Expansion: Cities, Odds, Dead Ends?

With so many people already commenting on this, I feel a little silly linking to the Las Vegas Sun article clocking the race to be one of the next two – or is it four? – cities Major League Soccer (MLS) will welcome into the league by 2010…or is it 2012? But there’s one [...]

The Real Upside of U.S. v. South Africa

I’m seeing this all over the place, but will credit My Soccer Blog with passing it on as reading Mike H’s post coincided with the inspiration to post on the (I think) now-finalized game between the U.S. Men’s team and South Africa. And definitely credit Mike for running down cool tid-bits like how rarely [...]

RSL 2-2 LA: Drunks Driving a Cadillac

I only caught the highlights to this game. When watching highlights, though, I shield the screen of MLSnet.com’s home page as I click through to the “video/audio” page (which, I suppose, I could bookmark…duh), so the game still, well, “unfolds” to some extent – and that’s significant for what comes below. Even in [...]

MLS Week 24 Collective Rankings: Mysteries & Eroded Tiers

OK, I give up on Sports Illustrated’s Ryan Hunt: inconsistent posting means he’s not pulling the required compost duty here on the Collective (that’s the Semi-Detached Pundit Collective); turn in your beads, patchouli, and Widespread Panic CDs, Hunt…it’s over.  You probably eat meat anyway…bastard…
As for the rest, everyone else contributed this week and we even [...]

UEFA Champions League: Turkish Delight

Group standings. 
Group A
FC Porto 1, Liverpool 1
Jermaine Pennant was sent off with 30 minutes to go, but Liverpool survived finding the equalizer well before Pennant’s ejection and hanging on from there. Lucho Gonzalez converted an 8th minute penalty to put Porto up early.
Marseille 2, Besiktas 0
Having trouble finding domestic success again, but Les Bleus found a way past [...]

Mourinho axed, hari-kari’d, whatever you want to call it…

He said his goodbyes this morning and got on out of London. His next destination – who knows?
Former Isreali coach and current Chelsea director of football Avram Grant will take over first-team duties with the help of Mourinho’s number two Steve Clarke (Ryan, at least it was a quick decision without the rumor of Juande Ramos flying [...]