Category: Soccer America Daily

[SPAIN] Jozy Altidore, La Liga’s lone American in 2008-09, was loaned by Villarreal to English club Hull City after last season’s loan to then-second division club Xerez expired. Danny Szetela moved to D.C. United after after his loan at Italian Serie B club Brescia ended and Racing Santander did not extend his contract. The Altidore and Szetela moves are typical of the activity in Spain, where a large portion of the La Liga summer moves are loan deals or involve the return of players previously on loan.

[OFF THE POST] Italian goalkeeper Lamberto Boranga, whose pro career in the 1960s through 1980s included stints with Fiorentina and Parma, is coming out of retirement at age 66 to play for amateur club L’Ammeto. He last played at age 50.

[COLLEGE] The top four teams — No. 1 North Carolina, No. 2 Stanford, No. 3 Portland and No. 4 Notre Dame — remained unchanged in the Soccer America Women’s Top 25, but there was lots of changes in the rest of the rankings. For this week’s Top 25 rankings as well as last week’s results …

[UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE] APOEL Nicosia made history when it beat FC Copenhagen, 3-1, and won its UEFA Champions League playoff series, 3-2, becoming the first Cypriot team to qualify for the competition’s group stage.  Debrecen became the first Hungarian club to qualify for the group stage in 14 years when sealed its 4-1 aggregate win over Bulgaria’s Levski Sofia with a 2-0 victory. Other teams making their Champions League debut will be Wolfsburg, Rubin Kazan, AZ, Standard Liege, Unirea Urziceni, and FC Zurich. For all the mid-week results …

[MAKING A LIST] England’s four representatives — No. 2 Chelsea, No. 3 Liverpool, No. 4 Manchester United and No. 6 Arsenal — rank among the top six teams in the 2009-10 UEFA Champions League and will be in the first pot for Thursday’s group stage draw in Monaco (TV: Fox Soccer Channel, live, noon ET). Defending champion Barcelona is the top seed. For the seeds 1-32 …

[CONCACAF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE] Home and away, D.C. United’s failure to close out games has cost it points, of which it has zero after two matches in Group B of the Concacaf Champions’ League. A week after conceding two late goals in San Pedro Sula to lose, 3-1, to Marathon, United suffered the same fate at RFK Stadium Wednesday against Mexican club Toluca.

[MLS] Real Salt Lake pumped some life into its playoff quest by beating Chivas USA, 4-0, Wednesday at Rio Tinto as three players shared the goals. Team top scorer Robbie Findley added two late goals after Pablo Campos opened the scoring in the 43rd minute and Fabian Espinola‘s clincher with 15 minutes left.

With only two Group D games remaining in the second round of games in the group stage of the Concacaf Champions League, only three teams — Mexico’s Cruz Azul and Toluca and Honduran club Marathon — have won both games. The four Mexican teams have five wins and one loss, while MLS teams have two wins, three losses and one tie. For all the results and standings …

[OFF THE POST] Rene Simoes, coach of Brazilian second division club Portuguesa, handed in his resignation after officials of the club came into the locker room with guns on their belts and threatened the players after a loss.

[CONCACAF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE] A better showing might have been expected from the reigning MLS champion, but Cruz Azul is a pretty good team, and its stadium is a tough place to play. Columbus lost its second game in Group C of the Concacaf Champions League, 5-0, to Los Cementeros, who reached the CCL final last spring.

[CONCACAF CHAMPIONS CUP] Much of what troubles international club soccer on the field erupted Wednesday in La Chorrera, Panama, as Houston and Arabe Unido traded fouls and cards while tying, 1-1.

[OFF THE POST] When Peruvian referee Georges Buckley showed up in Chile to work a Copa Sudamericana game, he was taken into custody for a 1997 arrest in Chile for smoking marijuana in public as he was preparing to enter a concert, reports Reuters.

[MLS] With new teammates Jesus Padilla and Maicon Santos playing their first games for Chivas USA, midfielder Sacha Kljestan took advantage to play his best game of the season and continue a revival for the club that started off strong before a six week winless slump.

[MLS] At a transfer fee reported as $1.4 million and $2.1 million by various outlets, and said by a source to be $2 million, MLS and Chicago have agreed to sell defender Bakary Soumare to French club Boulogne. The club – along with a few other teams — had expressed interest in Soumare in June, shortly after the European season ended, but MLS and the Fire tamped down the inquiry though an offer was reportedly made. A native of Mali, Soumare, 23, moved to the Paris suburb of St. Denis at age 3 and to New York at age 15.

[MLS PREDICTION] The two expansion entrants of 2005 that met in last year’s playoffs square off for the second time this season, with host Real Salt Lake desperately in need of a win.

[AMERICANS ABROAD] Jozy Altidore, who got an assist in his English Premier League debut for Hull City on Saturday, scored on a long-range shot in Hull’s 3-1 win on Tuesday over third-tier Southend in the second round of the English League Cup.

[CONCACAF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE] He missed out on the most recent Mexico-USA showdown at Azteca Stadium, so defender Frankie Hejduk is perhaps even more eager than usual for the assignment handed to him and his Columbus teammates Wednesday.

[U.S. WOMEN] Four members of WPS champion Sky Blue FC were called up to the U.S. women’s national team camp that will take place Sept. 21-Oct. 2 at the Home Depot Center. Not included in the squad is Sky Blue FC player-coach Christie Rampone, the U.S. national team captain who is three months pregnant.

[WOMEN’S EURO ’09] With five WPS players in its squad, England came into the 2009 European Women’s Championship with high hopes, but it crashed to Italy, 2-1, Tuesday in its opening game.

[AMERICANS ABROAD] German club Hoffenheim, the surprise of the 2008-09 Bundesliga season, has pulled a coup, landing Joseph-Claude Gyau and midfielder Charles Renken in the highest-profile signings of U.S. U-17 players since German club Bayer Leverkusen signed Landon Donovan a decade ago. There’s a twist to the deal: Gyau and Renken will first spend time at the Vancouver Whitecaps residency program.

[COLLEGE] Harvard’s Andre Akpan, a 2007 selection to Soccer America’s MVPs first team and 2008 pick to the MVPs second team, heads the Soccer America Men’s Preseason All-American team, as selected by its editors.  For all the Preseason All-American selections …

[AMERICANS ABROAD] Brad Friedel returned to Anfield to face Liverpool, the club at which he started his English Premier League career 12 years ago, and helped Aston Villa earn a 3-1 win over the Reds. The victory, the first of the league season for struggling Villa, was revenge for a 5-0 loss at Anfield in March.

[COLLEGE] North Carolina, the 2008 NCAA Division I runner-up, is ranked No. 1 in the Soccer America Men’s Preseason Top 25, as selected by its editors. The selection gives the ACC a clean sweep of the Soccer America preseason rankings. The Carolina women were also No. 1. The rest of the top five consists of Akron, St. John’s Indiana and Wake Forest. For the complete Soccer America Women’s Preseason Top 25 rankings …