In last week's Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci argued that baseball fans need to back off and give 18-year old phenom Bryce Harper room to make mistakes and grow.

When Freddy Adu was 18, he was already the highest paid player in MLS and agitating for playing time. His coach, Peter Nowak, famously responded, "nobody is above this team.

Saturday's Gold Cup final will feature the two teams named as favorites before the tournament began. Though they had two different paths to the final both teams are no strangers to the CONCAF tournament finale. Combined Mexico and the US have won 9 of the last 10 Gold Cup tournaments and will be meeting in the final for the third straight tournament.

Yup, if Ives is to believed, and he's usually reluctant to post anything until it's a done deal, Adu is coming back stateside and checking some of his oversized attitude to try to re-establish himself as a regular on the USMNT under Klinsmann. How, you ask? Well, he's going to be unveiled as a new DP signing in the next few hours for the Philly Union.

US Forward Eddie Johnson joining MLS via allocation

Chivas still has top spot in the order, but passed on Feilhaber and Adu. Seattle is 6th and would likely have to trade up to get him. But he is a forward...

After watching World Champion Spain dispose of the Americans 4-0, I'm left wondering. I'm left wondering a lot of things. It seems as though the game would have gone about much differently if not for some questionable personnel decisions, but we'll get to that.
This game never needed to happen.

By Andrew Villegas Freddy Adu is coming, er, staying, stateside. On the outs at Benfica, and after four unsuccessful loan stints, Adu has decided that it's probably a better bet to keep his place on the U.S. Men's National Team by seeing the field and getting some meaningful playing time in MLS. And who could [.

Full slate of games in Major League Soccer and WPS. Before we get our regular look at attendance, here are a couple of other business stories from the weekend. One quick note. Special thanks to the folks at World Football Daily and American Soccer Show for having me on in the last couple of days to talk about some of the big business issues in American soccer.

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Milan won Serie A. Congrats to them.
dN
8th seeded Chivas has knocked out #1 seed Tigres out of the Mexican playoffs!
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Where oh where has Oguchi gone? Onyewu has not been playing at all lately for his club Twente, and did not even dress as they won the Netherlands KNVB Beker aka League Cup.

Today's subs bench has a couple of entertaining names not seen there yet in this tourney. It looks like 100% Jamaica will see a 4-2-3-1 at the top of the hour.Howard; Cherundolo, Goodson, Bocanegra, Lichaj, Jones, Bradley, Bedoya, Kljestan, Dempsey, AltidoreBench: Hahnemann, Ream, Bornstein, Edu, Adu, Donovan, Agudelo - Greg Seltzer

Adu's marvelous through ball to Donovan to setup the counter attack goal.

Big congratulations to the U.S. Men's National Team for beating Panama in the Gold Cup semi-finals. I'll have more on my thoughts about the actual game itself in an article later today. For now, though, congrats are in order. Now we look towards Saturday when the US takes on Mexico at... 6:00PM, a half hour after the Portland Timbers game starts.

Time to pop bottles and hang with models, Philly fans. The Nowak/Adu reunion tour appears to be on and PPL Park is about to party like it's 2004. I wish I had a joke to insert here but I have to say that if this is a baller-ass move by Nowak; the Union just got that much closer to locking up the East.

Time: 8pm ET

Location: PPL Park, Chester, PA

TV: Galavision

At 4-11-11, the New England Revolution hold the worst record in the east. And they hold the ignominous honor of being the team the Union most thoroughly thrashed this season.

PSP photographer Nicolae Stoian was on hand for the final game of the regular season in New York. Here's what he saw.

The starting XI

Mapp looking to move.

Marfan is taken down.

This is not a foul.

Amobi Okugo holding off Luke Rodgers.

LOS ANGELES, Cal. German second-division club Ingolstadt has signed United States forward Edson Buddle. Buddle's contract with Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy had expired. He was MLS's leading scorer for most of last season despite missing more than a month for the World Cup. Buddle ended the regular season as the second-highest scorer [.

Talking Turkey? Hey, that's where Junior will be punting next...

Via stellar reporter Dan Bu on Twitter this morning, Michael Bradley appears headed to top Turkish side Galatasaray. This report by Dan who was right on Buddle, Adu, Van Nistelroy and more is one that TSG is taking as solid right now.

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The US Soccer Federation has canceled their trip to Cairo for next Wed Feb 9 to play the Egyptian national team. I guess that little political disruption scouring the country is the cause. I really hate politics.
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All the talk on Friday was that Michael Bradley was headed to Galatasary in Turkey, but come Sunday morning and he is instead headed to Aston Villa in England.

I wrote a guest post at the Good Men Project on my unusual feelings every time the US and Mexico square off. As a chicano with fair-skinned guero-itis, my life has been a series of chameleon assimilation acts, with the star confused as to his real persona. When the US and Mexico face off, I am forced to pull off mask after mask.

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The NSC Minnesota Star will host Breast Cancer Awareness Night at their home game on Sat Aug 27 v Montreal and will be wearing, auctioning & selling one-off pink Admiral kits. Please give them your support.
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This will be the 20th season of the English Premier League.

In a press conference at PPL Park today, Freddy Adu was officially announced as a member of the Philadelphia Union.

Adu and head coach Peter Nowak posed with Adu's number eleven jersey (which he acquired from Levi Houapeu in exchange for "a nice dinner") after answering questions from the media.

Jason and Jared are back, in the usual place, to talk about the craziness that was the past week. Things start with USMNT talk from Wednesday night's Klinsmania before moving on to Major League Soccer's new TV contract. Jason has a chat with Ben Berger of footiebusiness.com, then Jason and Jared hash out announcer candidates.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

Slowly but surely, Columbus has pulled themselves up the Eastern Conference ladder. Even as their top two strikers suffered injuries and the rest of their lineup rotated in and out of favor, the Crew scraped points together.

And when Philadelphia faltered, nobody was left to deny the Crew their place atop the East.

Union

The Union went down two goals in the first half of Wednesday night's friendly against Harrisburg City Islanders before answering with five second half goals to finish 5–3. Tweets from fans at the game say that Peter Nowak made the starting XI—MacMath; Williams, Miglioranzi, Califf, G. Farfan; Okugo, Adu, Daniel, Le Toux; Paunovic, Mwanga—run laps after the first half.

Lost in the roller coaster ride of losing Ruiz and gaining Adu is the one offensive signing no one is quite sure what to expect from.

By Andrew Villegas Freddy Adu is coming, er, staying, stateside. On the outs at Benfica, and after four unsuccessful loan stints, Adu has decided that it's probably a better bet to keep his place on the U.S. Men's National Team by seeing the field and getting some meaningful playing time in MLS. And who could [.

On Friday, the US national team will play its first match in Southern California under Jurgen Klinsmann. It wasn't Klinsmann's idea to play this match here of course but it is a great chance for the locals to get familiar with their locally-based national team manager.
Klinsmann, who has long resided in nearby Orange County, will trot out a host of new players as the U.

Welcome to the New England Revolution vs. Philadelphia Union live game thread! Tonight will be the Revs' first match in 17 days as they play the fixture that was originally postponed due to hurricane conditions two weekends ago.

I won't bother with much in terms of preliminaries since the Revs - Union preview was just put up earlier today, except to say that Monsef Zerka is making his full Revolution debut on the right side of midfield.

After each match the contributors to New England Soccer Today will rate the performances of the New England Revolution players who made an appearance on a 1 to 10 scale (1 horrendous, 5 average, 10 perfection). This week Sean Donahue and Brian O'Connell contributed ratings for the New England Revolution's 4-4 draw at the Philadelphia Union on Wednesday.

The Major League Soccer Players' Union has released the latest batch of player salary numbers. The numbers are offered both by team and player and show the wide range of salaries in the league. This latest release is most interesting because it reveals the wages of some of the league's most recent signings.

The Philly Soccer Page " Preview: Union v Columbus
Eight league games without a win. While positivity continues to pour out of the Union locker room, the team-and the fans-need a win soon or hope will turn into anxious fatalism. Columbus comes to town knowing that anything less than three points could see them drop within striking distance of the Union and Dynamo, a dangerous place to be as the season winds down.

PSP photographer Nicolae Stoian's photo essay of the Phialelphia Union's 1–2 loss to Houston Dynamo in the first leg of the Eastern Conference semifinal.

Leaving the tunnel

The National Anthem

That will be a yellow card.

Califf on Carr.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

After the Philadelphia Union gave away the lead to draw with Houston at PPL Park on August 6, we posted an article that, among other topics, looking at the consistency question. The question wasn't so much consistency on the field—little did we know that the Union were in the beginnings of an eight game winless streak.

Alright, it was just released so I figured I'd do a quick breakdown here and highlight who I thought would be protected and who ended up being protected and what it might mean for the team.

The actual protection list from the Union's website.

My Own List (Posted November 5th)

Mondragon, Williams, Califf, Valdes, G.

On Friday, the US national team will play its first match in Southern California under Jurgen Klinsmann. It wasn't Klinsmann's idea to play this match here of course but it is a great chance for the locals to get familiar with their locally-based national team manager.
Klinsmann, who has long resided in nearby Orange County, will trot out a host of new players as the U.

Scott Kessler: Hi everyone, I'm hoping we get some questions on such short notice.

Comment From Jared
I'm sure you will. I'll start it off. Have you heard any rumors on further moves the Union is planning?

Scott Kessler: Jared, I've been looking around without much success of late.