suffered last Saturday v Reading, but his team had a huge 2-1 win over London rivals Arsenal.
-Jay DeMerit - Watford - painfully lost to fellow relegation dwellers Sheffield United 0-1 at home. Jay played the entire match to no avail.
-Tim Howard - Everton - his team lost 3-0 at Manchester United, but Tim-may was not allowed to play for Everton seeing as he is on loan to them from Man U. Too bad, it's pretty obvious he is helping his current club immensely.
-Eddie Lewis - Leeds - played the first 72 minutes in a 2-1 loss at Burnley.
-Brian McBride - Fulham - Awesome game for BMB scoring the first goal (4 on the season) in a huge 2-1 victory over city rivals Arsenal. He was replaced in the 76th minute.
-Claudio Reyna - Manchester City - started and went 90 in a huge 1-3 road win at surprisingly strong Aston Villa.
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Yanks Abroad with an update on USA & Reading midfielder Bobby Convey's knee injury.
-The Times of London says he may need surgery.
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YA also catch up with Benny Fielhaber at Hamburg.
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USA & Kansas City striker Eddie Johnson has finished his stint training with Reading, but no deal is imminent according to manager Steve Coppell.
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Another young American, Michael Bradley, played the full 90 in a 1-3 road win over Vitesse last night in Holland.
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Soccer New England is reporting that LA midfielder Kyle Martino is now on trial at Leeds.
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The Mexican Apertura semifinals round (2 legs):
Last nights score-
Pachuca 1-1 Toluca - Bruno Marioni scored in the 55th minute for Toluca, but the home team managed to tie it up in the 71st on a goal by Luis Angel Landin.
Thur Nov 30-
Guadalajara v America - live at 9pm central on TeleFutura
Sun Dec 3-
Toluca v Pachuca - live at noon central on Univision
America v Guadalajara - live at 8pm central on Univision
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Big Euro matches coming this weekend:
Fri
Sporting v Benfica - #2 v #4 in a classic old rivalry
Sat
Arsenal v Tottenham - always the ultimate London derby
Werder Bremen v Hertha Berlin - #2 v #5 with 3 points between them
Sun
Nancy v Lille - #5 v #2 with only 1 point between them - actually there are only 2 points separating #2-9 in France
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Fox Soccer Channel is going to broadcast the FIFA World Club Championship from Japan Dec 10-17.
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Our pal Jonah Freedman at Sports Illustrated with his newest and always excellent World Power Rankings. He starts off with lots of hot MLS talk this week too.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Too bad about Convey. He was so impressive for being a newcomer to the EPL.

And concerning the article about Eddie Johnson and the comments from manager Steve Coppell. I was reminded of words of wisdom once handed down to me from Sr. Wolf. To paraphrase Mr. Wolf, "Eddie always seems to say the right words and shows well for press conferences. But how come all his teammates never like him and he always has trouble with managers"?

5:01 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sacha looks like he's in Black Flag !
But if it is "an LA thing," then, hasn't Sacha got the right cut, since he currently plays in LA ?

You should recommend that Sacha go get a haircut from David James' stylist.
But now I hear that James is considering going to Craig Waibel's stylist.

Whatever happened to the simple bowl cut ?

9:23 PM  
Blogger brucio said...

the bowl cut is excellent
the buzz cut is another
how about a flat top
i am not a chrome dome fan though
its not sacha hair cut in question though, its the facial expression and the neck scrunching
why did mlsnet use that pic of him?
the david james look still has me cracking up
and then when you hear he paid almost $500 dollars for that look, you have to feel very sad for him, he really is overpaid if he has that kinda dough to waste

i want to make the statement on the record that i think civil war era beard looks are the way to go

8:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm dreaming of June at Soldier Field already. I want to read the rest of your news as well as scrape up a picture of David James' latest hair disaster that I haven't yet seen, but I've got to shovel snow. I'll be back in 6 hours or so to finish reading.

10:43 AM  

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