Wednesday, February 07, 2007

All The Fine Ladies Understood The News

It's official - Czech & Arsenal midfielder Tomas Rosicky's last name is pronounced Row-zits-key!

Advance tickets for the Friday 7:30 & Saturday 7:30 showings of the Zidane film at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis are sold out! There are still 3 other screenings with tickets available.
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Actually Zidane was spotted at the New York Knicks basketball game at Madison Square Garden last night. When asked if he was in town to discuss playing for MLS he said, "No comment". I think it was just a stop over before flying to Minneapolis for Friday night's screening of his movie!
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Before we get to the main body of today's USA v Mex stuff, I just want to say that the newspaper coverage for the USA v Mexico game tonight in Phoenix via the Arizona Republic has been a joke! They've had a couple of stories this week, but you have to search deep into their website to find them, and then you read them and they are really just cliched fluff. So so so so lame. Any potential owners of a team in that city should take notice of this. One of the big reasons things have gone well in Houston, Salt Lake and Toronto is that they get at least decent, and in the case of Houston and Salt Lake, great coverage from the local press.
-To be honest the Arizona Daily Star of Tuscon has a nice article today, which picks out 5 points of interest for each team.
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It is game day bitches! Team USA v Mexico tonight in Phoenix Arizona. Are you ready? Let's hope our new coach and his team are. I can't imagine the pressure the Mexican team is feeling. I think it will hurt them.
-They say the game is sold out tonight! At least 62,000 tickets baby. And you can bet that almost all were sold to Mexicans too.
-Phoenix native Pablo Mastroeni will be the USA captain for the game.
-Keep up to date at the Team USA blog.
-Grant Wahl at Sports Illustrated asks himself and answers 5 important questions pertaining to US Soccer and this match.
-US Soccer with a video tour of the unique stadium.
-Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune has some Mexico practice observations on this blog The Red Card.
-Arroyave also previews the game for the Tribune.
-Greg Boeck of USA Today with a feature story on USA & Everton keeper Tim Howard. Tim-May!
-Chivas USA's legendary Mexican defender Claudio Suarez says some interesting things to Luis Bueno at LA Soccer News about tonight's game.
-Ives Galarcep was at both teams practice sessions yesterday and had some thoughts on his blog, Soccer by Ives. Excellent stuff as always.
-Mark Ziegler of the San Diego Union Tribune says the stats say it all: Seven games in the USA for Mexico since 2000, zero wins, eleven goals allowed, and zero goals scored. Mexico knows what they are up against tonight.
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Big news out of Toronto today with Yanks Abroad saying German team Mainz have released American striker Conor Casey from his contract and he is all set to sign with Toronto FC.
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Several reports have stated that RSL is looking to move keeper Nick Rimando, who they just got as a part of the Freddy Adu deal. The teams mentioned as possible destinations are New York, Dallas & DC United. The first two make no sense at all. They both have two keepers already battling it out for the starting spot. DC, where Rimando just came from, needs a back up badly, but probably don't want to give up anything to take him back. Could RSL be using the first two teams as a bluff to try and drive up the price on DCU?
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Freddy Adu has just moved to Salt Lake City, but it looks like he has already hired himself a nice little blond elfin valet. I wonder if the valet is giving Freddy diving lessons? (thanks to A for teh link the pic)
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James Edwards of the Deseret Morning News with a story on RSL midfielder Andy Williams who had to take a pay cut this year.
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The great guys at Are You Loyal? have podcasts of interviews with two RSL players: Carey Talley - AND - Jeff Cunningham. Excellent.
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The Dallas Morning News talks to long time FCD defender Bobby Rhine about the new coach and new season in Dallas.
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Chicago Fire head coach Dave Sarachan did an on-line Q & A session with fans today. Here is the full transcript from MLSnet.
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Also from MLSnet is this weeks edition of Jeff Bradley's First XI: The elements of good soccer
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The Toronto Sun checks in With TFC coach Mo Johnston who says most of his team showed up out of shape.
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Mike Woitalla from Soccer America gives us some background on the better players coming to MLS this season via the draft.
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An inner city site is being looked at for a Houston stadium. I think that would be great. But some people will not be happy at all - the land they want is currently a golf course. From the Houston Chronicle.
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Jack Bell at the New York Times with an article on how American players are promoted. And the rest of the weekly news round up.
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American keeper Adin Brown has signed a contract extension with his club in Norway, Aalesund. From Yanks Abroad.
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CONCACAF has announced the qualifying for the U17 World Championship. The USA will play games in late April & early May as part of a 5 team Group B in Kingston Jamaica. The top 3 from this group will qualify for the finals in Korea. Here is the schedule:
April 28
Costa Rica v Trinidad & Tobago
Jamaica v Canada
April 30
USA v Costa Rica
Jamaica v Trinidad & Tobago
May 2
Costa Rica v Canada
Trinidad & Tobago v USA
May 4
USA v Canada
Jamaica v Costa Rica
May 6
Canada v Trinidad & Tobago
Jamaica v USA
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The last of the Copa Libertadores qualifying matches are this week:
Last nights scores-
-Danubio 1-2 Velez Sarsfield - Velez advances 5-1 on aggregate
-Liga Dep. Universitaria 3-0 Tacuary - LDU advances 4-1 on agg
Wed Feb 7 games-
-Santos v Blooming - second leg - Santos leads 1-0
-Parana v Cobreloa - second leg - Parana leads 2-0
Thur Feb 8 games-
-Deportes Tolima v Deportivo Tachira - second leg - Tolima leads 2-1
-The group stage starts Feb 13!
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Rob Hughes of the International Herald Tribune with a report on Liverpool's two new American owners.
-Chuck Culpepper of the LA Times looks at the sudden American ownership of 3 English teams.
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American defender Carlos Bocanegra answers 10 seemingly random questions for the Fulham web site.
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Fulham manager Chris Coleman talks about his now 4 years in charge of the club. A real baptism by fire for him. (thanks to BQ for both these Fulham stories.)
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One last Fulham story today - witty midfielder Mortiz Volz (think Jimmy Conrad) writes his first column for The Times of London: Celebrations get tongues wagging
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London hosted 4 international matches last night! Amazing!
-Australia 1-3 Denmark at Queens Park Rangers' Loftus Road
-Greece 0-1 South Korean at Fulham's Craven Cottage
-Nigeria 1-4 Ghana at Brentford's Griffin Park
-Brazil 0-2 Portugal at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium
-Paul Doyle of the Guardian attended Ghana's win over Nigeria. It had been 15 years since their last win over Nigeria. Great article.
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Peter Kiefer of the International Herald Tribune with word on the solutions being put forward to fix ugly fan violence in Italy. The bottom line though, is that the show much go on.
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There is a good chance that Inter Milan & AC Milan will have to play the home legs of their Champions League series in an empty stadium!
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Tuttosport in Turin says Fiorentina striker Luca Toni wants to join Juventus next season. (Our friend Ken the Keeper will not be happy about this news.)
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Tim Vickery of Sports Illustrated describes the disaster that Brazils domestic league has become.
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Future Movies has an interview with the writer and some cast members from the upcoming film Goal 2. And for those who are DIEING to know, Goal 3 will involve Becksy and the LA Galaxy. Shooting starts on that one this next summer.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That article about the Ghana-Nigeria game is brilliant. Don't miss the absurd youtube videos of Ghanaian pitch invasions.

4:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love the Volz article. You have to like a guy who spews as much self deprecating humor as he does. You also have to like a guy who drives around in a 10 year old VW and most of the time actually bikes to practice and to games on his foldable bicycle.

If you haven't checked out his web site do so. Make sure to read some of the diary pages.

http://volzy.com/

4:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention the most important piece of news in the Grant Wahl article:

Had a nice chat with Marcelo Balboa on Tuesday. He's no longer with ESPN's crew, but he'll be doing MLS games for HDNet this season, and he's working here for Mexico's Televisa.

That may have been reported elsewhere, but this is the first I've seen of it. In general I don't listen to the commentators much anyway, but Celo was terrible, so this is great news.

5:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Go downtown Dynamo!

Down with golf (Thierry, it puts me to sleep too)!

On with soccer! On with downtown stadia!

5:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I disagree with the comment of not sending Rimando to NYRB. With Toronto picking up Conor Casey, they are now overloaded with strikers, and are also in need of a second keeper. NYRB will pick up Rimando and the send him or Conway + a high draft pick to TFC in exchange for Eskandarian.

12:46 AM  
Blogger brucio said...

good theory landis - i like it

4:07 PM  

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