Realise The Growth Potential News

While the USL-1 boys from Puerto Rico were huge in thumping Mexican's Santos Laguna 3-1 in the CONCACAF Champions League, yet another MLS team, Houston, stumbled, only getting a draw 0-0 at a very weak San Francisco team down in Panama. Houston should have stuffed them, and yet they barely mounted a real threat.

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CONCACAF Champions League News

Official CCL website
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Matchday 2 Matches & Scores:
-Tue Sep 23
San Francisco 0-0 Houston Dynamo
Pre, In & Post game notes by Bernardo Fallas of the Houston Chronicle on his blog Soccer y Futbol.
Puerto Rico Islanders 3-1 Santos Laguna - PRI goals by Osei Telesford, Noah Delgado & Edwin Miranda. SL goal by Christian Benitez.
Cruz Azul 4-0 Saprissa - CA goals by Miguel Sabah, Gerardo Torrado, Pablo Zeballos &
Christian Riveros.
-Wed Sep 24
Joe Public v Olimpia - live at 7pm central on FSC
Impact de Montreal v Atlante - live at 7pm on TeleFutura
UNAM Pumas v Luis Angel Firpo - live at 9pm on TeleFutura
Marathon v DC United - live at 9pm central on FSC
Match preview by John Haydon of the Washington Times.
Match preview by Steven Goff of the Washington Post.
-Thu Sep 25
Tauro v Municipal - live at 7pm central on Galavision
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Some photos of the stadium etc in Honduras from the DCU Staff. Thanks to Kyle for the link.
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The Houston v Firpo game that was postponed from Matchday 1 due to damage from Hurricane Ike has been rescheduled to Wed Nov. 26.
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MLS Scoreboard

Week 27
Matches & Scores:
-Thu Sep 25
Chicago v Los Angeles - 8pm central on ESPN2
Venue: Toyota Park, Bridgeview IL
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League Standings
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MLS News

CHICAGO FIRE

Luis Arroyave of the Tribune on his blog The Red Card says forward Patrick Nyarko is going to be ready to return early from his knee injury.
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COLUMBUS CREW

Shawn Mitchell of the Dispatch looks at the teams clinching of a playoff spot. And gives us an update on the Guillermo Barros Schelotto injury, which sounds worse then we have been lead to believe.
-But then on his blog Covering The Crew Mitchell says technically the Crew can be eliminated from the playoffs still. Huh? And other team notes.
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DC UNITED

FIFA.com gives us a cliffs notes history of DCU.
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KANSAS CITY WIZARDS

Martin Rogers at Yahoo Sports says KCW technical director Peter Vermes is hot property around the league.
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REAL SALT LAKE

The Deseret News with an article on RSL team president Bill Manning. At one time he was the general manager of my team, the Minnesota Thunder.
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The DNews also has photos from the first day the team practiced at the new stadium, yesterday.
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SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES

Elliot Almond of the Mercury News says the Equakes can't wait to get their hands on RSL, who have the worst road record in the league, at home this weekend. With a win and certain other teams not winning the team could climb to 2nd place by Sunday.
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TORONTO FC

Dean McNulty of the Sun reports that coach John Carver says he should be fired if the team doesn't improve in the last 5 games of the season.
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Morgan Campbell of the Star says Carver is commanding his players to give a lot more then they have been.
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Nigel Reed of the CBC says the teams growth from year 1 to 2 has been slow.
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GENERAL

A couple hundred people from all the teams in the league, and their many business partners, are in Chicago attending the 2008 MLS Business Summit.
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Beau Dure of USA Today on his blog The Netminder gives us Part 2 of his ideas to improve the league - focus on the scheduling.
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Steve Davis at MLSnet sizes up teams run for the playoffs.
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Richard Snowden at Soccer365 on AEG, designated players, money grabs, the future, cool summer breezes and much much more.
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Andrew Hush of ESPN Soccernet with his weekly league notes.
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MLS Rumor City - Don't Tease Me Bro!

The Barbados Nation News reports that Joe Public forward Gregory Richardson, the guy who torched the Revs, is being chased by Columbus, New England and San Jose.
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MLS Stadium Talk

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post with more on the latest DC stadium talk.
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The Washington Times with a look at the stadium proposal.
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USL First Division News

Minnesota Thunder

Burnaby Now previews the Minnesota v Vancouver series, from a BC point of view.
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Soccer In America

Orrin Schwarz of Chicago's Daily Herald rips into US Soccer for doing such a terrible job marketing our Men's & Women's national team games in Chicago this month. The men drew under 12,000 for a World Cup qualifier against Trinidad & Tobago and the Women drew under 6000 celebrating their Olympic gold medal v Ireland. Both games were at Toyota Park. An even bigger reason that US Soccer should be embarrassed is that the games were held in the city where their offices are. I bet most soccer fans don't know that either.
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Americans In Europe

Paul Kennedy looks at Freddy Adu's situation at Monaco. He is getting about the same amount of playing time as he had at Benfica last year - little to none. So what is going on?
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TRANSFER RUMORS

Celtic has made a bid for goalkeeper Dominic Cervi, who turned down a deal with the Chicago Fire earlier this spring, and is still teamless.
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UPCOMING MATCHES

Swedish Allsvenskan:
-Etchu Tabe - Ljungskile - play at Goteborg on Wednesday.
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DFB Pokal - German League Cup
-Bryan Arguez - Hertha Berlin - on Wednesday at Dortmund
-Kamani Hill - Wolfsburg - on Wednesday at Oberneuland
-Neven Subotic - Borussia Dortmund - on Wednesday home against Hertha
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English Carling Cup
-Brad Friedel - Aston Villa - Wednesday at home v Queen's Park Rangers
-Brad Guzan - Aston Villa - Wednesday at home v Queen's Park Rangers
-Tim Howard - Everton - Wednesday at Blackburn
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MOST RECENT MATCHES

DFB Pokal - German League Cup
-Gregg Berhalter - 1860 Munich - started and went the distance as they tied 0-0 at home against Duisburg, then he made on of the Penalty's as they advanced 5-4 on PK's after extra time.
-Michael Bradley - Monchengladbach - did not suit up as they lost 3-0 at Energie Cottbus.
-Steve Cherundolo - Hannover - not on the game day roster and they lost 2-0 at Schalke.
-Heath Pearce - Hansa Rostock - started and played 60 minutes as they won 1-2 at Eintracht Frankfurt.
-Sal Zizzo - Hannover - subbed in for the last 19 minutes but they lost 2-0 at Schalke.
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English Carling Cup
-Bobby Convey - Reading - started and went 106 minutes of a match at Stoke that went to extra time and finished tied 2-2. They will replay the game at Reading with the date TBA.
-Jay DeMerit - Watford - went the distance as they beat West Ham 1-0 at home.
-Clint Dempsey - Fulham - played all 90 minutes but lost 1-0 at Burnley.
-Marcus Hahnemann - Reading - got the day off as the team drew 2-2 at Stoke after extra time. They will replay the game at Reading with the date TBA.
-Eddie Johnson - Cardiff - started and played the first half as they lost 1-0 at Swansea.
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Mexico & FMF News

Grahame Jones of the LA Times with an article on national team coach Sven Goren Eriksson and his first few months in charge.
-Jones takes the opportunity to rip USA coaches Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley for not learning to speak Spanish like Sven is. I had no idea that Bradley & Arena had moved on to coach Mexican teams. That shrewd Grahame always has the inside scoop doesn't he? I wonder if he knows Spanish?
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FIFA.com has a Q & A with Justino Compean, president of the Mexican Football Federation, who talks about the 2011 U17 World Cup they are hosting and raves about Eriksson.
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England News

West Ham will appeal their 30 Million Pound Fine awarded to Sheffield United yesterday.
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The Guardian with an article on Arkadi Gaydamak, the controversial politician whose son owns Portsmouth.
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The Guardian also report that the big TV deals help the Premiership keep flowing smoothly even in this time of financial craziness.
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European News

GERMANY

Goalkeeper Jens Lehmann lives 150 from his club Stuttgart's training facility, and its been reported that he has frequently been taking a helicopter to go back and forth!
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ITALY

When Inter host Lecce tonight team captain Javier Zanetti is expected to make his 600th appearance. 600!!
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Football Italia reports that the government has help stop the mafia from infiltrating Palermo's plan to build a new stadium. The pressure got so bad that they team were sent a goats head by the criminals.
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World News

Our friend Andrew sent a link to this video clip called the Worst Fouls In Football History. We all know that this will be mostly from England in the last 5 or so years etc. So it doesn't live up to the title, but its pretty good.
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Jack Warner/Sepp Blatter/FIFA Idiocy & Scandal News

The Independent reports that Trinidad & Tobago has named Dwight Yorke to their roster for 2 World Cup qualifiers early next month. Let's all pray for another Roy Keane (Yorke's coach at Sunderland) v Slappy Jack mudslinging war!