Author Archive for Neil W. Blackmon
US-Mexico Gameday: Final Pre-Match Thoughts and Links
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon I love the smell of Mexico City in the morning. Smells of crisp spring air, flatas and baked breads, a touch or two of smog and today, of desperation. It’s a strange, brutally small-sample size world we live in as fans and journalists following the international game and so the narratives [...]
A Genuine Call of Support for Our Editor-In-Chief, Dan Seco
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon and the Yanks Are Coming Writers A couple of weeks ago, I received a series of phone calls from Dan Seco, one of the mainstays of this website and for a long while, its Editor-In-Chief. My wife and I were out of town for the weekend with our 11 month old [...]
State of the Union: US Midfield Still A Position of Strength, But Must Provide More
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon Editor’s Note: This is the second of a four-part series analyzing the “State of the US Soccer Union” as the Americans prepare for two critical CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying matches later this month. Today we look at the US midfield. Garrett McInnis breaks down the US defense in Part One. It wasn’t [...]
As MLS Season Opens, Matt Besler Is Sporting Kansas City’s Anchor: Our Interview
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon 2012 was a season of championship and promise for Sporting Kansas City, as they won the US Open Cup championship and finished first in the Eastern Conference. Unfortunately for the club, despite the top seed, they were eliminated by Houston 2-1 on aggregate in the conference semifinals. It was a difficult [...]
Thriving in Belgium, Sacha Kljestan Sits Down for an Interview
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon Sacha Kljestan, now in the best run of form in his life, has come a long way. Then again, he’s used to it. It wasn’t that long ago that Kljestan was a lightly recruited midfielder who got nary a look o US development teams as a teenager, most coaches thinking he [...]
Previewing the US U-20 Qualifying, Landon’s Return, and other Monday Musings
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon With the failure in Honduras for the Senior team only a week and a half in the rearview, another US national team will take the field in a CONCACAF qualifying effort tonight in Puebla, Mexico, when the US Men’s U-20′s face off against Haiti (6:30 PM, Fox Soccer Network). Head Coach [...]
Robbie Rogers’ Announcement Was Honest, Brave, and in the Larger Context, It was Necessary
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon Real Madrid and Manchester United played an incredible soccer match this past week, and certainly plenty of pubs were crowded to view that masterpiece and plenty of articles were written breaking it down, but the reality is that stateside, last week was a slow news week for soccer. The United [...]
Honduras 2, USA 1: Vexing Opener to Hex For Klinsmann’s Men
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon The United States lost a match Wednesday, 2-1 at the Estadio Olimpico in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. They lost a game on a hot, sticky, Honduran national holiday afternoon in front of a stadium that shook from fans stomping in unison for the first half hour of the match. They lost [...]
In Mind-Numbing Draw, Few Positives, Plenty Questions
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon The United States played a unique new style last night in Houston: let’s call it anti-total football. In so doing, they played to a scoreless draw against a weak, MLS-reserve heavy Canadian side under an interim manager, and doubtlessly left Jurgen Klinsmann shaking his head about the options that are [...]
Global Game: As Career’s Enter Stoppage Time, One Last Shot For Ivory Coast’s Golden Generation
Tweet Neil W. Blackmon Soccer history is chock full of “golden generations”, whose biographies include tremendous triumph (Spain, present day) and ignominious failures (Holland, 1970’s, England 2000’s). The stories on both sides provide ample, compelling drama. What soccer history is not full of is “African golden generations,” and as the African Cup of Nations [...]
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