Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Grates Are Vanishing News

Toronto FC coach John Carver wonders what his striker Jeff Cunningham is doing out there on the field: "You want my honest opinion on that? I'm thinking how has he scored 99 goals?"

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Giorgio Chinaglia, one of the biggest soccer villains in America, is wanted by Italian Police for helping a mafia group try to buy Lazio! See European News - Italy section for details!

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From the Canadian business newspaper the Financial Post: "TFC ... made a modest profit in its inaugural season."

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Brad Friedel will join fellow American goalkeeper at Aston Villa. Now that is a pair. But it is unfortunate for Guzan because Friedel never missed games.


MLS Scoreboard

Week 18
Matches & Scores:
-Wed Jul 23 - rescheduled for the 2nd time
DC v Houston - 6:30pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: RFK Stadium, Washington DC
Match preview by Mike Martin at United Mania.
Match preview by Craig Stouffer of the Washington Examiner.
Match preview by Steven Goff of the Washington Post.
Match preview by Bernardo Fallas of the Houston Chronicle.
-Thu Jul 24
MLS All Stars v West Ham United - 6pm central on ESPN & TeleFutura
Venue: BMO Field Toronto ON
-Sun Jul 27
San Jose v New York - 2pm central on TeleFutura
Venue: Buck Shaw Stadium, Santa Clara CA
Dallas v Los Angeles - 6pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Pizza Hut Park, Frisco TX
Kansas City v Chicago - 7pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Community America Ballpark, Kansas City KS
Colorado v Columbus - 8:30pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City CO
-Mon Jul 28
Salt Lake v Toronto - 8pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Rice Eccles Stadium, Salt Lake City UT
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League Standings
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MLS 2008 All Star Game News

Match & Score:
-Thu Jul 24
MLS All Stars v West Ham United - live at 6pm central on ESPN & TeleFutura
Venue: BMO Field, Toronto Canada
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Ives Galarcep of Soccer By Ives gives us all the lowdown from MLS All Star team practice. Two posts full of good stuff here, One - and - Two, including a rumor of a bid for Edson Buddle.
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Frank Dell'apa at Soccernet says MLS coach Steve Nicol picked his subs based on what he has to do to win this game. Fair enough.
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The Toronto Star with an article on the MLS line up for the game.
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The Toronto Globe & Mail gets the word from the MLS players.
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The West Ham website talks to player Lucas Neill about the game. He is excited for it.
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The Canadian Press reports that British police are looking into the chances that any known & travel-banned West Ham hooligans took part in the fight between Columbus & West Ham fans last Sunday at Crew Stadium.
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MLS News

COLORADO RAPIDS

SMU senior-to-be Bruno Guarda has left school and signed with MLS, and the Raps have won his rights in a lottery. This guy has some talent. He was born in Brazil and plays in the attacking portion of the midfield.
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FC DALLAS

Buzz Carrick at 3rd Degree attends team practice and gives us his observations.
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FC Dallas Updates has an email from assistant coach John Ellinger who is in Argentina on a scouting trip.
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Midfielder Marcelo Saragosa will miss the Sunday game against Los Angeles due to Yellow Card accumulation.
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DC UNITED

The Washington Post on the power outage that again postponed the DC v Houston game last night at RFK Stadium.
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KANSAS CITY WIZARDS

A doubter from a small town Kansas newspaper takes in a Wizmatch and is impressed. Wait till he sees them in a real stadium.
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LOS ANGELES GALAXY

Beau Dure of USA Today sits down and talks turkey with David Beckham.
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REAL SALT LAKE

James Edward of the Deseret News says RSL is doing it with defense.
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TORONTO FC

Info on the Canadian Championship in the Canada & CSA News section below.
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Canada's business newspaper the Financial Post has a story on how the club is run. They call it a success.
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Morgan Campbell of the Toronto Star on the papers TFC blog says the team needs more strikers baaaaaaaaaadly.
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MLS Friendlies

Matches & Scores:
-Wed Jul 23
Real Salt Lake v Saprissa (Costa Rica)
Match preview by James Edward of the Deseret Morning News.
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USL First Division News

Official Team Of The Week for both First & Second Division.
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Minnesota Thunder

Lot's of fan discussion on the USL Message Boards about the firing of Thunder head coach Amos Magee, and possible replacements.
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USL First Division Scoreboard

Matches & Scores:
-Wed Jul 23
Vancouver v Charleston
-Thu Jul 24
Minnesota v Seattle
Portland v Carolina
-Fri Jul 25
Rochester v Montreal
-Sat Jul 26
Vancouver v Carolina
Seattle v Charleston
-Sun Jul 27
Montreal v Rochester
Miami v Atlanta
Minnesota v Puerto Rico
-Tue Jul 29
Miami v Vancouver
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USL First Division Standings

Standings (games played):
30 Charleston (16)
27 Puerto Rico (16)
24 Rochester (17) (GD +3)
24 Vancouver (14) (GD +1)
23 Seattle (18)
22 Portland (19)
21 Atlanta (15)
20 Miami (19) (GD -4)
20 Carolina (17) (GD -7)
18 Montreal (16)
17 Minnesota (17)
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USA Olympic Team

US Soccer with a little bit on the first day of preparations for Team USA.
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Supposedly the NBC Olympic Soccer Channel is coming to all of our cable and satellite system in time for the games. Keep your eyes peeled on your channel listings.
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Official team blog.
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USA U20 News

Coach Thomas Rongen takes the U20's to the Milk Cup tournament in Northern Ireland again this year.
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Here is our roster:
G:
Josh Lambo - FC Dallas
Brian Perk - UCLA
D:
Richard Balchan - Indiana U
Kyle Davies - Southampton FC
Ike Opara - Wake Forest U
Zarek Valentin - PA Classics
Anthony Wallace - FC Dallas
Sheanon Williams - U North Carolina
M:
Daniel Cruz - UNLV
Jorge Flores - Chivas USA
Michael Green - Columbus Crew Academy
Brandon Manzonelli - New England Revolution
Amobi Okugo - San Juan Lightning
Brek Shea - FC Dallas
F:
Vincenzo Bernardo - SSC Napoli
Abdus Ibrahim - Toronto FC
Peri Marosevic - U Michigan
Casey Townsend - U Maryland
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Matches & Scores:
-Mon Jul 28
USA v Northern Ireland
-Wed Jul 30
USA v Wales
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Belgium, Chile & Israel make up the other group.
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The final will be played on Fri Aug 1.
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Soccer In America

Barney Ronay of the Guardian with his opinion on the Crew v West Ham fisticuffs in Columbus.
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Americans In Europe

Aston Villa has signed goalkeeper Brad Friedel from Blackburn.
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TRANSFER RUMORS

The current list of teams who are interested in signing Michael Bradley looks like this: Blackburn, Celtic, Everton, Hamburg, Middlesbrough, Monaco & Werder Bremen. Impressive.
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Americans in Mexico

The New York Times with an article on American Edgar Castillo who went to play in Mexico at Santos Laguna and with the help of duel citizenship he has played for the Mexican national team. Good for him. Am I mad that he is not in MLS and playing for the USA? Yes. But it happens. The USA scouting gets better and better all the time and things will improve for us. On the other hand Castillo's story is different. People knew about him. He was a known quantity. Someone just blew it. And that is not good.
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With the Mexican Primera division almost ready to launch their Apertura season, Luis Bueno on his blog the Sideline Views previews our boys playing south of the border.
Player Previews:
-Marco Antonio Vidal - Indios de Ciudad Juarez
-Edgar Castillo - Santos Laguna
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Canada & CSA News

By virtue of a tie game last night Montreal has won the first Canadian Championship in the round-robin games between Toronto, Vancouver & Montreal to determine their countries entrant in the CONCACAF Champions League this fall.
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Huge congrats to the Impact on a big upset. It will be great to see them in the Champions League.
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Matches & Scores:
-Tue Jul 22
Toronto 1-1 Montreal - TFC goal by Rohan Ricketts. MI goal by Roberto Brown.
Match report from the National Post.
Match report by Jimmy McNulty of The Wire.
Match report by Morgan Campbell of the Toronto Star.
Match report by Larry Millson of the Toronto Globe & Mail.
Match report from the Montreal Gazette.
Post game analysis by Ben Knight on the Globe & Mail blog On Soccer.
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Sports Net on what the win means for the Impact in the bigger picture.
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Standings (games played):
7 Montreal (4)
5 Toronto (4)
4 Vancouver (4) - has been eliminated
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Olympic Soccer News

Sports Illustrated has a slide show of their picks for players to watch at this Olympic tournament.
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England News

Arsenal defender Kolo Toure has been diagnosed with Malaria and will be out of action for 2-4 weeks.
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Alex James (would-be bassist for Blur) at the Guardian tells us about the changes in food sold at the football stadiums.
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European News

FRANCE

Lyon has signed Ghanaian defender John Mensah from Rennes.
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ITALY

I read yesterday that an underworld crime faction had tried to buy Lazio and failed. I admit I didn't much care because these things are often over blown only so newspapers will sell. But today my interest was swayed when I found out that one of the 7 people listed on the arrest warrant was Mr. Giorgio Chinaglia! Mr. I-Was-The-New-York-Cosmos himself! Ho ho! Now we are talking.
-Brian Lewis on the New York Post blog Extra Time with more details.
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RUSSIA

Premier League Standings: (14 of 30 rounds played)
28 Rubin Kazan
26 Amkar Perm
24 Dinamo Moscow
21 Spartak Moscow
20 Spartak Nalchik
20 Locomotive Moscow
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OTHERS

Fenerbahce has signed Turkish midfielder Emre Belozoglu from Newcastle.
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UEFA Champions League

First Qualifying Round 2nd leg matches & scores here. Some games were played yesterday, with the rest today.
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Inter Baki, Ventspils, Kaunas, Anorthosis, Dinamo Tbilisi & Sheriff have all advanced to the Second Qualifying Round. Those matches take place on Jul 29/30 & Aug 6/7.
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World News

Ravi Ubha of the Seattle Post Intelligencer with his weekly world soccer notes - The Beautiful Game.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Maybe Castillo wanted to play for Mexico? Are we so naive to think that being born in the USA automatically qualifies as loyalty to the US National Team?

8:40 PM  
Blogger aw said...

Bradley for Everton!

11:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Carver is a man!

Cunningham looks like a blunt tool.

3:03 AM  

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