Endlessly With Applause News

Carlos Bocanegra lead his team Rennes to a 2-1 win in the UEFA Cup by scoring the winning goal. Of course he got a header from a free kick! See how all our Americans did in the Americans In Europe section.

~and~

Even without their star player Guillermo Barros Schelotto the Columbus Crew steamrolled New York in the second half last night. They looked simply awesome.


MLS Scoreboard

Week 26
Matches & Scores:
-Thu Sep 18
Columbus 3-1 New York - CC goals by Frankie Hejduk, Robbie Rogers & Eddie Gaven. NYRB goal by Juan Pablo Angel.
Attendance: 10,881
Venue: Crew Stadium, Columbus OH
Match report by Shawn Mitchell of the Columbus Dispatch.
Match report from Big Apple Soccer.
Post game notes & NYRB player ratings by Jack Bell of the New York Times blog Goal.
-Sat Sep 20
Kansas City v Toronto - 7pm central on HDNet
Venue: Community America Ballpark, Kansas City KS
POSTPONED To OCT 15 Houston v San Jose - game is being moved due to damage from Hurricane Ike.
Venue: Robertson Stadium, Houston TX
Salt Lake v Chivas - 8pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Rice Eccles Stadium, Salt Lake City UT
Colorado v New England - 8pm central on Direct Kick
Venue: Dick's Sporting Goods Park, Commerce City CO
Los Angeles v DC - 10pm central on FSC
Venue: Home Depot Center, Carson CA
-Sun Sep 21
Chicago v Dallas - 2pm central on TeleFutura
Venue: Toyota Park, Bridgeview IL
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

EJECTIONS:
-Kevin Goldthwaite - New York Red Bulls - Red Card
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

League Standings
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

MLS News

CHICAGO FIRE

Bakary Soumare will not play this weekend due to Yellow Card accumulation suspension.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

COLORADO RAPIDS

Brian Forbes of the Denver Post says the Raps are making a concerted effort to crank up their performances at home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It is official, owner Stan Kroenke is now a board member at Arsenal.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

COLUMBUS CREW

Finally, Frankie Hejduk's complete inability to cross a ball paid off. He soft cross to the back post actually went up and over NY keeper Jon Conway and plopped perfectly into the back of the net. Frankie could try to do that 1,000,000 more times and never do it again! When yer hot yer hot, as they said in Smokey & The Bandit.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob Hunter of the Dispatch comments on the Forbes MLS article in his weekly sports column. Scroll down a bit. Interesting note about TV revenue for the team.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

FC DALLAS

Diego Aparicio of the Morning News reports that coach Schellas Hyndman has been promised at least another season even if he doesn’t make the playoffs this year.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

HOUSTON DYNAMO

Between league matches and Champions League the Dynamo will play 11 games in 36 days (starting next Tuesday in Panama) to close the regular season. And this does not include the postponed CCL home game against Luis Angel Firpo. I predict they will be out of gas when the playoffs roll around, and the defending champs will be severely hampered in their shot at 3 in a row.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

San Francisco FC who HD play next week in the CCL are known as The Monks! And they have an English manager!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bernardo Fallas of the Chronicle reports on work the team is doing to help with Hurricane victim relief.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

KANSAS CITY WIZARDS

Down The Byline is reporting that Bob Luder who covers the Wiz for the KC Star is, or is about to be, out of a job.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

LOS ANGELES GALAXY

Beau Dure of USA Today looks at what the Gals are doing to get things moving in a positive direction. They are in last place, but only 4 points from a playoff spot in the Western conference.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION

Ridge Mahoney of Soccer America calls him Supah Shalrie. We know him as Mr. Joseph.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

RED BULL NEW YORK

Coach Juan Carlos Osorio called last night the biggest game of the season, and what happened? They got waxed. And it wasn't so much that they played bad, which they did after looking strong early, it's that Columbus were just coming at them in unrelenting waves of pressure that the Bulls could do nothing to stop. That is until Kevin Goldthwaite just hacked the crap out of Robbie Rogers and earned himself a Red Card.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

REAL SALT LAKE

Defender Tony Beltran has had surgery for a hernia and will be on the sidelines for a couple more weeks.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

TORONTO FC

Midfielder Carl Robinson writes for his home town paper, The County Times, in Wales.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Marco Velez will not play this weekend due to Red Card suspension.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

GENERAL

This interesting note was found at Tribal Football (generally a hype filled rumor mill type site): Several MLS clubs this month took in a visit from 28 reps from its Japanese counterpart, the J-League.
The tour, which explored the operations of the Columbus Crew, FC Dallas, Chivas USA, and the Los Angeles Galaxy, was launched as part of the J-League's 11 Million Project, an initiative that aims to increase aggregate annual attendance at official matches to 11 million spectators by 2010. As part of the initiative a similar exercise will be undertaken by MLS during the J-League season.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Beau Dure of USA Today on his blog The Netminder gives us a rundown of the things that he feels should be at the top of MLS's Fix-It list.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

MLS Expansion News

The Queens Chronicle with an article on a possible team owned by the Mets baseball team.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Sports Network with an article on the next round of expansion, saying its a very critical move for the league. They must get it right.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

USL First Division Scoreboard

Final Regular Season Matches & Scores:
-Fri Sep 19
Charleston v Carolina
Puerto Rico v Atlanta
-Sat Sep 20
Carolina v Portland
Minnesota v Montreal
Seattle v Vancouver
-Sun Sep 21
Miami v Atlanta
Montreal v Puerto Rico
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

USL First Division Standings

Points - Team - Games played of 30 (goal difference):
*52 Puerto Rico (28)
*50 Vancouver (29)
*41 Montreal (28) (+7)
*41 Rochester (30) (+2)
*40 Seattle (29) (+2)
*40 Charleston (29) (-1)
36 Minnesota (29)
- - - - - - - - -
33 Atlanta (28)
%31 Portland (29) (-6)
%31 Miami (29) (-7)
31 Carolina (28) (-11)
(The top 7 teams advance to the playoffs - with the #1 seed getting a first round buy.)
* clinched playoff spot
% eliminated from playoffs
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

3 teams battling for one playoff spot - Minnesota, Atlanta & Carolina.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Team USA

Goal.com uses the ProZone stats to analyze the USA win over Trinidad & Tobago. Some interesting stuff, but it seems like they could have written about more. Either that or ProZone doesn't offer nearly as much data as we are lead to believe.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ives Galarcep at Soccernet tells us which new player he thinks should be added to the mix for the next group of qualifiers. His addition to everyone else’s similar lists is Chad Marshall. Can't say I disagree. Before he was hurt I thought Marshall was headed for greatness.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Americans In Europe

Greg Seltzer at Soccer365 talks to Heath Pearce about life at Hansa Rostock, in the German 2nd division.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

TRANSFER RUMORS

Goal.com looks at some prospective new homes for Oguchi Onyewu next season.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

MOST RECENT MATCHES

UEFA Cup
-Carlos Bocanegra - Rennes - played all 90 and scored the game winning goal for a 2-1 home victory over Twente.
-Brad Friedel - Aston Villa - went the distance for a very good 1-3 road win over Litex Lovech who played the last 20 minutes with 9 men.
-Brad Guzan - Aston Villa - on the bench for a 1-3 road win at Litex Lovech.
-Tim Howard - Everton - went the distance as usual and were held to a 2-2 home tie by Standard Liege.
-Oguchi Onyewu - Standard Liege - played all 90 minutes and earned a 2-2 draw at Everton.
-Neven Subotic - Borussia Dortmund - started and played the full match, but they blew it losing 0-2 at home to Udinese.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

CONCACAF Champions League News

Official CCL website
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All televised games shown on FSC.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Matches & Scores:
-Tue Sep 16
DC United 0-2 Saprissa - Sap goals by Walter Centeno & Jairo Arrieta.
Attendance: 6,105
Venue: RFK Stadium, Washington DC
San Francisco 1-1 UNAM Pumas - SF goal by Alberto Zapata. UNAM goal by Fernando Espinoza.
Puerto Rico Islanders 2-1 Tauro - PRI goals by Petter Villegas & Kendall Jagdeosingh. Tau goal by Edwin Aguilar.
-Wed Sep 17
Marathon v Cruz Azul
POSTPONED Houston Dynamo v Luis Angel Firpo - this game is being postponed for now due to the damage done in Houston by Hurricane Ike this past weekend. No word on a new date yet.
Santos Laguna 3-2 Municipal - SL goals by Gregorio Torres, Christian Benitez & Matias Vuoso. Mun goals by Pando Ramirez & Mario Acevedo.
Montreal Impact 2-0 Joe Public - MI goals by Stefano Pesoli & Tony Donatelli.
-Thu Sep 18
Atlante 1-0 Olimpia - Atl goal by Arturo Munoz.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

David Mosse at ESPN Soccernet with his thoughts on the Champions League so far, and the UEFA one too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

South America News

Matt Moffett of the Wall Street Journal with a crazy article on a woman who wants to teach a "Ten Commandments" of etiquette to Argentina's most violent supporters groups. With video.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

England News

The Oregonian with a nice political cartoon starring Man U. (thanks to John for this one!)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Rocky Mountain News reports that Stan Kroenke, owner of the Colorado Rapids in MLS, has been named to the Arsenal board of directors, and as a part of that arrangement has agreed not to buy any more stock in the team for 12 months.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Guardian with an article on fans of Queens Park Rangers, who have suffered through many years of mediocrity, now have new filthy rich owners, but see the prices of tickets & everything else around the club being jacked through the roof.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Martin Rogers at Yahoo Sports says the Chelsea players have a fresh remembrance of the Penalty Kicks loss to Manchester United in last years Champions League final to use as motivation when they meet on Sunday.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

European News

GERMANY

Franck Ribery is finally healthy again (ankle) and will make his season debut for Bayern Munich. How much do they miss him? He was the leagues Player of the Year last season.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

ITALY

Juventus forward David Trezeguet has been having problems with his right knee for quite a while and they have decided to shut him down and have surgery to repair it. He will be out for about two months, unless it turns out to be worse than they think it is.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Looks like Milan will be without Andrea Pirlo for 5-6 weeks after he suffered a muscle tear in his right thigh.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fiorentina have begun planning to build a new stadium. Their current home, the Comunale, was built in 1931.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

An article, written in Italian (so I didn't bother linking to it), says that Inter Milan want to hire Maradona as their South American ambassador/scout! (Speaking of the Hand Of God, did you know that his daughter is married to Atletico star Kun Aguero and that she is pregnant. That kid is going to have some amazing football playing DNA.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

SCOTLAND

The Guardian calls the fans of the Old Firm a disgrace. Even after all these years.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

UEFA Cup

First Round 1st leg matches this week. Here is the full list of Matches & Scores.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

See how the Americans did in the Americans In Europe section above.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

2nd leg matches will be played Sep 30 & Oct 2.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The 32 winners will advance to the Group Stage.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Big Club Matches This Week

English Premiership
-Sat Sep 20
Sunderland v Middlesbrough - A northeast derby.
-Sun Sep 21
Chelsea v Manchester United - the two who are supposed to duke it out for the title.
West Brom v Aston Villa - a Birmingham derby!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

German Bundesliga
-Sat Sep 20
Bayern Munich v Werder Bremen - two of the very best in Germany over the past several seasons.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Dutch Eredivisie
-Sat Sep 20
Alkmaar v PSV - two of the favorites for the title.
-Sun Sep 21
Feyenoord v Ajax - two teams that have clashed at the top for decades.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Italian Serie A
-Sun Sep 21
Milan v Lazio - an old old old school rivalry.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Spanish La Liga
-Sun Sep 21
Real Betis v Sevilla - the Seville derby!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mexican Primera
-Sun Sep 21
UNAM Pumas v San Luis - the two top teams in the league.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Argentine Primera
-Sun Sep 21
Boca Juniors v Tigre - #2 hosts #3.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

World News

The Guardian takes a look back on the strong German national teams that have won the World Cup, and wonders if they have gotten the credit they deserve.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Middle Eastern News

The Guardian with another article on the newly formed professional league in the United Arab Emirates. They WILL spend massive amounts of money on players. The UFL kicks off on Saturday with 12 teams.