Big Hairy Bastard News

Embarrassingly only 28,000 tickets have been sold for Sunday's USA v Brazil match in Chicago.

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Carlos Bocanegra, Landon Donovan & Tim Howard were named finalists for the 2007 United States Player Of The Year. The award will be handed out on Oct 5.

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There is no player conflict between the Spanish national team and the Catalonia team that was supposed to play the USA on Oct 14. The reason that the Spanish Football Federation has put the kibosh on this match is that they are afraid that even with little known players for Catalonia the game will overshadow Spain's Euro qualifying matches on dates near that date (they are not scheduled for the same date.) This has to be one of the lames excuses I have ever heard of for exerting pressure on a region of a country. It all politics folks, and Spain does not like places like Basque, Catalan, or Andalusia showing them up.


US Open Cup
Seattle 1-2 Dallas - in extra time after regular time ended 0-0. Sea goal by Leighton O'Brien. Dal goals by Carlos Ruiz & Abe Thompson(PK).
Post-game analysis by Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times. Great reading.
New England 2-1 Carolina - in extra time after regular time ended 1-1. NE goals by Jeff Larentowicz & Pat Noonan. Car goal by Anthony Maher.
Match report by Frank Dell'apa of the Boston Globe.
Match report from the Boston Herald.
-New England midfielder Shalrie Joseph was Red Carded and will miss the final. Connally Edozien & David Stokes were both Red Carded for Carolina.
-Final:
Dallas v New England - at Pizza Hut Park on Wednesday, October 3rd, at 7 p.m. CST.
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Greg Lalas at Sports Illustrated says the respect is gone for the Open Cup. And he doesn't seem to miss it much.
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MLS
Matches & Scores:
-Thu Sep 6
Chivas USA v DC United - 9:30pm central on ESPN2
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Jeff Carlisle of Soccernet previews The Goats v DC.
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Jack Bell of the New York Times on the rise to power of Chivas USA.
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Jeff Bradley at MLSnet previews tomorrow nights big match in his column First XI: Game Of The Year.
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Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times reported today that big time movie producer Joe Roth is expected to join forces with Seattle Sounders owner Adrian Hannouer to bid for an MLS team in that city. What about those other guys we heard about for the past several months?
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Ben Olsen of DC United was named MLS Player Of The Week.
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Tobias Xavier Lopez of the Fort Worth Star Telegram does a Q & A with FC Dallas owner Clark Hunt.
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The Observer from England (not a shitty tabloid paper) has a big article and interview with B******. He lays it all on the line.
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Andrea Canales at Soccernet wonders how the LA Galaxy finish this season without B******. Plan B, or I guess that would be C?
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Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union Tribune tells us what he thinks "No B******" means for MLS. He says LA season ticket holders are being punished the most of all.
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James Edward of the Deseret Morning News talks to former Salt Lake player Chris Klein, now with LA, about his most famous teammate.
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Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune talks to new Chicago Fire defender Wilman Conde.
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TSN in Canada looks at Toronto FC's first season so far, and asks who they should spend some Designated Player money on. I think these are some very unoriginal picks.
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Pete Gratoff of the KC Star says Wizards owners are going to Europe next month to study stadiums as they prepare top build their own. And other team notes.
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Martin Rogers of Yahoo Sports checks the current market value of some key MLS players, tournaments, world players and clubs. Buy or Sell. (try to ignore the very last idiotic sentences)
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Ryan Hunt at Sports Illustrated with his weekly MLS column Free Kicks.
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Kristian Dyer makes the case for MLS Developmental Roster spots paying way too little money. A theory I agree with, but get heckled for every time I bring it up. The reason always given to me in favor of these tiny contracts is that "this is what the market pays, so take it or leave it". Hahahahahahha. Please. My argument is not capitalism based, it's human conditions in America based and I think their pay being offered is a disgrace. And not just to MLS development
players either. To many many Americans.
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Greg Lalas with his weekly column at Goal.com - Clint Dempsey, Argies in MLS & USA v Brazil.
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USA v Brazil
-Sun Sep 9 - live at 3pm central time from Soldiers Field in Chicago. You can see the game on ESPN2.
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Kansas City midfielder Kerry Zavagnin has been added to the USA roster for Sunday's match v Brazil. He replaces Pablo Mastroeni who is sick.
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Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune talks to USA & Fulham defender Carlos Bocanegra about the match and the feeling around Team USA right now. From the Red Card blog.
-Arroyave also talks to USA & Watford defender Jay DeMerit.
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The smug bastards at Goal.com have joined the list of American soccer fans who love to hate the USA team. This week they have labeled the USA v Brazil in Chicago on Sunday as being OVERRATED, while the Mexico v Brazil game in Boston next Wednesday as UNDERRATED. So I guess the new trend is to dis American and be pro Mexico. Great. Just great.
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English Premiership club Derby County are still chasing after KC & USA forward Eddie Johnson and want to try and sign him in January. But that time they will 1000 points behind every other team in the league and already mathematically relegated.
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Andrew Wiebe of the Daily Kansan writes about the steady growth in the number of Americans heading to Europe to play their futbol, and like most of us he doesn't see this trend doing anything buy speeding up. The good part is this will give MLS clubs even more cash to spend on bringing more foreign players in.
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Gregory Sica at Sports Illustrated writes about the heavy influenced "hooligans" have on the game in Argentina.