The Flowers of Manchester - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Daniele (from Red Rants) has a written a moving piece on the Munich disaster here's an extract:

Sam couldn't have been more focused if he had been watching a movie, so I moved on: "Harry Gregg, United's keeper, had been thrown out the cabin after the impact along with Bobby Charlton.

Fair warning that this blog post may not be the most coherent I'm on 1 hour of airplane sleep in the past 36 hours and I've just returned from the Women's World Cup semi-final match between Sweden and Japan. But I wanted to pop online and share where I am and what I'm up to.

I'm in Frankfurt for the FIFA Women's Football Symposium.

photo by alaskaair.com

Fans of the Portland Timbers can now fly in style.

Alaska Airlines introduced its Portland "Timbers Jet" to a crowd of fans on Friday morning. The aircraft features the Timbers' name and logo and is covered in the team's green and yellow colors.

The Rapids have a short turn around after Saturday's match as they are in the Chicago area tonight for their first U.S. Open Cup play-in game. The game is actually in Peoria. The winner of the match will face the winner of the San Jose/Portland/Chivas USA pod for a spot in the full USOC.
Meanwhile there's some news about player availability.