Monthly Archives: April 2008

Argentine stars Marcelo Gallardo and Guillermo Barros Schelotto — rivals for many years with River Plate and Boca Juniors, respectively — will meet Thursday when D.C. United hosts the Columbus Crew in an Eastern Conference match at RFK Stadium. For all this week’s MLS TV schedule …

[OFF THE POST] New York contemporary artist Spencer Tunick is famous for photographing people in the nude — thousands at a time — and he plans on photographing 2,008 soccer fans inside Vienna Ernst Happel Stadium, site of the final of the 2008 European Championship Austria and Switzerland are co-hosting.

[FRANCE] Amateur club Carquefou’s fairly tale run in the French Cup ended when the fifth division club lost to relegation-threatened Paris St. Germain, 1-0. Portuguese veteran Pauleta‘s 28th goal in 23 French Cup games earned PSG the win before a sellout crowd of 40,000 in Nantes.

[SPAIN] Valencia won the Copa del Rey, the Spanish Cup, for the seventh time when it beat Getafe, 3-1, on Wednesday in Madrid to salvage its troubled season.

[INTERNATIONAL FRIENDLY] The fourth largest soccer crowd in Seattle history watched Mexico beat China, 1-0, Wednesday in a friendly game that marked Jesus Ramirez‘s debut as interim national team coach.

[YOUTH] The U.S. under-20 national team made up for an embarrassing 3-1 loss to the tiny Cape Verde Islands in their opening game with a 3-0 win over Northern Ireland on Wednesday at the Torneio Campos Verdes 2008 in Beja, Portugal.

[MLS] The Major League Soccer Disciplinary Committee suspended Houston Dynamo defender Eddie Robinson three games and fined him $1,000 for an elbow to the head of Kansas City Wizards defender Tyson Wahl during the Dynamo’s 0-0 tie at Kansas City on April 12.

[EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES] Soccer America provides the latest on employment opportunities for soccer-related positions, They include college coaching opportunities, as well as opportunities in pro soccer, youth soccer, the soccer industry and television.

South Carolina’s Spring Valley and Georgia’s Parkview remained the top boys and girls teams, respectively, in the NSCAA/adidas Spring High School Rankings. For the boys and girls Top 20 rankings …

Miami’s Varela and Wilson of Long Beach, Calif., finished as the top-ranked boys and girls teams, respectively, in the NSCAA/adidas Winter High School Rankings. Varela won Florida’s Class 6A championship in a shootout. Wilson finished as California’s Southern Section Division I co-champion with No. 8 San Clemente. For all the final boys and girls national rankings …

CASL rallied for a 2-1 win over South Charlotte, its sixth victory in a row, and maintained ts lead atop the Atlantic Conference in the U.S. Soccer Development Academy’s U-17/18 Age Group. Other U-17/18 conference leaders: B/W Gottschee and FC Westchester (Northeast), New York Red Bulls (Mid-Atlantic), Columbus Crew (Great Lakes), Concorde Fire (Southeast), U.S. youth national team (Mid-America), Arsenal FC (So Cal) and Real Colorado (West).

[MAKING A LIST] Legendary Alfredo Di Stefano edged out Zinedine Zidane as Real Madrid’s all-time best player in a poll of Real Madrid fans conducted at the Spanish club’s Web site.

[MEXICO] For the moment, Jesus Ramirez‘s commitment to coach the Mexico national team is only three games, the first of which takes place on Wednesday when the Tri faces China in Seattle. Ramirez, who led Mexico to the 2005 Under-17 World Cup title, was named interim coach after Hugo Sanchez was fired following Mexico’s failure to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.

[MLS] The final day before the close of MLS’s main transfer window was relatively quiet as the only announced transfer was the Columbus Crew’s signing of Nigerian under-23 national team midfielder Emmanuel Ekpo from Enyimba International FC.

FC Dallas is one of only two teams unbeaten after three weeks of play in MLS, but FCD players aren’t happy about their play. Dallas beat New York, 2-0, last weekend to move into second place with a 1-0-2 record, a point behind surprising Western Conference leader Colorado. Yet those ties felt like losses; in both games, FCD conceded late equalizers, which a revamped defense is supposed to avoid, right?