The World Cup has come and gone but it isn’t hard to beckon back a year and a half ago and remember that a man who ultimately was left off the World Cup roster was, for a brief respite in time, the toast of the proverbial town. Indeed, USMNT fans felt shaggy-haired Chivas USA attacking midfielder Sacha Kljestan was nearly a lock to be paired alongside Junior in the American midfield in South Africa. Kljestan had netted a hat trick against Sweden, been a force… Read more
Loyal readers, I hope your last few days of work have not been as stressful as mine. I don’t know exactly what has happened over the last week, but several contributing writers for “the greatest blog of all time” have decided that they needed to take some time off. Some people have actually been working hard at their real jobs during stints on the “DL”, but Lighting Cup Levy has been sitting in the living room, wearing nothing but his shit-stained… Read more
The 15 finalists for the USA Men’s Basketball roster came out today for the 2010 World Championships. After reading through the names on the roster, I began to think about what a USMNT roster could look like if these guys had been playing with their feet for as long as they’ve been hooping. The roster is as follows: Chauncey Billups, Tyson Chandler, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Eric Gordon, Danny Granger, Jeff Green, Andre Iguodala, Brook Lopez,… Read more
As a few The Yanks Are Coming readers are aware, our Editor In Chief and fearless, visionary leader Daniel Seco does not have a favorite English Premier League Team. He’s dabbled a bit with the boys at Craven Cottage but never fully bought in. Same for the Billy Beane Sabermetrics club success story that plys its trade at the Emirates. So he’s not a Gunner, and he’s not a Cottager, but let’s call those two clubs the leaders in the clubhouse. As we… Read more
So Joe Cole leaves Chelsea and joins Liverpool for a no doubt whopping signing-on fee plus a comparable weekly wage and probably the promise of greater playing time. Since bursting onto the scene with West Ham nearly 10 years ago as the next big thing, Cole has flattered to deceive. Whilst obviously talented, Chelsea never really found a regular place for a player who really needs a team built around him rather than trying to fit him into an irregular… Read more
Thanks to our friends from A Football Report and www.football-corner.org, we’re proudly taking part in the 2010-2011 Premier League Fantasy Challenge. Again, the challenge is sponsored by A Football Report, and we along with the good folks at Football Corner wanted to make sure we helped out and made the league as competitive and fun as possible. So, if you’re as excited as I am to see EPL football get going again in late August, and you’d like to try your hand… Read more
Since we got our butts kicked last month by a team we had no business losing to – a team whose best player was injured, whose GNP per capita ranks 194th in the world behind such worldwide superpowers as Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and Mauritania, and whose land area is somewhere between the size of Michigan and Minnesota – I have seen a number of arguments about who our next coach should be. Before I address that though, I should tell all of you that to… Read more
Posted by Puck in July 2010
Some people hate watching the same move over and over again. I do not subscribe to that philosophy. There are some flicks I am forced to watch over and over again when they are on TV. Anyone who knows me well understands that Kung Fu Panda and Pulp Fiction top this list. Another class film that I can’t just get enough of has been on HBO all week, PCU. The cast includes a few actors before they broke out to the big time, Jeremy Piven, David Spade, and Jon… Read more
Posted by Puck in July 2010
Within the last 48 hours, my favorite EPL team, Manchester City (called Blankcheckster City by fans of other less kick-ass EPL sides) and their scarf wearing, meatball eating coach Roberto Mancini have confirmed their interest in signing [Landon Donovan during the summer transfer window. This comes directly on the heels of MLS commissioner Dan Garber’s announcement that the MLS would not consider selling Landbro under any circumstances. No matter what Garber… Read more
Six US Midfielders on the Radar For 2014 Alejandro Bedoya, Orebro–The Boston College product had such a promising season in Sweden, endearing himself to Orebro fans and USMNT fans alike– that he received a surprise call-up to the final USMNT World Cup camp and had a legitimate shot of making the roster for South Africa. To some, including this writer, it was curious given that all we saw of him in a national shirt was a pair of cameos in two friendlies a… Read more
This is the second of a four-part Series of Report Cards for the U.S. Men’s National Team’s Four Year World Cup Cycle, 2007-2010. While we are not issuing grades for all 92 players capped by Bob Bradley during the cycle, we will feature players not on the World Cup roster who figured prominently in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup. We will issue grades of A-F, rather than player-rankings style grades of 1-10. This edition is likely the longest, focusing on… Read more
A few weeks ago I could have ended my soccer career on a high note. In stoppage time, I scored the tying goal for my over-30 team that was facing relegation. I thought about never playing again. Whatever it is, we all want to leave it on our terms. We want to go voluntarily–quit instead of being fired. But we also prefer that the departure be positive. We want to peak at the end. We want to hit a walk-off homerun. We want to reach the… Read more
This is the first of a four-part Series of Report Cards for the U.S. Men’s National Team’s Four Year World Cup Cycle, 2007-2010. While we are not issuing grades for all 92 players capped by Bob Bradley during the cycle, we will feature players not on the World Cup roster who either figured prominently in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup. We will issue grades of A-F, rather than player-rankings style grades of 1-10. We’ll also account for players who will… Read more
With the Go-Go-USA lovefest starting to fade into the rearview mirror, we’ve reached the one time of year tough for soccer fans—the dog days of July. It’s always tougher to deal with the dog days after the excitement of a major international tournament, and nearly impossible after a World Cup. A week removed from the World Cup Final, soccer junkies from Atlanta to Australia are stuck, for the moment, in soccer Siberia. Essentially soccer’s dog days of… Read more
