August 2, 2007
Today has been ultra crazy, so I'm just going to go through what I see as some of the bigger soccer news of the day.
- The US Open Cup potential Semifinal match ups and locations are out on US Soccer.com. With New England wanting to host and Colorado and FC Dallas not wanting any part of hosting a USL team, even in the Semis, it tells me that New England is taking this a whole lot more seriously than pretty much every other MLS club.
- Mark September 9th on your calendar as the USMNT will travel south of the border and take on Mexico in the first friendly at Azteca in 23 years.
- The SuperLiga semifinals are set after DC United had to sweat things out last night: Pachuca @ Houston and DC @ LA. I wonder if US Soccer could get a sponsor to throw $1 million into the kitty for the USOC champ and if that would get MLS teams to take that tournament more seriously?
- Ives Galarcep takes on the question of what does MLS' sucess in SuperLiga really mean? MLS has had homefield advantage in every game and they are in mid-season form while their Mexican opponents are still in pre-season form. At the end of the day, it's fun to beat soccer teams from Mexico, so I'm not going to worry with how the US sides win, and just focus on how many times they win!
- Luis Arroyave has a Q&A with the newest member of the Chicago Fire, paulo Wanchope.
- A new group is throwing their hat into the ring when it comes to MLS expansion into Seattle. With a name like Atletico Seattle , they at least appear to be soccer, or should I say futbol, friendly.
- Mo says that Beckham is a No Go for Sunday. Let the whining begin!
- It doesn't appear that this Toronto FC fan will be whining for a while. All sports teams need more stories like that one.
- Frank Giase is pumping up Landon Donovan's tires. It will be interesting to see how Donovan adapts to a new role once Beckham is fit.
- Grant Wahl , Ian Plenderleith, and Jack Bell have pieces on Freddy Adu's move to Benfica. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that there haven't been more columnists kicking Freddy on his way out of town. I guess they are too busy whacking Beckham over not playing through his ankle injury.
- What is up with the Red Bulls and the Minnesota Thunder? First Ansu Toure gets a long look in camp, then both Tony Sanneh and Sinisa Ubiparipovic land in Minnesota to get some game action and now the Red Bulls are looking at former Thunder forward Francis Doe.
- Soccer America has a really interesting article on the business side of soccer and particularly soccer sponsorships in the US. For people that like to play Monday morning owner or GM, this is a really good read.
- Another day, another lopsided loss by the Carolina RailHawks. This time they were on the wrong end of a 4-1 spanking by the Montreal Impact at Le Claude. Biello and Gbeke both scored for Montreal. Also, Montreal got a lot of production from three newcomers with David Testo scoring a goal, Joey Gjersten setting up two goals, and Roberto Brown also getting an assist. And Testo's goal came in a match where he only played 10 minutes.......
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the Rochester Rhinos or SoccerSam.com. Feel free to send any comments or complaints to news@soccersam.com. James promises to read (but not to respond) to all of them.
