Author Archives: Paul Kennedy

[USL-1] The Carolina RailHawks won a pair of games on the road and remained first place in the USL First Division, three points ahead of Charleston, which was also victorious in both of its games last week. For all the USL-1 action …

[AMERICANS ABROAD] It was a big weekend for Americans abroad as Maurice Edu and Oguchi Onyewu, both U.S. national team players of Nigerian descent, captured European league titles, while Texan Jose Francisco Torres moved closer to winning the Mexican Clausura championship. On the final day of play in England, a pair of Americans were victorious in games that sent Northeast giants Newcastle and Middlesbrough packing from the Premier League

[GERMANY] Before the season, Coach Felix Magath didn’t believe his team his team had a chance of winning, but Wolfsburg won its first Bundesliga title when it beat Werder Bremen, 5-1, on the final day of the season and edged Bayern Munich by two points. Brazilian Grafite scored twice to finish as Bundesliga top scorer with 28 goals and Bosnian Edin Dzeko scored once to finish with 26, making Wolfsburg the first Bundesliga team to have two 20-plus goalscorers. Their 54 combined goals also set a new Bundesliga record.

[CONFEDERATIONS CUP]  Ronaldinho won’t be playing in next month’s Confederations Cup. Nor will Ronaldo. But Brazil coach Dunga found room for three uncapped  players who will part of the 23-player squad for World Cup qualifiers against Uruguay and Paraguay and the Confederations Cup in South Africa.

[WORLD 2010 QUALIFYING] Chicago Fire defender Bakary Soumare has been recalled by Mali for a pair of World Cup qualifiers against Ghana and Benin June 7 and 21.

[AMERICANS ABROAD] Jose Francisco Torres‘ Pachuca beat Marco Vidal‘s Indios, 2-0, in the first leg of their semifinal series in Mexico’s Torneo Clausura.

[UNDER-17 WORLD CUP] It looks like Nigeria will lose the Under-17 World Cup, which it is scheduled to host in the fall. Following an inspection tour, Concacaf president Jack Warner, who serves as chairman of the U-17 organizing committee, said he would give local organizers a month to get four prospective venues ready. Only two of the nine venues — stadiums in Abuja and Lagos — passed inspection and three others were scratched from the list.

[WPS] Boston Breakers forward Christine Latham was handed a two-game suspension — the heaviest in Women’s Professional Soccer’s short history — and Washington Freedom midfielder Joanna Lohman was suspended one game for an elbow thrown in Sunday’s Boston-Washington game. Meanwhile, Breakers coach Tony DiCicco, the dean of WPS coaches, was fined and ordered to do “community service” for saying, among other things, WPS refs were “over their head” after the game.

[UEFA CUP] German and Ukrainian teams met in the championship of the 2009 UEFA Cup, but all the goalscorers were Brazilians. Jadson‘s goal in overtime was the difference as Shakhtar Donetsk beat Werder Bremen, 2-1, in the last UEFA Cup final on Wednesday and became the first Ukrainian team to win a major European trophy since the break up of the Soviet Union.

Charlotte Moran, who played an important leadership role in the growth of women’s soccer, died early Monday morning after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Moran was involved in soccer at many levels for more than 30 years. She was the longtime executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association and administrator for the Region 1 Olympic Development Program.

[USL-1] It took six games, but the Montreal Impact, one of the favorites to win the USL First Division title, finally got its first win on Sunday. The Impact, who replaced John Limniatis as head coach with Marc Dos Santos three days earlier, blew out the Austin Aztex, 4-0, getting three goals in 11 minutes.

[WPS] Brazilian star Marta‘s first goal in four weeks gave Los Angeles a 1-0 win over Sky Blue FC, and the Sol opened up a three-point lead at the top of the Women’s Professional Soccer standings.

[WPS] The WPS weekend kicks off with the Los Angeles Sol and Sky Blue FC in the first Friday night game and the first WPS game broadcast on Universal Sports. For a look at all the weekend WPS action …

[SIGN OF THE TIMES] The “All-Stars for Hope” charity match scheduled for June 14 at Giants Stadium was scrapped because of the lack of corporate sponsors. “The current economic situation has brought down all of our hopes to organize what should have been one of the greatest soccer games in U.S. history,” the event’s Web site said. The game was supposed to feature such stars as Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry.

[SUPERLIGA] The 2009 SuperLiga competition between MLS clubs Chicago, New England, Chivas USA and Kansas City, the four 2008 playoff teams not entered in the 2009 Concacaf Champions League, and four Mexico teams will begin June 20-29 with the group stage. The competition, which concludes with the semifinals on July 15 and final on Aug. 5, also features San Luis, Santos, Tigres and Atlas, none of which qualified for the 2009 Clausura playoffs that began this week.

[AMERICANS ABROAD] It looks like U.S. national team midfielder Michael Bradley will be staying in the German Bundesliga. He played the entire 90 minutes in Borussia Moenchengladbach’s 1-0 win at Energie Cottbus that moved it into 14th place, two spots and three points out of the relegation zone with two games to go. Meanwhile, fellow U.S. midfielder Maurice Edu also went 90 minutes for Rangers, whose 1-1 tie at Hibernian may have cost it the Scottish Premier League title.

[U.S. WOMEN] A pair of friendly games — the first at home in 2009 — the U.S. women’s national team scheduled against Japan were canceled on Tuesday because of Japanese concerns with the H1N1 virus. Instead of games May 20 at Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas, and May 23 at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy, Utah, the USA will face Canada at BMO Field in Toronto on May 25 when Japan was scheduled to conclude its North American tour.

[GERMANY] Out of the doghouse since Jupp Heynckes replaced Juergen Klinsmann as Bayern Munich coach, Lukas Podolski scored one goal and set up Luca Toni and Franck Ribery as Bayern beat Bayer Leverkusen and kept pace with Wolfsburg in the sizzling Bundesliga race.

[ENGLAND] With English clubs having run up debts of 3 billion pounds ($4.56 billion), the Premier League has proposed tough measures to curb abuses and bolster transparency.

[MLS] Philadelphia, MLS’s 16th team, will be named the Union. The team name is a reference to the original thirteen colonies, while the colors of navy blue and gold are a throwback to the uniforms of the American Continental Army.

Brazilian Julio Mazzei, best known as Pele‘s adviser during his New York Cosmos and later the coach of the Cosmos when they won the 1982 North American Soccer League title, died Sunday at the age of 78 in Santos.

[AMERICANS ABROAD] Portuguese Vitoria Guimaraes club has signed 23-year-old American Kamani Hill to a three-year contract as its first reinforcement for the 2009-10 season. The former UCLA forward signed a contract with current Bundesliga leader Wolfsburg in 2006, made his debut in early 2007 but was relegated to the German club’s second team and no longer figured in its plans.