Daily Sweeper, 08.31: Refunds, Superliga, and Priorities

- With David Beckham laid up for what looks like a really long time, people – notably those who bought tickets at “enhanced rates” to see Beckham – are rightly mulling what it means for the rest of the season’s games featuring an LA Galaxy road-show absent the main attraction. Major League Soccer’s (MLS) [...]

MLS: This Weekend’s Delight

Inspired perhaps by what feels like the end of the summer doldrums, the yen to talk about the upcoming games has hit. Yep, the must mean the playoff stretch has arrived.
Then again, perhaps it’s the particular match-ups on offer that signal an entertaining, as well as edifying, weekend ahead. MLSnet.com doesn’t yet have [...]

MLS Week 21 Collective Power Rankings

By running an impromptu survey, I grew the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective (SDPC) by two pundits – a good thing considering that bum Ryan Hunt still doesn’t have his rankings posted for Sports Illustrated; MLS Underground remains out of the game as well…dang it.
As for the data, the usual stuff applies: in parentheses after the current [...]

Superliga Final: Joy, Pride, The Moment

Life gave me a hard, unwelcome shag last night: I won’t bore you with the details on the assumption that you don’t want to hear them; the main thing is, this will be (comparatively) brief and I won’t be posting today with my accustomed relish and volume.
Taking the nouns in the sub-title in order:
JOY
To my [...]

RSL 3-1 KC: I knew it.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.
Damn my hide that I didn’t say it, but I knew it.  KC has issues.  Especially against teams with “fight.”  And that’s all Real Salt Lake has at this point.
And, for the record, I don’t even know what happened in this game…it could have been totally fluky…but, [...]

Your UEFA Champions League Group Stage Qualifiers are set…

Except for one. The winner of Sevilla and AEK Athens will move on. That game will be played September 3rd. Here they are by seed – the draw will be held today, early afternoon EST.
Pot 1/#1 Seeds
AC Milan (Cup Holders)
Barcelona
Liverpool
Inter Milan
Arsenal
Real Madrid
Chelsea
Manchester United

Pot 2/#2 Seeds
Valencia
Lyon
Porto
Sevilla/AEK Athens
PSV Eindhoven
AS Roma
Benfica
Werder Bremen
Pot 3/#3 Seeds
Celtic
Schalke 04
VfB Stuttgart
Steaua Bucharest [...]

French Ligue One: Midweek action yields win for Lyon

Lyon overcame a Valter Birsa PK conversion by sandwiching the Sochaux player’s strike with two of their own. Karim Benzema struck again and is fast becoming a staple in the starting line-up while offseason purchase and former Lille leader Mathieu Bodmer provided the winner early in the second half as Lyon survived 2-1.
Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain, [...]

Happy Birthday to me

It’s been a long week with my next 6 years lying ahead of my in my Linguistics Ph.D program and with the whole Antonio Puerta incident.  It’s also my birthday today and I’ll be taking a bit of a break in the next couple of days enjoying my time, recharging the battery and moving into [...]

Power Rankings: Join the Fun (and why I’m such a wally)

No offense intended to anyone out there who goes by “Wally” – though you should really consider “Walt.”
As regular readers of this site know, I roll together all the power rankings I can find every week and average out the scores to produce “collective rankings” (example from Week 20) Most the material I use [...]

Ritual Sacrifi…whoops…Superliga Final TONITE!

Best foot forward.
In a better, kinder world, fate would have consented to Major League Soccer to fielding its best, hottest team against the Mexican Primera’s mighty CF Pachuca, a team that one notable pundit dubbed the best soccer team in North America. Instead they’ll face the Los Angeles Galaxy and its south-of-green defense, the [...]