Category: Section 2 Around the Net

After 2009 Italian Serie A league winner Inter Milan and Cup winner Lazio played their Super Cup match in China, the hosts complained about the clubs’ prodigious wine consumption and the insults of Inter coach Jose Mourinho. “Just on wine, they ran up a bill of 70,000 yuan ($10,240),” said Wang Bo, who looked after […]

Current Los Angeles Galaxy coach Bruce Arena coached the USA in Azteca Stadium three times: a 1-0 overtime loss in the 1999 Confederations Cup semifinal and 1-0 and 2-1 losses in World Cup qualifiers in 2001 and 2005. But he guided the USA to its greatest win over Mexico, the 2-0 victory in the round […]

Steven Gerrard has pulled out of the England squad for Wednesday’s friendly against the Netherlands in Amsterdam because of a groin strain. He is replaced by Aston Villa’s Ashley Young, who has five England caps. While training on Monday, Gerrard felt a slight soreness in the leg and it was decided to pull him out […]

The Argentine league season, whose Aug. 14 start date was postponed because of severe financial problems facing the country’s top clubs, could kick off Aug. 21 amid a proposed government takeover of television rights to the games. The government has proposed paying the clubs $154 million for rights to televise the season, which would force […]

In an attempt to discover whether refs favor the home team, researchers showed one group of refs videotapes of tackles in the English Premier League with the sound off while another group of refs viewed the tackles with the sound on. The group that watched with the sound off called 15.5 percent fewer fouls against […]

Mexico's higher seeding than the USA at the 2006 World Cup resulted in the USA's placement in more difficult group (Italy, Czech Republic, Ghana), from which it exited in the first round while Mexico advanced from a group with Iran, Angola and Portugal. U.S. coach Bob Bradley addressed whether he believed the result of Wednesday's […]

The 23-year-old Longview, Texas, native Jose Francisco Torres has the tools to revolutionize the U.S. national team, says Sports Illustrated’s Jonah Freedman. But that doesn’t mean Coach Bob Bradley will take him off the bench on Wednesday against Mexico, where Torres plays for Pachuca, the club he joined while in high school. “The young midfielder […]

Freddy Adu may be on the verge of joining Odense BK in Denmark on a one-year loan from his Portuguese club Benfica, which last season loaned him out to French Ligue 1 club Monaco, where he sat on the bench. Adu, 20, recently denied a reported move back to FC Dallas in MLS and said […]

If the USA manages to get a result in Mexico City it will likely be thanks to Landon Donovan. The USA is 7-1-2 against Mexico in the 10 games that Donovan has played and 4-0-0 in games in which he has scored against Mexico. Donovan, the USA's all-time scoring leader with 41 goals in 115 […]

In an effort to stem its recent run of poor form, the Seattle Sounders FC veterans took the first hour of Monday’s training to refocus the team. They took turns sharing anecdotes about past struggles and the tactics they used to overcome them. The Sounders were routed 4-0 by San Jose and 1-0 by Real […]

Jozy Altidore, the 19-year-old U.S. striker, was granted a UK work permit and has officially joined English Premier League club Hull on a one-year loan deal from Spain's Villarreal. Altidore joined Villarreal a year ago from the New York Red Bulls. His deal includes an option for Hull to make the move permanent next summer. […]

"There is no escape, nor should there be, from the shocking news that the heart of a top sportsman in the prime of his life has ceased beating for no detectable reason," writes Rob Hughes of the abrupt, and seemingly unexplainable, death of 26-year-old Espanyol captain Dani Jarque on Saturday. The abrupt death marks "the […]

"Like Tony Meola, Brad Friedel and Kasey Keller before him, (Tim) Howard is preparing to accept one of the toughest assignments in all of world soccer: Mexico at their Estadio Azteca," reads the introduction to an exclusive interview on FIFA.com, but the Top Goalkeeper recipient from the Confederations Cup is confident and cautiously optimistic about […]

In part one of a rare but extensive and forthright FIFA.com interview with the Argentine living legend, Diego Maradona opens up about a host of topics, from the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to coach La Albiceleste ("I've been through some difficult times but I managed to pull myself together, and here I am in charge of the […]

Despite being familiar with signature styles of almost all of Real Madrid's other-worldly individuals, turns out they're a lot easier to defend when you're watching them on the tube. "You see them on TV all the time and you know their moves, but when they do it, they do it so well that it's almost […]

Just in case we the American soccer fans were getting comfortable seeing David Beckham standing over free kicks and lifting his club back to the top tier in MLS, England manager Fabio Capello offered up a matter-of-fact threat to the 34-year-old. "Beckham knows well that if he doesn't return to a big European league in […]

Part cocky declaration and part call-to-action, an open letter from team president and CEO Kevin Payne that was placed in the pages of Monday's Washington Post attempts to serve the dual purpose of reminding the city that, simply put, "we win trophies," as well as imploring fans to come out as they "try to add […]

I’m glad I’m not the only U.S. soccer fan out there wondering why the U.S. men’s national team won’t be spending more than 24 hours’ time in Mexico City to get accustomed to the exhausting altitude before Wednesday’s match at Estadio Azteca, as SI.com writer Grant Wahl investigates the reasoning behind and the potential detriments […]

My, how time flies. It was just 10 years ago when Major League Soccer was three and a half years old and "suffering through some painful growing processes," writes Steve Davis, with "one, lone soccer-specific stadium" and most teams "treading water at best," where "'diversity of ownership' meant the three guys sitting around a small […]

Having not been together in three months' time (almost an eternity in international soccer scheduling), the U.S. men's national team's "2½-hour flight from Miami to Costa Rica marks the beginning of a summer-long world tour that will feature 14 matches on three continents and in four time zones," writes writer Wayne Dreh in the first […]

You'd think that starting a soccer team "that will have the same name and wear the same uniform as Mexico's most popular team" in a place like Southern California that happens to "home to more Mexicans than in 29 of the 31 Mexican states" would pretty much guarantee success, if not always on the field […]

While rival Barcelona has stolen the show of the Stateside "Summer of Soccer" so far, don't expect Real Madrid to play second fiddle on their North American tour like they were forced to in La Liga last season. With the free-spending Spanish giants having now reached our shores, it's clear that the super club wants […]

Jorge Vergara's straightforward but often defiant style, witnessed in small part by his refusal to wear socks (like, ever), "hasn't always played well in the button-down Mexican business world," but "it's not the only sector of Mexican society the iconoclastic Vergara is shaking up," claims Kevin Baxter on location in the capital of Jalisco. "In […]

Honestly, is there anything the Sounders can't do this year? As if leading the league with average crowds of around 30,000 (almost twice the overall MLS mark), and serving up a second coming of expansion team-turned-overnight success (doing their best to following in the footsteps of the 1998 Chicago Fire) wasn't enough to make them […]

Somewhere in all the drama, tension and backlash surrounding "the book," "the handshake" and "the other handshake," David Beckham's mid-season arrival, while "still a circus" (according to the man himself), has been less of an off-field distraction and more of an on-field boon to the previously stagnant Galaxy, boosting them not just in spirit but […]