Gabriel Gomez was signed by the Philadelphia Union in late December. Last night was the first chance Philly fans have had to examine the versatile Panamanian.

In a 1-0 friendly loss to the United States, Gomez played as a calming link between Panama's back four and skittish front five.

The good news: He was fantastic.

Real Madrid dismantled Osasuna, winning 5-1 with two goals from Cristiano Ronaldo. His first was an absolute rocket blast from considerable distance and, in one of the most Cristiano Ronaldo goal celebrations ever, he pulled up the leg of his shorts and pointed to the thigh that just generated that impressive display of power and accuracy.

Seattle it is, and we couldn't be more proud. Montero, Alonso, Rosales, and the league's biggest fan base? This isn't a desperation pick. This is destiny.
And if we're wrong – if you show us up, Seattle – there are 18 other teams more than willing to carry this flag. We'll change this up as needed (accuracy is our prime value).

Former Barcelona defender and current New York Red Bulls player Rafael Marquez has hit the streets for Red Bull literally. The Mexican international took to the streets of Mexico City to show off his accuracy and football talent as he performed trick shots throughout the capital.

Check out the video below, and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

As we enter the 2012 season, there are many questions surrounding the Union, but one of the biggest is what to make of our young striker, Danny Mwanga.

After a fantastic rookie year, Mwanga seemed to regress in 2011. He started fewer games and scored fewer goals than he did his rookie year, and his appearances were inconsistent: during some games he looked like an absolute world-beater, while more often he was anonymous.

It's been awhile since I trawled through the Guardian chalkboards for interesting items. I know, we all missed it.
I remain convinced that Liverpool changed tact in midfield during the interval. The key seemed to be Spearing, more willing to stay in his own half and shield the defense rather than pressing higher up the pitch and leaving gaps.

Trademark volley from the non-flying Dutchman Bergkamp still got it by soccermr Ajax's coaching team like to roll back the years from time to time. Take this video, for instance. Frank De Boer play a lovely Hollywood pass, Dennis Bergkamp gets on the end of it and works his magic by firing in a glorious [.

Trademark volley from the non-flying Dutchman Bergkamp still got it by soccermr Ajax's coaching team like to roll back the years from time to time. Take this video, for instance. Frank De Boer play a lovely Hollywood pass, Dennis Bergkamp gets on the end of it and works his magic by firing in a glorious [.

As a team, Liverpool's passing accuracy in the Premier League so far this season is 81%, which is fairly good, but it means means that 19% of passes are being misplaced in every league game. Who are biggest culprits when it comes to giving the ball away?Before you read any further, try and guess who are the worst offenders.

In terms of the technical quality of games, the data taken from the Russian Premier League again shows few disparities between performances on the different surfaces. Critics of artificial turf often hold that players are not comfortable in possession on artificial pitches, yet the average number of touches per player remained steady (2.

You can deride stats all you like but sometimes they tell you things your eyes missed.

Take the following, for example:

Aerial duels won per game:

Hangeland 2.7
Hughes 2.1
Senderos 0.4

Weird. This isn't headers per game, merely what happens when two players contest a ball in the air.

Untold Referees

Untold regularly publishes reviews of the effectiveness and accuracy of referees in the Premier League, giving each referee a percentage mark for his performance.

In addition we also publish regular articles on refereeing in the Premier League which have led us to the view that there is something not quite right [.

Well, that wasn't very pretty, was it?

What can we learn using the match stats from the Chalkboard at mlssoccer.com's Match Center about the Philadelphia Union's 3–1 loss to Portland Timbers in Monday night's season opener?

Passing and shooting

Portland had a greater number of passes and a better passing accuracy percentage with 482 passes with a passing accuracy of 72 percent.

By Chris Wright

During an Asian Champions League match last night, Al Jazira 'keeper Ali Khaseif managed to ping a clearance off the 'spider' camera winching away overhead.

The game was duly restarted with a drop-ball, with an Esteghlal player returning the ball to Khaseif in a sportsmanlike fashion, only for the dead-eye 'keeper to pick out the spider cam again!

The study of football, and its players, is perhaps best accomplished by evaluating efficiency. Of course there are many methods of such evaluation – ranging from weekly player ratings on the typical "start at 6" scale to full scale statistical analysis.

In this article we look at football clubs in Europe's top four leagues the English Premiership, La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga and analyse their offensive and defensive efficiency so far this season.

You've probably read a hundred times by now that the MLS Western Conference is 9-2 versus the East so far this season. It's been less remarked that the two wins are by the Houston Dynamo and that Houston is a pretty tenuous Eastern Conference team. They're the westernmost team in the conference, are only a few miles east of the Western Conference's FC Dallas and they were in the West up until last season, when the MLS head office made the perverse decision to 'balance' the conferences by giving them an equal number of teams for exactly one season before the addition of Montreal unbalanced it again in favor of the East.

A lot has been said these last few days about the apparent "implosion" of Manchester City's title quest this season. And if The Guardian is to be believed, Roberto Mancini has six games to save his job. So what went wrong for Mancini and the Citizens?
Data can help settle arguments, so I thought I'd take another look at some basic performance indicators to see how the City's performance developed over the course of the season.

Since MLS made available detailed match statistics provided by OPTA early in the 2012 season, PSP has published a number of posts in which we try to better understand what was happening on the field with the Philadelphia Union through the use of various statistics. These posts have been something of an evolution, ranging from a closer examination of what happened in a particular match in order to better understand what went right or wrong, to trying to understand larger trends, be they for the team as a whole, across positions, or for individual players.

Photo: Earl Gardner

Yesterday we looked a basic passing statistics over the first four games. In the scatter plot below, we can see a simple pattern emerge along positional bands, much as Rolando De Aguiar demonstrated in a post last December looking at passing statistics from 2011.

The top 3 NBA free-throw shooters of all-time are white guys, Steve Nash, Mark Price and Rick Barry. Five of the top 10 overall are white, with Larry Bird and Scott Skiles as part of the list. Many people would consider Peja Stojakovic as white; he is also in the top 10.

El Clasico Stats: Messi v Ronaldo, Valdes v Casillas and Mesut Ozil - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Ahead of Barcelona v Real Madrid this Saturday, we look at key stats and performers that will feature in El Clasico. The analysis looks at Messi v Ronaldo, Valdés v Casillas and Mesut Özil.

Adidas Predator Lethal Zones Football Boot - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Earlier this week, adidas finally launched the Predator® Lethal Zones boot after weeks of teasers and sneak previews. The new Predator® Lethal Zones boot, designed to be a complete ball control boot for shooting, passing and dribbling, is composed of five, super-light (SL) rubber and memory foam 3-D zones, each designed to support perfect ball control.

A picture tells a thousand words

If John Henry is as serious about Liverpool being successful as we want him to be, he needs to be stark raving mad by now.During yesterday's match, I was in the middle of a conversation with a friend who asked what happened to the Liverpool that ended last season (2010-11).

Cristiano Ronaldo vs Online Football Fans: A Live Football Skills Challenge - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Last year Castrol EDGE presented Ronaldo Tested to the Limit, an award-winning documentary that showed the Portugal and Real Madrid forward showcase his strengths in a series of captivating challenges in the most scientific examination of a player ever undertaken.

The Revolution took to the pitch at Gillette Stadium tonight looking for their first victory of the 2012 season against an Eastern Conference opponent. In the end, they settled for a point-undone yet again by poor defending on set pieces and a late goal. Tonight's result brings the Revs to 4-6-1 on the season, with 13 points, tied with Houston (3-3-4) in the standings.

By Chris Wright

It's fairly common knowledge that Rafael van der Vaart and Zlatan Ibrahimovic despise each other, stemming back from an incident years ago during an international friendly in 2004 where the latter went through the former with a horrendous tackle that left the pair teetering dangerously on becoming 'mortal enemies' with Zlatan even once going on record as saying he 'wished he'd broken Van der Vaart's legs.