The nice thing about this time of year? We get a break from demands that MLS move to a season to align with European leagues. Something about balmy 28 degree temperatures in Chicago - and that ain't bad for this time of year - tips the balance from purity in favor of sanity.
The FA has given the green light to an anti-homophobia video. Welcome to the 21st century, chaps.
Perhaps such a video will herald the start of a campaign along the lines of the successful Kick It Out anti-racism campaign. I hope so.
However, I wonder if the FA would have taken any action against homophobia if Peter Tatchell, the tireless gay rights campaigner, had not lobbied for the video I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
Tatchell's plan 'is to feature big-name football stars speaking out against homophobia in a hip, fun video designed to make anti-gay chants look as stupid, ignorant and uncool as racist ones'.
He wants David Beckham to get involved, and it will be very interesting to see if Becks says yes. How can he not? Wayne Rooney, who is arguably the most heterosexual footballer in the Prem, is also on Tatchell's wish list. Again, how could Rooney excuse himself...click here to read more...
FIFA's Executive Committee ended it's quarterly meetings with a stunning orgy of self-congratulations, with FIFA Emperor for Life Sepp Blatter proudly announcing to everyone's great relief that the organization's coffers are bulging, and the current international financial unpleasantness will have no effect whatever on the opulent lifestyle of either himself or his assembled cronies.
Describing FIFA's financial situation as "very comfortable", he noted that some clubs and leagues around the world may be facing some difficult financial times in the coming year and he expressed FIFA's willingness to help "however we can".
That help will most assuredly not include Sepp giving them money, of course. If FIFA started giving money away to support soccer it would set an unfortunate precedent. What exactly he would be willing to do is a good question, but I imagine it would involve issuing some statements and possibly flying into town and lecturing various local Federation officials...click here to read more...
Liverpool's most valuable player so far this season? Let's hear it for Dirk Kuyt…
Well, according to official Premier League stats he is. And according to me too - although an honourable mention goes to Steven Gerrard, obviously.
I had almost hoped that the Actim stats got it wrong - they often do - so I could go on a rant about how statistics and data never tell the full story, but in this case they're bang on the money.
Yet for a while back there, it looked like Kuyt might not make it at Liverpool.
I suspect he found it hard to adapt to the Premier League for a different reason than most of the foreign players who come to England. He had almost no problem adapting to the pace and physicality of the Prem - but then you'd struggle to find a stronger, fitter player in the league.
It was the psychological adjustment that I think Kuyt found difficult...click here to read more...
We had our first real transfer news of the weekend today, some of which you can pick up in the "News" section at the top of the screen or just click here.
Manchester City have a reliable left-back now in Wayne Bridge - a proven veteran that should easily push ahead Javier Garrido and Michael Ball in the pecking order at Eastlands. It cost them, however, around $20 million or so to upgrade that spot and it came at the top of the morning before a dreadful 3-0 drubbing at the hands of Nottingham Forest. Despite pretty much always being second-choice to Ashley Cole at Chelsea, Bridge still carved out a respectable international career and delivers a decent cross from the left and solid marking. It's a shame he had to sit through that game after being "presented" to the home crowd. As for City, you can bet this won't be their last...click here to read more...
I can only applaud Phil Brown for having the balls to expose his Hull City team to a very public halftime team talk, away at Man City last week:
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Hull were 4-0 down at the time and, by all accounts, playing worse than atrociously. After the cosy chat, they perked up. City won 5-1, so at least the visitors achieved parity the second half.
Whilst I am in awe of the size of Brown's cojones, I'm not convinced it's a wise move to treat professional footballers like a class of naughty primary school kids. If Brown loses even a small section of the dressing room over...click here to read more...
"I love Wenger and everything he has done for our football club… but I’m seriously starting to question his sanity!
This current group of Arsenal player [sic], is by far the worst squad Wenger has ever had at Arsenal… it’s clear for all to see, just look at the results, this season… yet he thinks we can dominate?
Last season, we needed 2 or 3 more players to finish off the squad! Instead we lost Diarra, Flamini, Hleb, Gilberto, Senderos and a few others and he replaces them with F**K ALL (accept [sic] Nasri, who is doing well)…!!"
Comment left by 'Clock End Gooner' this week on The Spoiler, a British football blog.
Clock End Gooner might not be the most eloquent commenter in the world, but I agree with him - and there's no doubt that an increasing...click here to read more...
It's not all fun and games for Lyon at midseason for Les Gones. Claude Puel's men are 1-2-2 in their last 5 games, scoring only twice in that stretch, and lack the consistency of years past. In spite of recent form, they still find themselves 3 points clear with Bordeaux and Marseille in tow. Leading scorer Karim Benzema has 10 at the half and now that the silly season is upon us, Jean-Michel Aulas and Claude Puel's main focus is holding on to the youngster while strengthening their squad around him. Aside from Benzema, there has been very little production from players like Fred, Kader Keita, and Frederic Piquionne. They might still be able to scrape by but with the firepower Marseille and Bordeaux have up front this year, if more don't share the load with Benzema - Lyon will lose the title. Cris has led Lyon once again on the defensive front but...click here to read more...
The 08/09 campaign is already half done, and I still have little idea who's going to win the league and who's going down. That's a good thing.
Anyhow, here's my team of the season so far, with no particular formation in mind:
Mark Schwarzer (Fulham)
Chelsea are the only team to have conceded fewer than ten goals in the league, but I think Fulham's 14 goals against is way more impressive (Arsenal, for example, have already conceded 23 goals), especially when you consider the relative merits of both sets of defenders. Much of the credit for Fulham's new-found meanness goes to the excellent Schwarzer, who is having one of the best seasons of his career.
Jose Bosingwa (Chelsea)
He's adapted to the Prem about as fast as any non-British player I've seen. One of Chelsea's best buys in recent seasons, Bosingwa is blazingly fast and so willing a...click here to read more...
More football gold, mined from my ever-failing memory (check out Part 1)…
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6. The Legend of Darren Huckerby
He is a legendary legend, apparently. And that's no joke. I heart Huckerby, and so does MLS - he was voted the league's Newcomer of the Year in '08. So what if he's 32 years old.
7. Chelsea selling Robinho shirts online
It couldn't happen to a nicer club. Which is not to say that I hate Chelsea - I just don't...click here to read more...
With the winter break upon us, the Bundesliga is crowded at the top. Hoffenheim is obviously the surprise at the top here, first Bundesliga season and all. They have an arsenal of offensive weapons that are now known throughout the league - Obasi, Ba, Ibisevic - and with a new stadium in Sinnsheim being formally opened near the end of the winter break, they might actually have a shot at the unthinkable. Whereas Hoffenheim have adopted an aggressively offensive tactic, the other surprise at the top of the table - Hertha Berlin - relies on the opposite. Hertha - mid-table last year - have scored only 23 goals so far but given up only 19, best in the league. They don't dominate and rely on timely goals and if you take out...click here to read more...
This caught me a little by surprise, to be honest. I'm way behind on forming fiery opinions based on nothing but third-hand reports from Yanks Abroad and BigSoccer fora. Worse still, I've completely forgotten who our savior is this month. Is it still Kenny Cooper? Or have we moved on to Lee Nguyen?
God, and I haven't even begun demanding that Sunil hire a foreign coach already, in order to give the Yaks legitimacy in the eyes of the world. I was distracted by Sven-Goran Eriksson re-enacting Hernan Cortes bringing Mexico the gift of smallpox.
I can't wait to read the roster. It's like a late Christmas present, or a slightly late Hanukkah present - you know, those horrible waxy chocolate coins that I guess they ate at Masada or whatever the hell Hanukkah commemorates. At last, something to talk about besides god-damned promotion and relegation.
Ooh - the headlines say it's MLS-heavy! God, this is going to be great. Is there anything US fans hate more than MLS players?...click here to read more...
Tis the season for arbitrary lists and awards. In that spirit, here are my favourite football moments of the year, in no particular order:
1. John Terry's penalty missin the Champions League final
I don't like John Terry much. I don't like his chavvy hairstyle, I don't like his yobbish past, I don't like his parking etiquette, I don't like the way he always calls Frank Lampard 'Lampsy' and Wayne Rooney 'Wazza'. I do like the fact that Terry has to live forever with the knowledge that he choked from the penalty spot - yeah, he slipped, but he slipped because he choked - in the biggest match of his career. I like that a lot.
I had to share this magical video with you. It stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Wazza Rooney, and it could only happen in Japan (immediately after the final whistle in the Club World Cup final, to be exact)…
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In the future, all post-match interviews should be conducted this way: the man (or men) of the match walk straight off the pitch and into a purpose-built TV studio filled with extremely excitable Japanese people.
Favourite moment: How scared Ronaldo is throughout the whole affair. He manages to conceal his alarm behind a goofy grin, but you know he's thinking,...click here to read more...
We all heard and read about Klaas-Jan Huntelaar's high profile, 20-million Euro move to Real Madrid, but with Ajax fans remembering his prolific past and the still somewhat-fresh departure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, many were wondering - who takes Huntelaar's place as the next dangerous striker from Amsterdam?
Dario Cvitanich made a HUGE statement yesterday as Ajax seemed fully prepared to go hunting for a new striker come January 1st as a replacement for Klaas-Jan Huntelaar. Huntelaar, now a Real Madrid man, scored 79 goals in only 97 appearances for Ajax and Cvitanich was bought some time before as a possible successor. The verdict is still out on the Argentine-Croatian, but he's made his presence known early on, dampening the effect Huntelaar's exit has had on the team. Yesterday, he hit for a hat-trick against ADO Den Haag giving him 5 goals in the past...click here to read more...
How about some random notes? What? Random notes blogs suck, because they're a cheap substitute for actually thinking through a topic? Because it takes a truly special kind of hack to punt something as basic as premise, evidence, conclusion?
Look, dudes, it's the holiday season, all right? I'm waiting on stuff to happen, and it they're not happening right now. You think I didn't notice the last couple of posts here? How WPS handles the Marta contract will pretty much shape the direction of the entire league. If she takes the field for the Satellite of Love, we argue about whether we have WUSA Twosa on our hands. If she doesn't, we argue about whether we have a W-League putting on airs.
Usually I Haughtily Disapprove of Rumors, but at least Ms. Striker is following up on the story, which is going to be a turning point in the history of the club game. No, she should not have headlined her previous post "Done Deal!" Yes, if...click here to read more...
I must say - and this is not a suck-up to American readers - that my high point of the Prem's mainly 'meh' holiday programme was Deuce Dempsey's brace against Chelsea.
Thing is, I really thought Dempsey wouldn't make it in the Prem. And not because he wasn't good enough - I just thought he'd slip through the cracks.
We can all argue about which of Europe's premier leagues is the best, but I don't think there's any doubt that when it comes to acclimatisation, the English Prem is by far the toughest. A lot of very good players - players who have shone at World Cups, for example - have failed to survive one season in the EPL (there, I've said it - sometimes an acronym has its uses). Not because they weren't good enough, but because they weren't prepared for the ride.
Indeed, I've lost count of the number of non-English players who have tasted the Prem and, after a few months, trotted out...click here to read more...
First up: I hope everyone out there on 'the internets', as I prefer to call it - it's an OCD-style thing I have right now, which involves adding an 's' to every damn word - had/is still having a wonderful holiday.
After a week in the wilderness, I am now back in Wi-Fi range, so I can return to writing about what's been going down - and up - in the Premier League since I last posted.
I'll post later today about what's happened on the pitch, but first I wanted to scribble down a few words on The Unfortunate Nightclub Incident That Might, Very Allegedly, Have Involved Steven Gerrard.
Gerrard's alleged assault in a Southport nightclub is, depressingly, the top story on most English national newspapers' websites (you can watch a BBC report on the story here).
First thoughts? Something like: 'Oh no, not Stevie G, I thought he was better than that.'
Catching up with various happenings, non-happenings and could-be happenings:
Some people are saying I've been surly and grinch-like about some of the - OK, MOST of the - MLS expansion candidates. Miami fans in particular seem outraged that someone came right out and mentioned some actual facts and stuff. Apparently, that's not permitted.
Well, tough titties, guys. This is the big leagues. Unlike your high school teachers, it's not my job to make you feel good about yourself. Whine, cry, hold your breath until you turn blue, nobody cares. Your bid seems to involve long-term residence at FIU, with artifical turf and few amenities, and very few people consider that optimal.
Even Seattle fans seem to get all riled up when someone mentions that they have a 70,000 seat football stadium with artificial turf. Sorry guys, but it's a fact. Scream all you want at how rude it is of people to mention it, but at the end of the day, when you get done namecalling and foot-stomping, your team still...click here to read more...
It's the holidays, of course, and so I plan to celebrate a very traditional Christmas. Tonight I'm going to make a Palestinian family sleep in a barn, and tomorrow I'll go through the county killing every male child two years old or younger. After all, King Herod is the reason for the season.*
If you were thinking of getting me anything...and I can pretty much tell you weren't...don't bother. I got a free book already. Months ago.
See, the nice people at The Overlook Press sent me a copy of David Winner's book about Dutch football, "Brilliant Orange," available on Amazon...which site now screws up url links so here's the publisher link instead.
The reason for the book's re-release was Euro 2008, in which, we recall, the Dutch were one of the favorites. "Hm, either another Euro win, or another heartbreaking loss, would be an interesting bit of perspective on the...click here to read more...
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