Category: Section 2 Around the Net

So Major League Soccer approved the so-called “Beckham Rule,” which allows teams to acquire one player each beyond the $2 million per-team salary cap. Just imagine, if you will, being a teammate of either David Beckham, Ronaldo, or Luis Figo, knowing full well that your team is most likely paying him up to five times […]

Thanks to two fantastic strikes from Wayne Rooney that saved a sub-par Man Utd in Sheffield, and a compulsory win for Chelsea at home to West Ham, the hype surrounding next weekend’s clash at Old Trafford between top of the table Manchester United and No. 2 Chelsea may now begin. Both games this weekend were […]

Dutch winger Arjen Robben is getting fed up with his lack of first-team action at Chelsea this year, according to a BBC report. The 22-year-old faces stiff competition for places in Chelsea’s midfield, which usually consists of Michael Ballack, Frank Lampard, Michael Essien and Claude Makelele. Manager Jose Mourinho sometimes deploys Robben as a forward, […]

It seems like Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says it every year, but he thinks captain Thierry Henry deserves this year’s Ballon d’Or, the prize France Football gives out to the best player in Europe over the last year. Wenger has a point: like Spain and Real Madrid forward Raul in the late 1990s and early […]

The renovation of Wembley Stadium has to go down as one of the worst stadium construction disasters in the history of sport. In fact, the Guardian tells how the English Football Association almost fell apart as a result of the botched project. Wembley National Stadium Limited is the wholly owned subsidiary of English soccer’s governing […]

When soccer players retire, the logical next step is usually a career in management or as a TV commentator, but Brad Friedel, former U.S. national team goalkeeper and long-time veteran of the English Premier League, has bigger ideas: he wants to take on a social problem plaguing the sport in his country. Once he retires […]

Real Salt Lake has become the first team in a major American sports league to display a sponsor’s name on its jersey, according to the Associated Press. Utah-based juice company XanGo, which markets itself as a dietary supplement has reportedly signed a deal worth $4-$5 million to place its brand on the Major League Soccer […]

Klinsmann or no Klinsmann (or Argentine Pekerman, as Los Angeles daily La Opinion is now reporting to be the new U.S. coach), the U.S. Soccer has agreed to its first friendly of 2007, which will be played against Denmark in the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif. It will be the U.S. national team’s first […]

Hungarian legend Ferenc Puskas, considered by many to be among the greatest soccer players of all time, lost his battle with pneumonia Friday morning at the age of 79. Jonathan Wilson of The Guardian calls him “one of the two greatest European players of all time,” alongside Dutch master Johan Cruyff. Puskas played on the […]

Former U.S. coach Bruce Arena, who opted to leave Freddy Adu off his 23-man roster for the World Cup this summer, has lauded the 17-year old as the “first superstar” of American soccer. “Freddy is without doubt the most talented kid we’ve ever seen at his age,” Arena said of the Ghanaian-born player who’s on […]

Theoretically, Major League Soccer expansion team Toronto FC could field an entire starting 11 of former U.S. internationals next season based on the players MLS clubs have made available for tomorrow’s draft. It would certainly be a team of aging internationals, but the fact that so many former national team members are available highlights the […]

Freddy Adu shows up next week to start training with Manchester United, and the press is getting ready. Just about every major British paper has included some kind of story on the 17-year old Ghanaian American’s two-week training session. They’re all wondering, of course, whether the hype surrounding the kid is even justified. It’s important […]

So England didn’t lose to the Netherlands Thursday-in fact it didn’t even play badly-but even a “creditable” 1-1 draw in Amserdam can’t hide the fact that England is currently losing the battle to qualify for Euro 2008, writes The Guardian’s Trevor Higgins. After Croatia’s 4-3 victory over Israel and Russia’s 2-0 win in Macedonia, England […]

Real Madrid is on the cusp of signing a massive TV deal that will bring the club $1 billion over the next seven years, President Ramon Calderon announced Thursday. While the contract for domestic games isn’t worth as much per year as rival Barcelona’s is-the Catalans will receive $154 million per season in domestic TV […]

It could be that West Ham’s Argentine pair, Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano, will the leave the club in as swift and bizarre a fashion as they arrived, according to a Guardian report. After flopping badly so far in England, where neither player speaks English, Brazilian club Flamengo has expressed an interest in returning the […]

According to Football Italia, reports in France pip Real Madrid defender Fabio Cannavaro to win this year’s Ballon d’Or over his Italy teammate Gianluigi Buffon. The award, called the Golden Ball in English, is given out annually by France Football magazine, and is voted on by members of the European sporting press. To qualify, a […]

Tonight’s friendly between the Netherlands and England at the Amsterdam ArenA tonight is more than meaningless filler for this week’s international break-for England, that is. Friendlies are often dismissed as irrelevant, and as far as the record books are concerned, they are, but Steve McClaren’s England side isn’t exactly in what you’d call a rich […]

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z45-HBtrAqg The European press is in raptures over the crisis at Italian giant AC Milan, writes Roberto Gotta of Soccernet. When the mighty fall, you can count on the press to take pictures and count the number of pieces. This time, that number is four losses in Milan’s last five Serie A games; it’s now […]

Sir Alex Ferguson is demanding a seventh straight English Premier League win from his Red Devils on Saturday ahead of Manchester United’s crucial Premiership showdown with second-place Chelsea at Old Trafford the following week. Saturday’s match is against lowly Sheffield United, a club that’s recorded just one win at home this season. “The game with […]

For five New England Revolution players, Shalrie Joseph, Jay Heaps, Daniel Hernandez, Steve Ralston, and Taylor Twellman, Sunday’s MLS Cup loss was particularly hard to take, writes Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe. It was their third MLS Cup final loss in a New England shirt, after twice losing 1-0 to the Los Angeles Galaxy […]

Being at the top isn’t getting any easier for Barcelona. The Spanish champion lost two more of its strikers during Sunday’s rousing contest against Real Zaragoza, which the Catalans won 3-1 thanks to the set-piece brilliance of Ronaldinho, who scored from one free kick and made another in the final four minutes of the game […]

Soccernet’s Phil Ball tells the interesting story of Rafael Guerrero, possibly the most famous linesman in the game, certainly the most famous linesman in Spain’s La Liga. He is known as “Rafa no me jodas” Guerrero for the words spoken by a match referee to him in a game involving Zaragoza and Barcelona 10 years […]

By several accounts, New England Revolution midfielder Clint Dempsey played his last game in a Revs shirt on Sunday when his team lost, 4-3, on penalties to the Houston Dynamo in the MLS Cup final. The 2006 Honda U.S. Soccer Player of Year has made no secret of the fact that he wants to play […]

Don’t believe AC Milan’s board when they declare that the Rossoneri’s challenge for this year’s Scudetto isn’t over. Now 20 points behind leaders Inter Milan and Palermo, it would be nothing short of a miracle if Milan was able to overcome that kind of deficit to claim the top spot in Serie A. Even without […]

It seems that every season, one of Serie A’s giants endures a run of luck that’s bad enough to amaze even neutral observers. Match-fixing and conspiracy theories aside, without a doubt the club with the unshakable black cloud hanging over its head this season is AC Milan. At the very beginning of the season, Milan […]