Soccer America Archives

[MLS WEEKEND PREVIEWS] Reeling Real Salt Lake strives to get it right against the Revs; Mexican attacker Cuauhtemoc Blanco makes his American pro soccer league debut in Canada, and Kansas City hopes to stabilize its patchy home form against Chivas USA.

All four PDL conferences will hold their semifinals and finals this weekend. The Michigan Bucks (Central), Ocean City Barons (Eastern), Laredo Heat (Southern) and Fresno Fuego (Western) will be playing host to their respective four-team conference tournaments. The winners of the conference championships will advance to the PDL semifinals next weekend. The PDL championship, hosted by one of the two finalists, will be played on Aug. 11 and will be broadcast on Fox Soccer Channel.

The W-League playoffs began on Wednesday with Jersey and Toronto both winning to move into the Eastern Conference semifinals in Ottawa on Saturday. W-League postseason action continues on Friday with the Western Conference final in Chula Vista, Calif., and the Central Conference semifinals in St. Paul, Minn. The three conference champions will join the W-League championship tournament host Rochester Rhinos in the W-League semifinals Aug. 3 to determine who will square off for the W-League title Aug. 5 at PAETEC Park. The W-League championship will air on Fox Soccer Channel at 5:30 pm ET.

[WOMEN’S WORLD CUP COUNTDOWN] He has three more games and a few more weeks before he must submit his list of players for the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup, yet head coach Greg Ryan finalized his roster last week by adding three players to an original list of 18. Forward Natasha Kai, midfielder Angela Hucles and defender Marion Dalmy got the nod. Kai and Dalmy are two of six World Cup players who have debuted for the national team since Ryan took over from April Heinrichs in March, 2005. Starting Saturday against Japan at Spartan Stadium in San Jose, Ryan will tinker not with formations and systems, but with blocs of 11 players who he believes may earn starting slots in the World Cup.

Ante Razov and Sacha Kljestan scored as a smothering defense led by Jesse Marsch, Claudio Suarez and Jonathan Bornstein blanked Red Bull New York, 2-0, on Thursday night for only the second road win posted in 2007 by Chivas USA.

Former Penn State star Tiffany Weimer of Soccer Plus Connecticut, Mexican international Fatima Leyva of FC Indiana, Cindy Schofield of the Tampa Bay Elite, Brittany Cooper of the Albuquerque Lady Asylum and Chinese Ouying Zhang of the San Diego WFC Sealions won regional Player of the Year honors in the Women’s Premier Soccer League. For All-WPSL selections and individual awards …

Iraq reached the Asian Cup final for the first time with a 4-3 win in a shootout over the Koreans and will met Saudi Arabia in all-Arab clash. The Saudis ended Japan’s dreams of a third straight title with a 3-2 win in Hanoi.

Argentine international Juan Sebastian Veron, whose name had been linked to D.C. United a few weeks ago, surfaced this week as a possible acquisition by Chivas USA.

David Beckham has made his debut and the SuperLiga has kicked off amid spectacle and controversy, yet MLS league play rolls right along sparking off its own fireworks. Houston and New England shared six goals and Kansas City split four goals with Colorado Sunday in high-scoring ties, and the return of Thursday night league action with New York hosting Chivas USA finds a team that can’t lose at home visiting the team whose search for a new home has been roiled with problems for most of this decade.

Right winger Sal Zizzo signed a three-year contract with German club Hannover, becoming the first member of the U.S. U-20 national team to sign a contract with a European club since the end of the U-20 World Cup in Canada, where it fell in the quarterfinals.

Slammers FC and the Dallas Texans Red both won two games on the opening day of play in the girls divisions at the US Youth Soccer National Championship. Carmel United split a pair of girls games.

The Dallas Texans Red quickly wrapped their much-awaited showdown with the Baltimore Casa Mia Bays in McGuire Cup action on the opening day of the US Youth Soccer National Championships, scoring twice on goals by Bahram Sajjadi and North Carolina’s Billy Dworsky in the first 26 minutes and winning, 2-0. Arsenal FC began its quest for its fourth national title in as many years with a 2-1 win over Atlanta Fire United in the U-18 boys division, while Real So Cal U-16 boys began their bid for a third straight national championship with a 1-0 win over the FC Delco Hammerheads.

With four games in the books the SuperLiga ledger reads: two MLS wins, two ties, eight goals, two ejections, 98 shots, and 63,405 fans. Well, it’s a start. A good one. Not perfect, but good. On the second night of competition Wednesday, defending MLS champion Houston beat Club America, 1-0, and Morelia rallied while a man down to tie D.C. United, 1-1.

Two suicide car bombs went off near Iraqi fans celebrating Iraq’s victory over South Korea in the semifinals of the Asian Cup. One bomb killed 30 and wounding 75 in Baghdad’s Mansour area. Another attack at an army checkpoint in east Baghdad killed another 20 people and wounded 60, many of them soccer fans celebrating nearby.

ESPN’s telecast of David Beckham‘s debut with the Los Angeles Galaxy against Chelsea on July 21 was the most-viewed telecast involving an MLS team on ESPN or ESPN2. An average of 947,000 million television homes (1,468,000 viewers 2 and older) watched the World Series of Football game for a 1.0 rating.