By Chris Wright

Bearing in mind that you could probably rupture Robin van Persie's spleen if you stared at him hard enough, it's little wonder that Diego Lugano's reckless, two-footed stomp after only 30 minutes of last night's 'friendly' between Holland and Uruguay didn't land the Arsenal crock in an Intensive Care ward.

By FRANCO PANIZO

The 2011 MLS Combine is in the books, but before all of the focus turns towards where these guys will be playing this season, we're looking back at the event's top performers.

Several of the top prospects did not participate in the Combine, but there were still many players who showed considerably well over the three days worth of matches in sunny Ft.

Mario Balotelli's remarkable talent for finding new ways to embroil himself in controversy resurfaced on Manchester City's pre-season trip to Los Angeles when the Italian was substituted in disgrace only 30 minutes into a friendly against LA Galaxy.
Balotelli then became involved in a touchline row with his manager, Roberto Mancini, and angrily threw a water bottle on to the pitch after taking his seat among the substitutes.

This Saturday the US Men's National team will look sit alone at the top of their Gold Cup Group with a win against Panama. Coming off of a strong showing in their 2-0 win over Canada the US is favored to come away with the win in Tampa, but Panama also won their first group match against Guadalupe.

The 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup came to end Tuesday night at the new Livestrong Stadium in Kansas City with Canada playing Panama and the United States taking on Guadeloupe.
In the night's first match, Canada took an early lead over Panama in the 61st minute when Dwayne De Rosario converted a penalty kick after being fouled by Eybir Bonaga.

The Independence were able to move into second place in the six team WPS with a 6-0 thrashing of the team I will only refer to as Florida. The margin of victory is the highest ever in the 2.5 year old league and only the second time ever a team has scored six goals in a game (the now defunct LA team did it last season).

Ok I set the alarm and got up for the Matildas game - I'm still on a high from their last World Cup and with Tom Sermanni changing the whole team - why wouldn't I get up.
I thought we might beat Brazil - more later.
I fell asleep after the game only to wake to see Dylan Tombides getting sent-off for kicking an opponent - just when Jan's boys seemed to have some pressure on the ballas well - and then Teeboy gets sent-off - that's what you get when you take a 15 year old to a World Cup - great experience for him - but he can't go to the next one due to FIFA regulations not his age he's only 15 - so his 30 minutes here he'd better remember.

THe LA Galaxy were given a lesson in finishing last night as Real Madrid opened their pre-season with an impressive 4-1 victory over the LA Galaxy.

Real Madrid is one of the best teams in the world, and even with a strong line-up, the Galaxy could not hang with the Spanish giants. Madrid won 63% of the tackles in the game, had 60% of the possession and had 20 shots on goal to LA's 8.

Los Eternos Rivales, eh?

It certainly started to look like it after about 30 minutes when the Mexico we've come to know and love started asserting is prickish best after looking in a different class for the first half hour. It's been weird lately, watching Mexico play within themselves, so it came as something of a relief when their true colors started bleeding through.

It doesn't seem that long ago that Newcastle were conceding three goals in the last 30 minutes of the season against West Brom in May. But here we are again at the start of another Premier League season, and at least four of Newcastle's five new signings should be on display tomorrow night, when Newcastle [.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why Fernando Torres has only played eight minutes of first team football in the last two games. You could understand Didier Drogba starting the game against Liverpool if he was playing well, on form and scoring goals. This was his first game back!.
I guess AVB wanted to use the a different physical approach with using Drogba there to rough up the Liverpool defenders but it never happened.

Written by Total Arsenal

Arsenal 0 – 1 Manchester City: Match Review

During the day there was a lot of discussion whether we should take this game seriously or not.

Tonight, in about 30 minutes actually, SB Nation's MLS writers will attempt to predict just what what will happen in Baltimore next Thursday...this could be interesting.

You can follow all the action on the Live Mock Draft Thread and be sure to check back here at Dynamo Theory after I make my selection in the 7th spot for the "logic" behind my thinking.

If you don't tingle with pride at being an Arsenal supporter today then you my friend have a severe case of Jaguaritis and that is not good because yesterday we walked with giants and witnessed the quality of champions.

How dare these pie eating upstarts take two points off us up North? How dare they?

1. The January Camp friendlies rarely provide the most exciting matches normally our MLS-ers against a decent country's domestic-leaguers but they do provide a glimpse at our youth (most players on our roster are under 25). For a lucky few, it can even propel them into the first-team conversation.

Picture courtesy of FAS's Facebook Group
(The following message was made available via Facebook group of the Football Association of Singapore)
Venue : Jalan Besar Stadium
Date: 19 Feb 2011 (Under 8 & 10) and 20 Feb 2011 (Under 12)
FAS will conduct trials for its 3 JCOE centres Under-8, Under-10 and Under-12 programme on Saturday and Sundays 19 and 20 February.

Kenny Dalglish admitted Liverpool were made to pay for a slow start as Tottenham Hotspur dented their European aspirations with a 2-0 victory at Anfield on Sunday.
A volley from Rafael van der Vaart and Luka Modric's penalty secured the points for Spurs to ensure the race for Europa League qualification will go right to the wire.

A modest one, courtesy of the Associated Press:

CARY, N.C. (AP) -- The U.S. men's national team will be trying to follow a well-traveled path to more World Cup success in a few years.

Four years ago, the Americans won the Gold Cup to earn an automatic bid to the 2009
Confederations Cup.

The Daily Express is reporting today that owner Mike Ashley stormed out of St James's Park minutes after the final whistle last Sunday, furious that Newcastle had given away a three goal lead to WBA with 30 minutes remaining of the season, and with it a very good 9th place. Mike Ashley storms out [.

Preston

TSG fave Preston Zimmerman takes another step in furthering his German footie career today.

Zimmerman who has been at Mainz playing on their reserve team for a year now signs today with SV Darmstadt 98.

Zimmerman had offers from Greece and Croatia but told TSG that Darmstadt, recently promoted to the 3rd Bundesliga, offered precisely the opportunity he was looking for.

Our youngsters are still keeping busy after the long taxing EPL season.

Chicharito for one has carried his fine scoring form into the Gold Cup where he's currently the top scorer with 5 goals from 3 games. For a player who was supposed to be eased into the rigors of the English game and pegged more as one for the future, he played in well over 40 games for us last season.

I have to say that I was probably a little more optimistic about this game after seeing the pounding SKC gave FC Dallas. But, I was also a little worried that Vermes was going to go back to his beloved 4-3-3 formation that hasn't worked well. But, when I saw that Omar Bravo was going to replace Stojcev (who was suspended) I was again excited.

For the first time in their history, Argentina's biggest club River Plate have been relegated to the second division after a 3-1 aggregate defeat to Belgrano at the Estadio Monumental.

The result was followed by mass riots as furious River Plate fans set fire to cars and clashed with police outside the stadium.

The P2010 Index is a ranking system based on player ratings assigned by some of the country's top soccer sites and journalist. These ratings are then weighted by strength of opponent, match significance, venue, and recent form. (It's all explained here.) In this post we are simply looking at the average (unweighted) ratings from the Gold Cup final vs.

Thoughts on the USA win over Brazil;

Never say never. This game will go down in Woman's World Cup history as one of the all time greats. The U.S. women won their quarterfinal match in unbelievable fashion Sunday, overcoming bad referee decisions, being down a woman, and being down a goal with literally seconds remaining before beating Brazil on penalty kicks (5-3) to advance to the semifinals.

My predicted winner bounces the hosts, while another underdog reached the Copa América semifinals for the first time since 1983. Be forewarned, the Argentina v Uruguay feature presentation runs 30 minutes long.Peru(2)vs(0)Colombia Copa America 2011 door somaliflagArgentina v Uruguay door geuzehead- Greg Seltzer

The manager says he intends staying on and seeing his contract through to the end of the 2014 World Cup. The Copa America exit clearly hurts but the larger picture is the World Cup and its preparations.

Batista mentioned that the team did not play upto expectations against Bolivia and Colombia.

30 minutes on the pitch.
A goal with his first touch and an assist with his third.
Two goals and one assist on debut.
A 4-0 victory.
Very average.
Mancini better pray that he can keep Carlos Tevez and Mario Ballotelli happy in Manchester if City are going to achieve anything this season.

What a fantastic hit by new Manchester City signing Sergio Aguero. He scored 2 goals and picked up an assist in just 30 minutes of action off the bench in yesterday's 4-0 win over Swansea. The new Carlos Tevez? ... Continue reading →

Arsenal's defence at full stretch

Three points in the bag. Move up to 11th in the league (still early days to consider any significance of the table). No injuries suffered during the game. No red card accrued during the 90 minutes. Andrey Arshavin opened his accounts for the season and another clean sheet kept by Wojciech Szczesny (not that it was his effort alone, those in front of him helped of course).

After a summer of transfer rumors about where will Carlos Tevez be playing this season, nobody was willing to pay City's price for their former captain, and it appeared that Tevez was happy to be returning to Manchester.

But in Munich tonight, the Carlos Tevez's relationship with Manchester City hit a low point as Tevez refused to go into the game as a second half substitute.

Jim(my Briand)'ll fix it Lyon progressed in the Champions League after a remarkable 1-7 win at Dinamo Zagreb last night. The six-goal margin built up over a period of 30 minutes was just what the French side needed to overhaul Ajax and pip them to qualification on goal difference. Needless to say, Lyon's [.

League 2 - Saurday 1st January 2011
Cheltenham started like a team who had won 4-0 in their previous game and were confident another was well within their capabilities. It certainly seemed the case for most of the first half. Early chances came to Pack and Melligan. The Robins out passed Wycombe and looked a classier act.

The Referee | Rättskiparen [2010] from Freedom From Choice AB on Vimeo.

I want to share with you a wonderful documentary from Swedish director and producer Mattias Löw about the referee who was responsible for the controversial mistake that helped France qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

Our Mock Draft stars in just 30 minutes. You can follow along on the whole shebang by CLICKING THIS LINK.

Or you can read my thoughts on Sounders specific stuff once I've made each pick as I update this post.

Hopefully some of our industrious readers can critique my thoughts like I will be critiquing Hanauer and Co during the real deal.

Well in 30 minutes we will be treated to Villareal hosting Valencia once again.

In our previous encounter we battled it out to a 0-0 draw in Mestalla with some atractive football.

Valencia dominated the pitch but failed to capitalize.

That does give us some advantage going into this match.

Don't miss the brand new episode of the 3 Up Front podcast!

Host Adrian Clarke does his best to control feuding pundits Iain Spragg and Iain Macintosh during half an hour of lively laughter-filled football chat that features;

Darren Bent is a money-grabbing traitor Fact or Fiction?

Arsenal booked their first cup final since 2007 today with a 3-0 victory over Ipswich.

So here's the deal in all probability there will be no match review or ratings for this one. Sairax and I always do our best to try to divide up the work so that one of us is always available to watch matches and put up the recaps and ratings as soon after the match as possible, but due to circumstances beyond our control (me having a hellish day at work, Sairax having some family issues she needs to attend to), it looks like it won't happen.

The San Jose Earthquakes have hit the goalkeeper jackpot.

Entering Wednesday's lottery for Cal goalkeeper David Bingham with the fifth-highest odds of winning (8.8 percent), the Earthquakes cashed in by landing the final 2011 Generation adidas prospect on the market.

Bingham enters an appealing situation.

Time and time again the Unions are painted by the media as being loony-left strike happy agitators.
Consider this relating to British Airways taking legal action against Unite and stopping it's members from striking (because they failed to mention the number of spoiled ballots
In January 2010, Unite gave BA notice of its intention to conduct a ballot.