In promotion of ESPN's 2010 World Cup coverage the sports network giant has commissioned artists, at the direction of ESPN and Wieden+Kennedy agency, to depict a story in each of the 32 team's in a mural.

Vanity Fair reports that each mural will appear in publications and on subway platforms and billboards in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere from now through mid-July, the network worked with the Wieden+Kennedy ad agency and the little-known AM I Collective, a group of artists based in Cape Town, South Africa.

A new photograph of Manchester United's new home jersey for the 2010-11 season has been leaked on the Internet.

The image, which shows a design of Nike's UK website, features pictures of Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra, Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney wearing the new Manchester United home football jersey.

By Ollie Irish

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Name: Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri, aka 'Dunga' (after Dopey, one of the Seven Dwarves because of his lack of stature when he was young)

Nationality: Brazilian

Position: Defensive midfielder

Why so hard?

This week's Video Of The Week goes all the way back to 1962, and a short film called "The Saturday Men". Produced as part of a shot series of films sponsored by the Ford Motor Company called "Look At Britain", "The Saturday Men" spends a week following West Bromwich Albion around. It follows them to training, the inner workings of the boardroom (to the extent to which the inhabitants of said room were going to be honest when there were cameras around), takes the time to meet a former player who is about to embark on a new career as a salesman and even stops in on a pre-match team talk by the club's then manager, Archie McAuley.

Sometimes I'm proud to be British. But other times, I'm ashamed. After watching a documentary series on YouTube entitled "Hooligans Untold Story," an investigative look inside the world of England football hooligans by the renowned team from BBC's Panorama, I was very ashamed especially since the footage was only a few years ago, from 2006.

I wish I could answer the questions as to why Fernando Torres was taken off at Birmingham on Sunday – but I for one have given up trying to guess.
Preserving players early in the season is one thing – but doing it in April just doesn't make sense.
No wonder Steven Gerrard was scratching his head.

Some things are unforgivable. One of those things is posting a Loverboy video on a Friday evening. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I've had a few glasses of wine and it's the first thing that came to mind when I started thinking about MLS big weekend ahead, with all 16 teams squaring off tomorrow, including your New York Red Bulls playing Chivas in La-La Land.

Sunday League fun Off The Post has three copies of football cult classic Danny Baker's The Game to give away. The six-part series was filmed on Hackney Marshes in the 1980s as Baker charts the fortunes of Sunday League outfits in the East London Sunday League Division 4. That means lots of hungover, slightly overweight men [.

This summer's hottest footy fashions Team: Mexico Maker: Adidas Prem personalisation: Carlos Vela, Guillermo Franco Verdict: Mexico's home kit has more than a nod to the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainly due to the diamond pattern on the strip but also because it has more than a hint of the Power Rangers about it.

Hopefully the World Cup will shine the light on South Africa's rich football history. Like the story of of Simon "Bull" Lehoko, a star defender of the 1970s and 1980s with Vaal Professionals and Kaizer's Chiefs. In this video profile by journalist Leoni Marinovich (for the Twenty Ten project), Lehoko talks about the annual "multi-racial matches" specifically the 1981 edition arranged between the White XI and African XI as a sign of political "reform.

Mexico striker Javier Hernandez carried on a family tradition by scoring against France at the World Cup on Thursday: his grandfather did the exact same thing 56 years ago.

The 22-year-old Hernandez came on as a second-half substitute Thursday and escaped the offside trap set up by the France defense after 63 minutes.

Chile's record of futility continues against Brazil as they crash out 3-0. Goals by Juan, Luis Fabiano, and Robinho guide the Selecao to a quarterfinal meeting with Netherlands.

Lots of possession for the Chileans. But their finishing in front of goal let them down.

Brazil soaked up the pressure and hit them on the counter.

Defending German Bundesliga champions FC Bayern Munich (or Bayern München in German) unveiled their 2010/11 home kit all the way back in February. Now the Bavarian giants' adidas 2010/11 away kit has hit the streets. Already available at World Soccer Shop, the Bayern Munich 2010/11 adidas away kit uses an adidas 1980s-inspired design similar to [.

If the last few weeks of my life needed a soundtrack, the proto-horrorcore song 'My Minds Playing Tricks on Me' by Geto Boys certainly gets a spot on said playlist.At least four times I've woken up to the sweet sounds of Ian Darke.You remember."... Howard gratefully claims it ... distribution -- brilliant.

In the third of AFR's four part Premier League preview series, Nick Lichtenberg (writing from New York City) looks at his Premier League's Wild Cards: Aston Villa, Birmingham, and Newcastle. (Part One: Contenders. Part Two: Middle Men)
Aston Villa Football Club

"The Villans" .

In this week's installment of Friday Flashback Videos, we continue out journey through 1970s English football by landing on the 1971-72 season and taking us from August until the end of the season.

As usual, there is so much to watch and so many observations that can be made of how different the game was back then versus now.

In the first of a regular weekend series, Longpier.com looks back at footage from the Southend area, over the years. First up is this cracking 80s video, voiced by former Essex FM and now TalkSport producer Eddy Salim. Eddy still lives in Leigh on Sea and clearly had an eye for media, even back then.

Lars "Lasse" Lagerback is Sweden's former manager. This picture was taken back in the 1980s when he first started out. Since then, he managed Sweden from 1998 until 2009 leading Sweden in five consecutive championships, the first time in Swedish history. He resigned in 2009 after Sweden's failure to qualify for the World Cup.

We have to tread lightly as any thinly-veiled hints will immediately reveal this beautiful-'baller-to-be's baby identity. However, we can provide two sub-clues:

1. He's not an EPL player

2. He's a front-row fashion whore

Can you name this 1980s babybitcher?

When you're too stumped/lazy to keep guessing, pay a visit to our good friends at Ciacha to find out who this pretty-faced player is.

I share this mainly because it's the first time I've seen a member of team management (as opposed to an MLS head honcho) speak about the strike threat.

AEG's Tim Leiweke essentially threw down the gauntlet today in an interview with the LA Times.

"Here's our issue, and I'm speaking on behalf of AEG," Leiweke said in an interview with The Times on Monday.

Diego Armando Maradona had been the uncontested football star of the 1980s, and is perhaps the best player that ever lived. In 1986 he had led the Argentinean team to the World Cup, and had changed club from FC Barcelona, where he had not had a happy spell because of injuries, to AS Napoli as the then most expensive player in history.

Two years ago they finished runners up to Sriwijaya in the old format Liga Indonesia. Last season they battled valiantly in the AFC Cup while battling relegation. A battle they lost.
PSMS are a lesson in how not to run a football clu. Instead of building on the success of 07/08 the team was allowed to fall apart as people sat around waiting for money to fall in their deserving laps.

As a player, he made 241 appearances for Liverpool during the club's glory years of the 1980s, winning nine major honours. Now, he is one of the most recognised pundits around, a lynchpin of the BBC's football coverage. But whilst Mark Lawrenson retains a special affection for his old club, he believes that failure to finish in the top four this season could have disastrous consequences for the club in the long term.

Last week, we took you from the beginning of the 1966 World Cup finals through to 1978 through the lens of the television cameras that brought the world's biggest football tournament into our living rooms. This week we move on to the 1980s and the beginning of the gradual expansion of the tournament.

The end of the 1980s and early 90's were a time of great changes in the world as well as in the world of football. The 1980s had seen violence around the game grow, culminating in the specter of hooliganism and banning of English teams to play in Europe. Football had become a catalyst for the ugliest sides of European nationalism and the intervention of football.

Name: Walter Zenga DOB: 20/04/1960 Height: 6ft 2in (1.88m) Clubs: Salernitana (1978-79) Savona (1979-80) Sambenedetesse (1980-82) Internazionale (1982-94) Sampdoria (1994-96) Padova (1996-97) New England Revolution (1997-99) Years Active: 1978-1999 Club Appearances: 530 International Appearances: (Italy) 58 Walter Zenga, for a number of years at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s was widely regarded as the best goalkeeper in the world, in the middle part of a successful [.

The way they've been hoarding the glory lately, it wouldn't be so far-fetched to believe that Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid have been winning titles since the Jurassic era. But it wasn't always so. Between the late 1960s and early 1980s a spate of small-town clubs achieved unprecedented success across the continent.

France had always been a reluctantly great footballing nation. With great teams, from their 1958 bronze winners to their legendary squad from the 1980s, the title of champions of the world had nevertheless eluded them, in spite of the huge amount of enormously talented players that were being produced in the excellent youth academies of the countries.

This week's Video Of The Week may be a couple of days late, but it's well worth the wait it's the first episode of the BBC's "Match Of The Eighties" series. "Match Of The Eighties", hosted by Danny Baker, was a six-part series that first aired in 1997. It follows a fairly simple theme, telling the story of each of the first six seasons of the 1980s (the series stops at the point at which the BBC lost television rights to show Football League matches).

This week's Video Of The Week may be a couple of days late, but it's well worth the wait it's the first episode of the BBC's "Match Of The Eighties" series. "Match Of The Eighties", hosted by Danny Baker, was a six-part series that first aired in 1997. It follows a fairly simple theme, telling the story of each of the first six seasons of the 1980s (the series stops at the point at which the BBC lost television rights to show Football League matches).

In exactly two weeks the 2010 World Cup will begin in South Africa. For soccerheads, Christmas comes only once every four years. But it lasts a month.
These two weeks are going to feel interminable, though. It can't come fast enough. The trick is to stay busy until kick-off... not to give into the anxiety.

The 1980s saw a continuation of the old recipe. Take a schmaltzy German songwriter, print the faces of the national team on the record cover, let them sing the background vocals -- and some fools will buy the official world cup song. In 1982 it was the Austrian Peter Alexander's turn to express German cosmopolitanism and the nation's hitherto unknown love for the host country: "Mexico, mi amor".

By Paul Sorene

THE Vuvuzela is the buzz. It buzzes like a pasty-faced Manchester Student union rep in the late 1980s. Only, without the charm. We've scoured the web and thanks to Anorak - produced the ultimate vuvuzela gallery. Enjoy:

vuvuzela-1 ◄ Back Next ► Picture 1 of 13

By Paul Sorene

THE Vuvuzela is the buzz. It buzzes like a pasty-faced Manchester Student union rep in the late 1980s. Only, without the charm. We've scoured the web and thanks to Anorak - produced the ultimate vuvuzela gallery. Enjoy:

vuvuzela-1 ◄ Back Next ► Picture 1 of 13

"Go for the glory, go for the score. ... Go for it. CONNECT FOUR!" -- 1980s Connect Four jingle.Admittedly opening a preamble to the most important American soccer game in four years with a bit of Saturday morning 80s nostalgia might be the most prudent idea I've ever made writing this blog. For whatever harebrained reason, that deceptively simple yet savvy children's game jingle has been

Just a link to some worthwhile lunchtime reading for American soccer fans, and indeed, anyone who wants to understand a little more about how the US men's national team has gotten where it is today (which is a hell of a ways from where it was in the 1980s, lest we forget): a superb piece on ESPN Soccernet by Tom Friend on David Vanole, a rather obscure goalkeeper crucial to America's qualification for the 1990 World Cup:

The United States is a World Cup regular now, in the midst of its sixth consecutive appearance.

Netherlands beat Slovakia 2-1 in the Round of 16, thanks to classic piece of Arjen Robbenry. We've mocked the man's injury attracting hamstrings here on World Cup Blog, but Robben proved once again today that even half fit, he's basically unstoppable.

New Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson is keen to retain the services of club legend Kenny Dalglish - even though he was appointed to the top job the Scot was overlooked for.
The 62-year-old officially took over on Thursday after signing a three-year contract having impressed in a final round of interviews at the weekend against one other unnamed candidate.

Does anyone out there remember Craig Johnston? If not, you probably should. Johnston was a South African born Australian striker who played in England for both Middlesbrough and Liverpool in the 1980s. After retirement, Johnston went on to design the football boot that would become the adidas Predator.

Brian Kidd spent 11 years wearing our shirt, after progressing through the ranks, winning two league titles, the FA Cup as well as scoring in our 1968 winning European Cup final. Sir Alex Ferguson then brought him back to the club in the 1980s to work with our youngsters, before promoting him to assistant manager in 1991.