Category: Section 2 Around the Net

Italian Christian Vieri, recently linked to a move to MLS’s Los Angeles Galaxy, says he’ll try his luck at poker while continuing his search for a new club. The 35-year-old forward quit Serie A side Atalanta after fans jeered him during a training session. “I enjoy cards a lot,” Vieri told Sportweek magazine, “but my […]

Former China national team striker Gao Hongbo was named as the new national team coach on Thursday. At 43, he is the youngest coach in 30 years. The popular Gao was sent to a closed camp for a three-day grilling by federation officials in February with three other candidates. China failed to qualify for the […]

FIFA released the results of the first-phase lottery for World Cup 2010 tickets, and more tickets were issued to residents of the United States than any other country besides host South Africa. A total of 1,862,319 tickets were requested from 205 countries, and 555,871 tickets were drawn. Americans were issued 69,208 tickets. British fans received […]

Fox’s acquisition of the UEFA Champions League’s U.S. TV rights, beginning next season, means that American fans may not have to put up with Tommy Smyth much longer. As Steven Wells notes in the Sport Blog, “fans will be hearing a lot less of quite possibly the world’s most hated sports commentator …” Smyth acknowledged […]

Twenty years after 96 men, women and children, all Liverpool fans, were crushed to death at the start of the English FA Cup semifinal at Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium, Rob Hughes reports that a lot has changed in English soccer. The death traps that were English stadiums with standing sections and movable metal fences are gone. […]

Merritt Paulson‘s father, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, pushed for quick passage of last fall’s financial bailout dubbed the Paulson Plan. Now Merritt Paulson is asking the City of Portland to move quickly on a redevelopment plan that includes the renovation of PGE Park, the home of the future MLS Portland team. Some are […]

When a goalkeeper gives up seven goals in his last two home games, it’s probably time to make a change, but Chelsea manager Guus Hiddink backs goalkeeper Petr Cech. “He is a very intelligent and self-critical goalkeeper,” said Hiddink. After giving up three goals in the 4-3 win over Bolton on Saturday, Cech conceded four […]

Washington fans were hoping that the return of Christian Gomez would reignite D.C. United, which won one MLS Cup and two Supporters’ Shields during the Argentine’s first stint with the club but failed to make the playoffs without him in 2008. But the Argentine has yet to rediscover the form that made him at MLS […]

Thomas Veit, who has had front-office stints in MLS with Tampa Bay and the MetroStars, has been named president of Keystone Sports & Entertainment, the ownership group of MLS Philadelphia 2010.  He will oversee all business matters relating to the new MLS team and the construction  of its stadium in Chester and will report directly […]

“I compare Sunday to Christmas, and we’re the parents, working behind the scenes to get everything ready.” President Peter Wilt gets ready for the Chicago Red Stars’ first home game. They’re the last Women’s Professional Soccer team to open at home.

In these times, “the audacity of hope” is a term that you most likely connect with a man named Obama, but MLSnet.com’s Steve Davis makes a case that it’s that same dare-to-dream confidence that helps soccer players who possess it “more likely to come shining through” and that more often that not, “bold, aggressive action […]

At age 26, standing tall at 6-foot-4 and with a wealth of international experience to his credit, from the youth level to the full national team, it’s no secret that U.S. international Oguchi Onyewu is currently a hot commodity overseas. But after speculation that the Belgium-based defender would be shipped off to any number of […]

"My wife got a funny telemarketing call when we were home last summer, some guy trying to get us to go to a Las Vegas hotel to see the Eiffel Tower and the canals of Venice. Well, we've been there and done that!" Seattle keeper Kasey Keller, speaking of his family's many travels during his […]

"We have to walk first. We have to take the first step in order to take the second. First is to qualify for the World Cup and then from there we'll re-establish ourselves and we'll reveal our next step. For now, it is an absolute priority to put our bodies and souls into this qualification […]

"It is a shame because he used to be a nice guy before he went to Stuttgart, but now he spends all his time trying to provoke people. He just keeps getting on my nerves now. He is totally overrated and out of touch. He should remind himself of the own goal he scored against […]

Among a Chicago Fire team that features players from 10 different nations, ESPN Soccernet’s Maria Burna Ortiz writes of a trio of Chicago Fire internationals – Patrick Nyarko of Ghana, Yugslavian-born Baggio Husidic and Bakary Soumare of Mali – that had “chance meetings turn into life-altering events” and while “everyone has worked and battled to […]

Growing up amid the flying bullets and soaring rockets of Liberia's civil war, "which claimed some 200,000 lives between Christmas Eve of 1989 and 1996," somehow Vancouver Whitecaps forward Ansu Toure's "entire immediate family — nine kids in total – survived," for which they feel "no better than the dead, just truly blessed." According to […]

Twenty years later and with "hundreds of thousands of soccer fans passing through Liverpool's Anfield stadium every season, the memories remain" of the 96 men, women and children who were crushed to death in "the country's worst sports disaster," on April 15, 1989, a "day that irrevocably changed English soccer." "Time has gone by, but […]

Of all four Champions League quarterfinal series, the one that is by far the most out of reach is that of Bayern and Barcelona, but you wouldn't know it from the cautious comments and approach of Barca coach Pep Guardiola, who sat key players Xavi, Samuel Eto'o and captain Carlos Puyol on Saturday in order […]

"We were one of the lucky families. Our children came home to us that night and obviously we are eternally grateful for that, but that doesn't mean to say we don't have a great deal of sympathy for those who were not as fortunate as us. I always feel for anyone who was there and […]

"You look at someone like Ryan Giggs and he has to be the prime example of what we're after in life. Someone that has never changed, someone who at every training session does his best and throughout his 20-year career has excelled in different levels all the time. He just keeps going and going and […]

"Jose was a great coach, (and) he is a great guy, but I think his time at Chelsea Football Club has passed." Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, addressing the team's high profile coaching vacancy after Guus Hiddink departs this summer and all but ruling out a possible Mourinho homecoming. Buck did not comment on recent rumors […]

Not often is the occasion that rookie talent translates into instant impact in MLS, but only three weeks into the '09 season that optimistic scenario has already "been borne out on the field," as ESPN Soccernet's Ives Galarcep points out that "a total of 15 MLS draft picks have already earned starts for their teams, […]

In the name of MLS success, Toronto FC coach John Carver has been forced to put aside his die-hard fandom of Newcastle United and place his faith "into the hands of a man who once played for Sunderland, the Toon Army's hated Northeast rivals," writes Paul Attfield. But EPL allegiances aside, it's Carl Robinson that […]

When early 2009 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year favorite Kasey Keller earned a very rare red card in the 29th minute of Seattle's match vs. the Kansas City Wizards, and with backup keeper Chris Eylander out with an injury, it was left to "extreme hardship" (yes, that's an official league term) call-up Ben Dragavon to […]