Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie, Oi, Oi, Oi News

Today is Sir Alex Ferguson's 21st anniversary as the big boss man at Manchester United. I think the old red nosed fella has done pretty good for himself. Cheers dude.

~and~

Ives Galarcep on Marc de Grandpre, the man at the top of the food pyramid for Red Bull New York: "You must remember that just two years ago deGrandpre was marketing soft drinks and knew as much about soccer as Britney Spears knows about good parenting."


MLS Semifinals
-Thu Nov 8
New England v Chicago - 6:30pm central on ESPN2
-Sat Nov 10
Houston v Kansas City - 7:30pm central on FSC, FSE & HDNet
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jack Bell of the New York Times on Cuauhtemoc Blanco, Juan Carlos Osorio and the re-rise of the Chicago Fire to near the top of the league. Plus other MLS etc news.
-Bell with a most excellent Q & A with Osorio, from the Goal blog.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune writes about Fire forward Paulo Wanchope finding himself on the bench for the biggest games.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Frank Dell'apa of the Boston Globe looks at New England's use of the ACC for their young players. It's been extremely successful for them in the past few years: Michael Parkhurst, James Riley, Wells Thompson & Adam Cristman (plus 6 others on the roster) for instance.
-The Greensboro News Record with a story on the very productive Wake Forest team.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Don Cuddy of Soccer365 does a Q & A with New England defender Michael Parkhurst.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob Luder of the KC Star says the Wizards like where they are sitting right now, and Eddie Johnson winning the league's Comeback Player Of The Year award is a big reason why.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jeff Bradley at MLSnet with his First XI: Conference Finals Breakdown. (You and I call it the semifinals.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Grahame Jones of the LA Times speculates on who the Galaxy will hire as the new boss. Add Carlos Queiroz to that mythical list that I started yesterday.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Damian Calhoun of the Orange County Register quotes LAG pres Alexi Lalas as using the word SEXY when describing a potential coach. What a joke.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Luis Bueno of the Press Enterprise is like many of us, and not surprised that Frank Yallop took the train North.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ridge Mahoney at Soccer America on the dumping of two highly regarded coaches in MLS on the same day - Yallop & Arena.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stephen Brunt of the Toronto Globe & Mail on the Yallop move.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nick Green of the Daily Breeze on the same subject.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Real Madrid have invited the LA Galaxy to play a friendly in Spain at the Bernabeu on Dec 5.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ives Galarcep of the North Jersey Herald News on the Bruce Arena canning. It astounds me that this team can go through a massive overhaul just 15 months ago and still fail in the exact same ways as before. From top to bottom its bad. I am starting to believe in this curse after all.
-Ives also reports on his Soccer By Ives blog that Jeff Agoos' position of Red Bulls Technical Director has been eliminated.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Martin Rogers at Yahoo Sports on Arena's adios-ing.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Paul Gardner of the New York Sun on Arena's departure and other recent coaching moves from around Europe.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Frank Giase of the Newark Star Ledger focuses on the failings of New York player Claudio Reyna.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Clemente Lisi at the US Soccer Players Assoc says Bruce Arena was the wrong coach for New York all along.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today its Dallas coach Steve Morrow's turn to make post-season remarks on the teams blog.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Steven Goff of the Washington Post with the story of DC midfielder Josh Gros and his concussion problems. Ben Olsen is having ankle surgery too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Larry Millson of the Toronto Globe & Mail on TFC coach Mo Johnston's scouting trip to Brazil.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Seattle Post Intelligencer with a story on former U Washington player Ty Harden who just finished a hard and crazy first season with the LA Galaxy.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob Luder of the KC Star reports that the Kansas City Wizards are going from NFL-Way-Too-Big to Minor-League-Baseball-Awkward in their stadium situation. The team averaged just under 12,000 fans per game this season, and the new home will hold only 10,000. Oh, and the move takes them from the extreme east side of the KC Metro to across the river a little west of KC proper.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Buzz Carrick of 3rd Degree puts his grades on the FC Dallas coach & players.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The word on the street is that Seattle will NOT join MLS for the 2008 season, but will for 09. What will they do for next year?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Vancouver Province looks ahead to tomorrow nights Vancouver Whitecaps v Los Angeles Galaxy friendly.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Vancouver Sun with their Top 25 things about David Beckham. So are serious, and some are pretty flippant.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup
From Brazil
USA Group B Matches & Scores:
-USA 4-8 Spain
-USA 7-6 Iran
-USA 6-5 Portugal
-And with that the USA has been elimdated from the tournament. Our intrepid beach & street soccer reporter Ethan F with words on the matter:
The US just crashed out of the Beach Soccer World Cup 6-5 in extra time to Portugal. The US was down for nearly the entire match, but came back and actually took the lead with just over a minute left in regulation before Portugal tied it and then scored the winner with 0.0 on the clock in extra time. I think that it if more people cared, the result would probably have been pretty controversial because the refereeing on the final sequence was a little strange. Overall, a very exciting game. The first period was garbage with the US looking like they had been up partying a little too much last night, but they seemed to get more and more fired up as they fell behind. After Portugal went up 3-0, the US finally decided to try and really made a match of it, including hitting the woodwork 3 times and missing a penalty kick. The final US goal (which gave them a literally 3 second lead) was an amazing chip shot. You should really watch the highlights for that one alone.
Portugal were definitely the favorites coming in (they won the Euro qualifying), but with just a little bit of luck, the US would have won this game and progressed to play Brazil in the next round. Too bad.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

US Soccer with the details on the CONCACAF Men's Olympic qualifying tournament.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

UEFA Champions League - Matchday 4
-Tue Nov 6
Liverpool v Besiktas
Porto v Marseille
Valencia v Rosenborg
Schalke v Chelsea
Lazio v Bremen
Olympiakos v Real Madrid
Celtic v Benfica
Shakhtar v Milan
-Wed Nov 7
Lyon v Stuttgart
Barcelona v Rangers
Manchester United v Dynamo Kyiv
Sporting v Roma
Internazionale v CSKA Moskva
Fenerbahce v PSV
Steaua v Sevilla
Slavia v Arsenal
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Times of London with the story on the go-ahead for building a new home for Liverpool Football Club.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It looks like fans of Wigan are in for an even worse season as the team fired their latest coach only 12 games into this season, and are going to replace him with grouchy old Graeme Souness. Very unpleasant.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oh yeah! Stephen Ireland, he of the dead Grandmother stories, pulled a new stunt last night. After scoring for Manchester City he dropped his shorts and showed off his Superman underwear! (please help find a good picture of this scene)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Phil Ball of Soccernet on the Basques of Bilbao and the rest of the news from Spain's La Liga.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Brazilian forward Adriano failed show up for practice at Inter Milan AGAIN yesterday. How many excuses and passes does this talented loser get?