Category: Section 2 Around the Net

Frank Lampard, former two-time England Player of the Year, was once again booed by the Lions’ faithful following England’s 3-0 victory over Estonia at Wembley on Saturday. Coming on as a 70th-minute substitute for Michael Owen, Lampard was unmistakably jeered onto the pitch. How, asks the Independent’s Jason Burt, has the Chelsea midfielder fallen so […]

We’re now into the last week of the regular season and the MLS playoff picture should be coming into focus, yet it remains extraordinarily muddled, with four closely linked teams battling for the final two playoff spots. Washington Post Soccer Insider Steven Goff breaks down the possibilities that would any combination of Chicago, Los Angeles, […]

Luis Arroyave of the Chicago Tribune takes a look at what David Beckham and Cuauhtemoc Blanco have brought to their teams and to MLS this season ahead of their potentially crucial head-to-head clash at Toyota Park this weekend. We say “potentially crucial” because the L.A. Galaxy has to beat New York on Thursday to retain […]

Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe has the final 2007 home attendance figures for the New England Revolution. The Revs brought in 251,812 fans for 15 regular season home games this season, averaging 16,787 fans per game — far better than the 11,786 average the team posted in 2006. Had the season gone on longer, […]

Ostracized by his club but loved by his country, Juan Roman Riquelme delivered another virtuoso performance for Argentina this weekend, powering the albiocelestes to a 2-0 win against Chile in Buenos Aires on Saturday. Riquelme scored from two nearly identical looping free kicks  into the upper left hand corner of his net. Both shots left […]

With three games to play, Germany on Saturday became the first nation to qualify for the Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. If the unbeaten Germans continue their form, the team is likely to secure the last remaining seed, as the team with the best record during qualification. However, General Manager Oliver Bierhoff hopes that […]

Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger and others have railed against FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s proposal to introduce a foreign player quota. A few weeks ago, the FIFA President floated the idea, claiming that a foreign player quota would encourage greater competition in the world’s biggest leagues, which are often dominated by a handful of clubs. Wenger […]

UEFA President Michel Platini adamantly opposes the idea of using video replay to make on-field decisions, saying the introduction of technology would disrupt the flow of matches and bring about the end of traditional refereeing. “Video is a big problem for me. You would have to stop the game every 10 seconds, for every decision […]

Despite returning to top form, Real Madrid striker Raul has once again been left off of Luis Aragones’ national team squad, a decision that’s drawn the ire of soccer officials and media critics across Spain. Raul has scored four goals and three assists in nine games so far this year, recalling the form of his […]

David Beckham may be back training full-time with the L.A. Galaxy, but team GM Alexi Lalas says he’s unlikely to return against Toronto FC this weekend. “The good news is that he is training and doing everything that all the other players are doing,” Lalas told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday. “I doubt […]

In a perfect world, national team coaches would be able to call up the best players to play for their country all the time. But, as the International Herald Tribune’s Rob Hughes points out, things like injuries, egos, politics and poor decision-making always get in the way. In England, the politics of club vs. country […]

As long as you’re not worried about the immense salary gap it causes between the few MLS-haves and the multitude of MLS have-nots, the Designated Player Rule has been a resounding success. New York DP Juan Pablo Angel has unquestionably been one of the league’s best players, while Chicago’s mid-season arrival Cuauhtemoc Blanco just may […]

Jozy Altidore stars in another “Next Big Thing” article, this one from ABC News. This could be his last season in MLS. Altidore turns 18 on Nov. 6, making him eligible to move abroad. And after a string of impressive performances for both the New York Red Bulls and the U-20 national team at the […]

To the surprise of many — including a few sportswriters who live in the country — South Africa continues to pass FIFA’s regular progress inspections in preparation for hosting the 2010 World Cup. During the most recent visit, South African organizers brought executives from the game’s world governing body on a tour to the four […]

Grant Wahl of SI.com has a lengthy article on the coach’s son, national team midfielder Michael Bradley, who Wahl says is arguably the most improved U.S. player in the past year. He’s also played a heck of a lot of soccer: in addition to the nine months Bradley’s put in for Heerenveen, he’s also made […]

The long-awaited season debut of AC Milan striker Ronaldo could finally happen after the international break, which ends after next Wednesday’s games. “The doctors have given me good news about Ronaldo,” Vice President Adriano Galliani said earlier this week, suggesting that the Brazilian striker would be fit to play Empoli on Oct. 21. Billed by […]

The FIFA World Player of the Year shortlist, which is long at 30 players, was released on Wednesday, featuring five players from 2006 world champion Italy, four from England, four from France, three from Brazil and three from Argentina. Italy’s national team candidates include defending World Player of the Year Fabio Cannavaro of Real Madrid, goalkeeper […]

Bob Bradley’s roster says it all. While it’s nice to see fresh faces like Preston Zimmerman, Freddy Adu and Sal Zizzo on the U.S. national team squad to face Switzerland, it’s frustrating to see the national team coach in a position where he can’t call on his best domestic-based players. As USSoccerPlayers’ Ian Plenderleith points […]

Just three months into his five-year MLS adventure, David Beckham has once again found himself in the position of having to prove people wrong. A pair of injuries restricted him to just three league appearances, and five overall, causing many to brand Beckham as “a bust, a distraction to his struggling team, and a malingering, […]

If David Beckham’s attitude toward artificial turf is anything to gauge by, his England teammates could be in for an equally unhappy time when they face Russia in a Euro 2008 qualifier in Moscow next Wednesday. The capital city’s Luzhniki Stadium had field turf installed in 2002 due to the country’s particularly harsh winters. The […]

U.S. soccer fans will recognize the attitude displayed by former Germany coach Juergen Klinsmann in a recent interview with the London Times. The Southern California resident makes it abundantly clear that he isn’t going to work on anyone’s terms but his own. Last April, then-Portsmouth football directorAvram Grant traveled to Klinsmann’s California home to try […]

Several pundits have noted that Landon Donovan’s name seems to draw all kinds of reactions from American soccer fans. Many of these are equally ambivalent about the 25-year-old striker, who last week won an unprecedented fourth Honda U.S. Player of the Year award, but most, if not all, would begrudgingly accept that Donovan is the […]

Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe says that Major League Soccer’s expansion plans are over-extending its teams, whose financial constraints keep them from having a big enough squad to handle mounting fixture lists. One obvious example is the Los Angeles Galaxy, which will have played 41 games this year not including the playoffs, and while […]

After David Beckham limped off the field once again nearly a month and a half ago, L.A. Galaxy and league officials must have started looking towards next season: their publicity rainmaker would likely miss the rest of the season, and the Galaxy’s playoff hopes, already bad, looked even worse. And so it is — or […]

Had it not been for an ill-timed ankle sprain, Johann Smith might have become a household name this summer along with the other stars of the U.S. team that reached the quarterfinals of the U-20 World Cup in Canada. As Coach Thomas Rongen tells ESPN, Smith “would have played a very important role with us” […]