Category: Section 2 Around the Net

It only takes a second to score a goal, the Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough used to say. And it only takes a single game to restore a team’s international reputation, judging by the reaction to England’s 4-1 road win in Croatia Wednesday.   Nothing prior to the performance had suggested that England would show […]

The first time this season that the Houston Dynamo returned to the franchise’s previous home in San Jose, the players were perhaps more focused on the occasion than the soccer. “It was supposed to be a special night for many Dynamo players who either grew up in the San Jose area or through the years […]

During past qualification campaigns, German teams used to grind out unspectacular results against mediocre countries, writes Juergen Schmieder. Wednesday’s exciting 3-3 draw in Finland was a reflection of the changed times — no one knows what to expect from the Germans any more.   “Against clearly weaker teams like Poland [Euro 2008] or Belgium [first […]

The English FA will report racist abuse leveled by Croatian fans at striker Emile Heskey to soccer’s world governing body FIFA.

Although 2010 World Cup host South Africa has failed to qualify for the next African Cup of Nations, people who criticize the South African Football Association’s development program are “idiots,” says SAFA’s CEO Raymond Hack.

Switzerland coach Ottmar Hitzfeld has led two teams to the European Cup, but on Wednesday experienced the “bitter embarrassment” of being in charge of only the third ever country to lose to Luxembourg in a World Cup qualifier, and the first on home soil. “Now is the time for the team to pull together and […]

Matt Scott speculates that Manchester City may make a new and more lucrative offer to lure MLS Deputy Commissioner Ivan Gazidis on board the freshly enriched club.

Fancy a challenge? The English FA is seeking a chief executive to secure the country’s bid to become World Cup hosts in 2018.

Any assurance given by FIFA President Sepp Blatter to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that their independence would not be threatened by a united GB Olympic team in 2012 would be non-binding for any of Blatter’s successors, according to a UK government e-mail released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Bundesliga side SV Hamburg is to open up a 500-corpse capacity cemetery so that fans can be buried within sight of the team’s stadium. The cheaper option is to have their ashes interned in an official club urn.

FIFA Vice President Jack Warner has written a forthright letter, on FIFA-headed paper, to Sunderland manager Roy Keane following the withdrawal of the English club’s striker, Dwight Yorke, from World Cup qualifying action for Trinidad & Tobago against the USA.   Warner, the Concacaf president who also acts as “special adviser” to the Trinidad & […]

Soccer in America fails to make the headlines not just because it’s still a minority sport at the top level, but because its main figures rarely say anything interesting about the game, writes Grahame L. Jones.   Compare that with the rest of the soccer world, where positions of power are occupied by colorful characters […]

FC Dallas has made a number of surprising trades since Schellas Hyndman took over as coach mid-season, and many of the team’s fans think that striker Abe Thompson’s move to the Kansas City Wizards last week was more of a gift than a trade, writes Bob Luder. The Wizards, though, hope to cash in on […]

After largely ignoring the continent for years, Major League Soccer teams have finally cottoned on that Africa offers a rich mine of soccer talent. Last week the franchise-in-waiting Seattle Sounders signed Gambian Sanna Nyassi, twin brother of New England’s Sainey, as its third player following Kasey Keller and Sebastien le Toux. Now D.C. United has […]

Dan Raley sought out former U.S. women’s national team star Michelle Akers in Florida, and found her busy being a mother to her three-year-old son, as well as rescuing abused horses and nursing them back to health. But she still has plenty to say about soccer eight years after leaving the game due to a […]

Although there is plenty of intrigue in European and African World Cup qualifying, writes Luis Bueno, Concacaf has become utterly predictable. Already three of the region’s four qualifiers from the past World Cup — Mexico, Costa Rica and the U.S. — have won their opening two semifinal round games, and are dead certs for the […]

It seems that every U.S. victory is immediately followed by the statement, “It wasn’t pretty but they still won,” writes Jeff Carlisle.  But when they take on Trinidad & Tobago in Chicago Wednesday in their third semifinal round World Cup qualifying game, the U.S. team might be hoping for a little extra on top of […]

England’s performance against Andorra at the weekend may have been “Doomsday anti-football,” but James Lawton liked what he saw in Coach Fabio Capello’s body language. “Whatever the limitations of the England performance, and they were plain enough,” he writes in a column well worth reading in full, “it was surely reassuring to note that for […]

Zac Lee Rigg salutes the staying power of L.A. veteran Chris Klein, 32, who has now started 108 games in a row for the Galaxy and Real Salt Lake, stretching back to April 15, 2006. The two-time MLS Comeback Player of the Year, who was made Galaxy captain by coach Bruce Arena at the weekend […]

The clichés about a ‘politically charged fixture’ are never truer than when applied to North Korea taking on South Korea. On Wednesday the two teams meet in a World Cup qualifier that FIFA has moved from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to the neutral Chinese city of Shanghai after the North refused to fly […]

“I gave him [Marco Velez] the responsibility of the captain’s armband and he got sent off for violent conduct and deserved to be sent off. I’m not going to stand up for him or back him. He’s let me and the team down.” Perennially aggrieved Toronto FC coach John Carver reveals he may add his […]

Ben Knight says it’s time to dismiss Dale Mitchell as Canadian head coach, and the national team’s players must take the initiative in demanding his departure.

Former Chelsea and Italy forward Gianfranco Zola is reportedly to be appointed manager at West Ham United.

“It’s just great where I’m at with this team. You can tell this is a good team I’m playing at. I just wish I would have been here earlier.” Houston’s Kei Kamara tells Bernardo Fallas how much he likes it in southern Texas.

Home fans threw plastic bottles on to the field after the United Arab Emirates went 2-1 down to North Korea in a World Cup qualifier in Abu Dhabi at the weekend. FIFA, the UAE Football Association and the Asian Football Confederation will all be investigating the matter. North Korea went on to win the game.