Fútbol chatter

[realjd]

They must be offering Dempsey serious bank for him to leave Tottenham. No offense to the Sounders but it's not exactly a lateral move on his part.

[Bruce]

They must be offering Dempsey serious bank for him to leave Tottenham. No offense to the Sounders but it's not exactly a lateral move on his part.

According to NBC ProSoccerTalk, the transfer fee is $9 million, paid for by the league, and the Sounders have "guaranteed the 30-year-old attacker $32 million over the next four seasons". That comes out to $8 million per season.

In other news, here's the full timeline/saga from SounderAtHeart, by far the best Sounders news source. Deuce's home debut will be against Portland in front of over 66,000, filling CenturyLink Field to capacity as the second highest standalone game in league history. Also, this happened on the Timbers' sister fan site.

[wphiii]

They must be offering Dempsey serious bank for him to leave Tottenham. No offense to the Sounders but it's not exactly a lateral move on his part.

He was also going to face an increasingly uphill battle for pitch time at Spurs. I imagine he is smart enough to have seen the writing on the wall, and this way everyone can win: Spurs get paid, Dempsey gets paid, and gets to play out his career in his home country as a superstar rather than as a bit part. It's just a shame he was cheated out of the chance to appear in the UCL.

[mgk920]

A bit belated, but the USA National Team won their 12th in a row on Wednesday, an international 'friendly' v. #13 ranked Bosnia and Herzegovina at Sarajevo (the USA was ranked #19 in the World going into that game).  The USA spotted B-H two first half goals and then stormed back with four of their own in the second half, including a hat trick by Jozy Altidore.  This was despite the fact that several of the team's best players, including Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan, did not make the trip.



Mike

[english si]

How's NBC's Premier League coverage (which must be in it's second week)?

Looking at their ads on youtube, there's an awful lot of Italian singing being used to promote English football - eg "Forget Downtown Abbey. Real English Drama. Every Match. Every Week. Every Team." with Pavarotti singing 'Nessun Dorma' as the soundtrack.

[mgk920]

Congrats to newly-promoted Cardiff (as in Wales, UK), for their first WIN in the English First Division (now the Barclay's Premier League) in 51 seasons. Their first victim since 1962? Manchester City - winning 3-2 on Sunday, 2013-08-25!



BTW, The Seattle Sounders (MLS) drew 67K+ fans to their game v. Portland Timbers on Sunday, winning 1-0.  Clint Dempsey has had an amazing effect on fan interest in the Pacific Northwest, indeed!

Mike

[on_wisconsin]

How's NBC's Premier League coverage (which must be in it's second week)?

Crap, but only beacuse they don't insist that affiliates and cable companies not center crop the match from 16:9 to 4:1 (for non-HD feeds) cutting off part of the score box/ important game footage.

[Bruce]

BTW, The Seattle Sounders (MLS) drew 67K+ fans to their game v. Portland Timbers on Sunday, winning 1-0.  Clint Dempsey has had an amazing effect on fan interest in the Pacific Northwest, indeed!

It wasn't all Clint. Mostly Portland hate that fuels the large attendance.

Anyway, the Sounders won 1-0 in Columbus after a two-hour weather delay and going down to 10 men in the 7th minute. Amazing stuff.

[1995hoo]

Dos a cero! Clap clap clap-clap-clap!

[mgk920]

And a trip to the 2014 World Cup!



BTW, Mexico is still not out of it yet, but things are not looking good at all for 'El Tri' this time around.

Mike

[Bruce]

USA are through and top of the qualifying table...and Dempsey definitely missed the penalty on purpose to preserve Dos a Cero numero 4.

[mgk920]

Is there a luckier team in all of sports right now than the Mexican National Team?



They were less than two minutes away from missing the World Cup on Tuesday night (2013-10-15), when the USA (who had absolutely nothing to play for - they had a 1st seed in the WC group draw and first place the qualifying group already sewed up regardless of the outcome of their game) pealed off two goals in second half stoppage time to defeat Panama 3-2 in Panama City, knocking Panama out of the World Cup and keeping Mexico's hopes alive.  Mexico had earlier lost their game 2-1 to Costa Rica in San Jose, Costa Rica.  Mexico will now play New Zealand in a two game home-and-home total score playoff in mid November for the trip to Brasil.

Amazing!



And yes, it was a totally DEVASTATING loss for Panama, it would have been the country's first-ever appearance a World Cup had their score held and they then had won the subsequent home-and-home playoff v. New Zealand.

Mike

[realjd]

I meant to post this last week...

The final hurdle was cleared last week for Orlando's new downtown soccer stadium. This means that division 3 Orlando City will move up and become the newest MLS team, most likely in 2015!

http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2013/10/22/orange-county-approves-funding-downtown-orlando-soccer-stadium

There's talk that Miami will be getting a team as well. In their case, it won't be a minor league team moving up; it will be a brand new expansion team.

[mgk920]

Any thoughts on Friday's World Cup group draw?

Said to be the 'Group of Death' (Group G), the USA is paired with Germany, Portugal and Ghana - a very tough grouping, to be sure, but the USA is definitely good enough and well enough coached to advance from it.

Mike

[english si]

There's several groups of death in the World Cup draw: B and D, as well as G. A looks like it might be - everyone but Brazil should have strong doubts about their getting through - and Brazil should not be confident of an easy three games, though home advantage (and not having qualifiers has lowered their ranking) will see them through. C, E and H look to be where the softer teams in each pot ended up.

Hard groups D and G, will at least have an easier second round game than they might have had.

Group A: Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon
Group B: Spain, Netherlands, Chile, Australia
Group C: Colombia, Greece, Ivory Coast, Japan
Group D: Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy
Group E: Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras
Group F: Argentina, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Iran, Nigeria
Group G: Germany, Portugal, Ghana, United States
Group H: Belgium, Algeria, Russia, South Korea

The Netherlands, and Italy, must be kicking themselves for having friendlies against poor opposition (Indonesia and San Marino respectively) just before the World Cup Draw. They both lost out on the seedings to Switzerland by 2 points. If they had played the team one rank higher in the world rankings than the ones they did, they'd have gained 3 extra points. Instead they played friendlies with friends and got stuck in groups of death, with a higher-ranked team in there too

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Wow, the final match of last World cup will happen again in Brazil. But at first round instead.

PS:

American football is boring and sucky.

I jumped the gun too early. I have watched some American football, and is not that boring and sucky as I thought.

[Alps]

Any thoughts on Friday's World Cup group draw?

Said to be the 'Group of Death' (Group G), the USA is paired with Germany, Portugal and Ghana - a very tough grouping, to be sure, but the USA is definitely good enough and well enough coached to advance from it.

Mike

The idea behind the seeding should be closer to how the NCAA does it - with eight groups, you have your world rankings 1-8, 9-16, 17-24, and 25-32 (out of the 32 qualifying teams). Each group gets one random pick from each of those four pools.  That way, you don't have a group of death where the combined additive ranking of all four members is less than 50.

[mgk920]

Remember that one of the driving priorities, in addition to splitting apart powerhouses, is that each group have geographic diversity, this so that, for example, you don't have a group with four South American teams and/or a group with four European teams.

Mike

[english si]

^^ yes, each group has 1 or 2 European teams, 1 South American team and 1 or 2 other teams...

[Stephane Dumas]

Time for a flashback moment when the defunct Cleveland Crunch in the MISL in 1994 won a championship. First championship in Cleveland since 1964.

[mgk920]

With just over two weeks to go before the start of the 2014 World Cup (already?!?!?!  *YIKES*!!!    ), what's going to happen in Brasil this time around?  How far will the USA get into it?  Will there be a home-team winner?  Etc?





Mike

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I go with Spain due to obvious reasons . But they won't win the World Cup again, I think.

The Spanish league got a thrill ending with FC Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid having a direct match for the championship. A triumph of either team gave it the league, if a draw occurred then Atlético won (They had three points more than Barça). On the first half Atlético got two players injured, and to make things even worse Barça scored a goal. On the second half Atlético reacted and scored, and then managed to keep that scoreboard of 1-1 to break the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barça and clinch its 10th league trophy.

Next week the Champions League Final Match took place in Lisbon, with both teams hailing from the same city: Real Madrid and Atlético (again). The latter scored on the first half and was already chhering for having won the European Cup for the first time... when at the last minute Real Madrid tied the match. They had to go to overtime, where Real Madrid scored three more goals and therefore clinched its long awaited 10th European Cup.

And that's all from the other side of the pond.

[realjd]

With just over two weeks to go before the start of the 2014 World Cup (already?!?!?!  *YIKES*!!!    ), what's going to happen in Brasil this time around?  How far will the USA get into it?  Will there be a home-team winner?  Etc?





Mike

I'd be very surprised if the US makes it out of the group stage. We did not get lucky with the drawings this year.

[english si]

The groups were nice and fun, weren't they - all the rubbish-sounding teams together and all the cool teams together.

That said, some of these rubbish-sounding teams are good and some of the good-sounding teams aren't as good as they could be.

I'm surprised that some of the English Newcastle players didn't try to injure Suarez. That said, there aren't many.

[on_wisconsin]

What do people think of the World Cup early on? Surprisingly little talk of it on here.