zequist

I can't believe the USA just qualified for the semifinals - after the first two games they were looking like the second-worst team in this tournament. Someone in USA Soccer better send the Brazilians a big thank-you note.

Gillett to sell the Montreal Canadiens for £330m. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...and&cc=5901

Opening ceremonies for the ACN are on January 10, and the players will probably be required to report a few days early, which means we won't have Pienaar and Yak for our return matches against Arsenal and City, and maybe not for the 3rd and/or 4th rounds of the FA Cup either. Overall I'm pretty happy with this. I'm a proponent of getting the toughest games out of the way as soon as possible and enjoying the run-in while the teams around you are still sweating, so the fact that we're completely done with all six of the wealthiest clubs by the end of February couldn't have worked out better from that perspective. Jan & Feb are going to be the absolutely critical part of the season, though. The flipside of having a pileup of tough fixtures is that we need to get through those two months with some decent results and our confidence still intact. As long as we do that, we're more than capable of ripping through the rest of that schedule from March onward. One more thing: I just took a quick look at Arsenal's schedule - if they're the ones that we have to keep within touching distance for 4th place this season, then Jan-Feb becomes even MORE critical. Take a look at this: Wednesday 27 January Aston Villa v Arsenal 19:45 Saturday 30 January Arsenal v Man Utd 15:00 Saturday 06 February Chelsea v Arsenal 15:00 Tuesday 09 February Arsenal v Liverpool 15:00 That's a rough stretch, but after 2/9 their run-in is almost as soft as ours...they have Tottenham away and City in April, but that's about it.

I think some of it is also going to depend on what country the player is from. For instance, I'd imagine that we'd probably be pretty attractive to a quality Nigerian player or American player, since players from those countries who play for us have a tendency to get noticed by their national teams, they'd have fellow countrymen to hang out with, and they'd get a nice wage bump (in most cases) over their old clubs. In contrast, we'd probably not be so attractive to a quality Russian player. We have no Russian players nor any real history with Russian players, and clubs like CSKA Moscow can already afford to pay higher wages than us anyway, so if you're a Russian national-teamer you can just hang out at CSKA or Dynamo making equal or better money than what we can offer and competing for Champions League football, until a wealthy club like Spurs or City or one of the Big Four comes calling for you.

Gotta give it up for these Sunderland fans, they have a pretty wicked sense of humour!

Cuz the Confed Cup is only for the six current Continental champs, the World Cup holders, and the next WC hosts. This was probably a double stomach-punch game for a lot of American fans. The US team played this game a man down for almost 70 minutes following a straight red card that's getting questioned pretty heavily, at least on our side of the pond (the media seems to agree that a yellow would've been warranted, but not a red - I didn't see it so I can't offer an opinion), and then after taking a surprise lead despite the odds, they get their hearts ripped out by the American-born kid who rejected them to play for Italy. Kind of makes me glad I was at work and had to miss it.

Belgium could be the next country in line for the "Golden Generation" tag - hopefully they'll do a little more with it than Portugal has done with theirs so far. Also, here's one for the "let's get Crouch" folks, since I know there are a few of you out there. It looks like he wants some answers as to what's going on with Portsmouth right now, and wants reassurance he won't be in a relegation battle next year. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...and&cc=5901

Interesting short piece on how RM can afford to spend all this money. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/foo...icle6481424.ece

Sepp Blatter says Ronaldo is "worth the money" and this transfer proves that the global game is still healthy. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...rld&cc=5901 I can't help but wonder if he'd still be saying that if Ronaldo was GOING to the EPL instead of LEAVING it.

That's what you get for leaving it open while you're drunk.

That's all I have to say about that.

Interesting that every club has at least one vote now except Blackburn and Bolton. Didn't someone post earlier in this thread that they were going to vote for Bolton?

28 is a pretty generous interpretation there, mate. First you have to subtract the guys who are already out the door since the season ended. Second, you can't really count all the guys like Kissock and Jutkiewicz who we're either repeatedly loaning out or keeping in the reserves because they're nowhere near ready to join our rotation. Yeah they're bodies, but if the bodies can't really help you out on the field then there's no point counting them as part of your squad. Once you've taken those two groups out, our practical week-to-week rotation as of this moment is 21 players at the most, and that's only if a) you count Baxter, who's only made like four appearances for us, b ) you assume that Jacobsen decides to stay, which is not a given, and c) we don't sell or loan out anybody else. Considering that we could play upwards of 60 games next year between the EPL and the Europa League and the various cups, that is nowhere near enough. How many should we have? As I said, it's not just having guys, it's having guys who the manager trusts to step in and play and play well whenever we ask them to. If you look at the two teams who played 60+ games last year, Arsenal and Man U, they had 25 and 26 players on their end-of-season rosters, respectively, who made at least five appearances for them (and it would've been 26 each if Eduardo hadn't missed almost the whole season with that broken leg). So let's say 25 is a good target for the length of season we're looking at. If my numbers are accurate (since the official site for some stupid reason doesn't have them), we only had 21 players who made at least five appearances for us last year, and two of those (Castillo and Jo) are already gone back to their parent clubs. Subtract those two and add Nash (or whoever our backup goalie will be, since none of them played last year), and that makes 20, which means that if we held on to everybody else that we have now (which is far from a given), then we would still need to sign or borrow or promote from the youth ranks a minimum of five more guys who are AT LEAST good enough to make our rotation, if not challenge for starts.

I would take Everton winning a trophy over England winning the WC I would take the USA either winning the WC or even finishing second over Everton winning a trophy However, as of right now I would take Everton winning the Premier League over the USA winning the WC (not that either one looks remotely likely to happen without some drastic changes to the footballing world)

In the last ten years we've only been a new arrival's first fixture one time (that was Watford a few years ago), so I wouldn't say it "normally" happens. But since it's all a crapshoot, who knows, we could get new teams the next five years in a row.

It's been a while since we've opened up against a Northeast team, so I'm gonna roll the dice a bit and say we'll get Sunderland.

Something similar to that just happened in New York City - this guy died in his van, and it sat there for like a month collecting parking tickets before it occurred to anyone to actually look inside the van. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090605/ap_on_...parking_tickets

John Barnes is apparently in. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id...and&cc=5901

I want to go to Emirates or Old Trafford for the first game of the season and just get it the f*** over with. Besides, it seems like those big teams have gotten off to sort-of slow starts a LOT in the last few years, and it's not until a few weeks in that they start getting warmed up and steamrollering people (wasn't Man U somewhere near the relegation zone for the first few weeks of this past season?). So since we have to make those road trips at some point in the season anyway, why not get at least one of them out of the way early when the giants might not be totally awake yet? If not one of those two, then yeah, let's play at Eastlands right off so that we can stomp them before all the superstar players they buy this summer have had a chance to jell.

Apparently. Don't forget those rulings that were handed down a couple of years ago where a player (depending on his age) is now allowed to buy out his own contract after 2 or 3 years if he wants and leave the club immediately. I doubt Pienaar would do that, since he is happy here, but it's just one more sword to hold over the clubs' heads.

Not unless something's changed since the last time I looked.

Oddly enough, even though we're disagreeing I understand what you're saying, up to a point. Since the US is a nation of immigrants, we have a lot of that to deal with. Giuseppe Rossi is a perfect example. The kid was born in New Jersey and lived in New Jersey until he was 13, but he had dual citizenship and his dream for whatever reason was always to play for Italy (where his parents immigrated from). Did the US team need him more than the Italians did? Absolutely - it's rare for us to have a striker of his caliber in our talent pool. But that's not where his heart was, and he was good enough that the Italians wanted him, so more power to him. What I'm objecting to in your proposal is the potential for poaching and shady dealings that it encourages. People play fast and loose enough with the citizenship laws as it is now - I don't even want to think about what the Russian "national" team would look like; how many quality internationals (especially from poor countries) would suddenly develop an overwhelming desire to renounce their homelands and become Russian "citizens" after all those Russian mega-billionaires got through offering them money and/or mail-order brides under the table. That's a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it makes my point: the softer you make these rules, and the more exceptions and loopholes you open up, the more you allow the influence of money and the risk of corruption to take over. I have no problem with a dual citizen choosing one country over the other, and I have no problem with someone choosing to play for his adopted home over the land of his birth because he identifies more with his adopted home. I do have a problem with a player taking advantage of loopholes to play for a country he really doesn't give a damn about for cynical and selfish reasons. If David Regis had always wanted to play for the United States, or had lived in the US for a long time and harbored a strong desire to become a US citizen, then I wouldn't have had a problem with him joining the team in '98, and I don't think anyone else would have either. But he had never lived in the US, never played in the US, and he barely even spoke any English - the only reason he was eligible for citizenship at all is because his wife just happens to be American. Even then, he double-checked with France to make sure he had no prospects of ever being called up by them before he agreed to play for the US. That's not a case of "acclimation" or "identification," it's purely a mercenary decision (and the national team coach is equally at fault for his cynical decision to take advantage of that loophole in the first place). If you opened up the option for senior national players to change countries in mid-career, it's guaranteed that 99% of the players changing teams would do so for mercenary reasons, and not patriotic reasons - either because they were being influenced from outside to become a citizen of their new country, or because they felt like they had a better chance of winning silverware with their new country, or because their new country had a higher profile and would help them make more money in their club career, or whatever. Just like club football, in other words. In fact, that's exactly why FIFA first imposed the ban on changing national teams. Used to be up until the 50's or early 60's that players could do something very much like what you propose, change national teams at any time, provided they were eligible for passports and/or citizenship. They changed that rule because some countries (Spain especially) were handing out passports and national team spots to elite foreign players like they were going out of style.

Yeah, see I don't like that either. You had some of that in the World Baseball Classic this year, with some players who represented one country in the first tournament choosing a different country in this tournament, and it just looked and felt weird. Especially having to root against the guys who I was cheering for in the first WBC when they played for the US, because now they were representing the Dominican Republic or some other country in the second one. I thought it was bad enough when the US rammed through an accelerated citizenship for the Frenchman David Regis so he could play for them in the '98 World Cup, but at least that was still within their right (as much as I - and to judge from their reactions most of the US team - detested it), since he'd never represented any nation internationally. But the team-swapping going on between WBCs was even worse. And here's another thing. If something like that were to ever be put in place, the smaller countries would be even more screwed than they are now, because the Germanys and Italys and Englands and their brethren would be hovering all over their best players looking for any link of ancestry that would justify being able to poach them. You're a Belgian holystove...imagine if, after that huge World Cup run in 1986, the Italians and French and Dutch had all come swooping in and offered call-ups on their teams to all of your best players (Pfaff, Van der Elst, Scifo, Ceulemans, etc.) because they had French or Dutch or Italian ancestry in their past. Wouldn't that tick you off just a bit?

Well let's be fair here, Terry probably fueled a lot more male fantasies while that show was on the air than Nana did. Anyway...ding ding ding! You are absolutely correct sir, it is Alexander Siddig. Very well done, indeed. For those craving a little more trivia, he has another uncle on his father's side who is a former prime minister of the Sudan, so he has notable relatives on both sides of his family. And now I know why you ask so many of these Jimmy...it's fun being on this side of the question!

How about a category for TT's Biggest Man Crush of the Season? Suggested nominees: That guy who could never make a post without glorifying Cahill Bill, on Fellaini Cristiano Ronaldo, on his teammate