In one of my many attempts at avoiding getting a proper career, there was a time when I worked for Amazon.com customer service. Basically, the job involved replying to the emails sent to customer service by anyone who had used the .com site and had a problem or query and getting paid silly money to do so (silly in the good way).

This week it was announced that the Mexico-US match at Azteca next month will only be available on Telemundo and Mun2, with Mun2 carrying the English feed. This means many USMNT fans will have to watch the Spanish language feed. This would not be so bad if it was on Univision or Telefutura, but the Telemundo commentators are over the top in their Mexico bias.

Amazon have dropped a Manchester United album full of terrace chants after an official complaint from Arsenal FC The song they are directly referring to is the "Sit Down You Paedophile" song, lovingly sang by United fans, too the touchline on visits from the North London crybabies giants, or on the rare occasion that Graham Rix [.

You can - at time of posting - buy an album of Man Utd chants at Amazon's MP3 store. Track four lasts 30 seconds and goes something like this: "Sit down you paedopile, sit down you paedophile! Sit down...

Hello there,

I must apologise in advance this morning as today's blog is a bit of a cuntfest. There's no other way to describe it really. I shall try to temper the cunts with some non-cunts to decuntify things a bit though.

Firstly, Amazon. They've withdrawn the CD that was on sale after Arsenal's legal department got in touch.

I realized this past weekend that we're so spoiled as soccer fans. We have access to practically anything that a English football fan desires. Live radio via the Internet, gazillion football matches on TV, blogs galore, English football magazines and even British tabloids at your local Barnes & Noble bookstore.

The steady release of excerpts from Grant Wahl's forthcoming book "The Beckham Experiment" continues to stir interest (and no doubt pre-orders on Amazon) as more behind-the-scenes details from his tumultuous time in LA emerge.
The latest tidbit, that ESPN paid Beckham's management company to produce a one-hour special on Beckham sounds even more crass than the previous charge that Becks was a cheapskate.

"And I'll have the 'Labrador rack' on a bed of wild rocket, thanks...
"Nyum nyum nyum."

Today, the ever-watchful Arseblogger alerted me to the existence of an album of Manchester United football chants.
It's called "Manchester United Chants [Explicit]", which is about as unambiguous a title as any fan could wish for.

The recent success of the informal campaign to bring the deeply unpleasant nature of Man United's fans chanting against Arsene Wenger to the wider attention of the public is to be applauded. Led by Arseblogger, the issue made it to the wider press last week, at long last, and led to widespread condemnation against Man United, and also against Amazon and Play whose website carried a CD including a

Long-time Columbus notebook author Steve Sirk has just published his first book. A Massive Season: Sirk's Notebook Chronicles the 2008 Columbus Crew is now available at Crew Stadium and at Amazon.
Check out Sirk's web site here. I'll have a review up on this site as soon as I can.

A few important house notes before this long holiday weekend (Memorial Day in the United States, and a Bank Holiday in the United Kingdom):

• The latest episode of the highly-recommended Soccerlens Podcast, hosted by Stephen Darwin, features an interview with yours truly about the final weekend of the Premier League, my predictions on how are going to get relegated, what team will give Man United a run for the money next season, what position Liverpool needs to fill to have a strong chance of winning the league next year, and much more.

FIFA announces the World Cup cities that will host 2014 World Cup matches.

Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, Cuiaba, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Manaus, Natal, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio De Janeiro, Salvador, Sao Paulo

These 12 lucky cities were pruned down from the original list of seventeen. Of them, Natal, Salvador, and Recife will have to build new stadiums.

Back after a week's vacation, Dan Loney and I pick up with Episode 13 of Four At the Back by looking at the US Nats' shocking run to the Confederations Cup final, the potential demise of the Xtreme Soccer League and third-round results in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, plus we talk to soccer historian and author Roger Allaway about his new book, Corner Offices & Corner Kicks.

Any hopes of a WPSL Sunshine division title and a playoff berth in their inaugural year evaporated for the Clearwater Galactics Amazons after a 2-2 draw against the visiting Miami Kickers. The match was played under full sun in temperatures in the mid nineties at St Leo College Wednesday afternoon in front of a crowd of about 30 supporters.

Well its now official. I have a Blog Store opened in conjuction with Amazon.co.uk and you can access my Blog Store via the Blog Store link at the top tab menu. Make sure you come and check it out. I have just opened the store and will be adding more and more Chelsea related items asap!If you want to head directly there click this link

Images via somoche.com

Let us state that after a thorough hasty photographic inspection, we are thoroughly convinced 75% of the Valencia roster were manufactured in a dilapidated warehouse tucked far away in The Land of Hobbits. Oh, and just as these miniature men were placed on the Chiseled, Rock Hard Thigh assembly line, the machine combusted.

Barney Ronay of The Guardian is the latest guest on the EPL Talk Podcast to discuss his newest book, The Manager: The Absurd Ascent Of The Most Important Man In Football.

Ronay is best known for his appearances on the The Guardian's Football Weekly Podcast as well as the top writers at the newspaper.

Soccerphile is pleased to announce a partnership with Voucher Alerts to bring you the best deals on buying official football merchandise online.
Voucher Alerts is the leading online UK discount code directory, providing voucher codes for over 2500 leading online stores including Amazon, HMV, Play.

Morning everybody! It's looking like a good reading day here in New Hampshire, although it's early yet!

The Bookeaters had an excellent meeting at the Exeter Inn last night, where we broke bread and discussed The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage. We all loved (and most of us read) the book, and I would highly recommend it as a portrait, not only of a marriage but of a period of time.

The official United site advertised the 08/09 season review DVDs yesterday, with them being sold for as much as £19.99! Amazon is selling the Manchester United - End Of Season Review 2008-2009 for as little as £12.68!

The DVD will be released next Monday, so pre-order it for delivery now!

The Global Game - Writers on Soccer. Edited by John Turnbull, Thom Satterlee & Alon Raab. Bison Books. 296 pp. $19.95.

Living in the States, you are about as likely to find a good book about soccer/football right off the shelf at your local bookstore as you are to get Anne Hathaway's phone number after bumping into her at your local pub.

Steven Wells passed away Tuesday at the age of 49.
The Guardian has a story about him and some selections of his best works which is worth your time, the 'On why we should boycott the Olympics' piece is especially great.
I'm posting here one of my favorite bits of Wells writing concerning a young 16-year old Wayne Rooney, then of Everton.

Does any more need to be said? Yes? then how about this?

I should point out that neither of these are the view from my apartment.

MUSIC

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By now, the world has absorbed the first excerpt from Grant Wahl's book The Beckham Experiment, which is officially released Tuesday and is already No. 9 on Amazon.com's Sports best-sellers list. (Note to myself on my other beat: Hmmm, Forrest Griffin's book is doing really well.

Grant Wahl's extraordinary book The Beckham Experiment was finally released today.
Amazon.com: The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America: Grant Wahl: Books Amazon.com: The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America: Grant Wahl: Books
Amazon.

My newest book project took me away from the show for a few weeks one to work on it and the other to unwind from it. But I've got five CDs for you to check out, one of which, One Last Century by The Damnwells, is available for free from their website. As for the other four, well they're definitely worth something, too.

Amazon.com: The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America: Grant Wahl: Books Amazon.com: The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America: Grant Wahl: Books
Amazon.

As it turns out, today is also the third anniversary of the podcast! But because my nine-month hiatus yielded on four other episodes in the past year, there won't be an outtake clip show like there was in 2007 and 2008.

Also, it wasn't until after I put this together yesterday that I realized that there's an Americana theme running through all four acts.

Cantona The Rebel Who Would Be King is the new biography of Eric Cantona by the French football journalist Philippe Auclair. Auclair has interviewed every key player in Cantona's life to produce a biography that reveals, for the first time, the heart and inner thoughts of the King.

Before I had a chance to read The Beckham Experiment by Sports Illustrated soccer writer Grant Wahl, I surmised that it could end up being the most important piece of American soccer journalism (while certainly there are a number of incredible pieces of soccer literature, never has the story taken place nearly exclusively in the good ol' U.

There is an ingredient in Diet Coke that stops it from fizzing up like crazy at the soda fountain. Whatever that ingredient is, it's not approved in the EU, so Diet Coke fizzes up like crazy either when you serve it as a member of staff or when you serve yourself.
There are ingredients in Diet Irn Bru that prevent it from being distributed in the United States in it's original recipe.

Alright you lot,

for the very first time the Wenger chant was discussed on the radio this morning. Yes, it is 13 years too late but something has to be done about this chant. United are the main culprits but as seen here, Sp*rs fans are fond of it too.

It was discussed on Radio 5 Live on the Victoria Derbyshire show, the same one that discussed the Phil Brown spitgate saga last season, and made him look like a total and utter div in the process.

"I come in peace, to give penance for winning three titles that should be rightfully yours"

Outrage at Arsene Wenger's treatment at the hands of Man Utd fans during Arsenal's visit to Old Trafford seems to have percolated up from Gunner blogs and online forums and entered the mainstream.

Arsenal Highlights is pleased to announce a partnership with Voucher Alerts to bring you the best deals on buying official Arsenal merchandise online.

VoucherAlerts.co.uk

Voucher Alerts is the leading online UK discount code directory, providing voucher codes for over 2500 leading online stores including Amazon, HMV, Play.

Compilation Fridays are back and this one is for anyone who thought American girls soccer just suddenly turned epically violent in the last two weeks. This video is from one high school team over one season in 2007. There's stuff in there that would make hardened Premier Leaguers take jobs at Hello Kitty shops.

Had to repost because the link to the episode was broken.

At just over 25 minutes, this is one of the shortest episodes I've ever done. I didn't feel the need to come up with three paragraphs worth of material about every song, but instead decided to let it flow a little more naturally. I think it works pretty good.

Well, Jason and I do, so there. Jason even gets a little too close to him.

(At least I'm tall enough that I could have looked him in the eye. I also wouldn't have worn a peach shirt)

Anyway, I can think of no better way to re-launch the podcast than to celebrate Townshend's 64th birthday with another huge Who fan.

I may or may not post anything else today; the ocean is down the street from me and is shcokingly warm for June so I may make a move toward open water this afternoon. But if this is the last post of the day I am fine, fine, fine with that because it's a good post. Or at least it links to something good.

Morning.

I don't know how long Man United fans have been singing that song about Arsene Wenger, years and years. I know I've mentioned many times on this blog. It's always audible when the games are on TV it's been a huge credit to the manager that he's never reacted to them. And how difficult must that be when you consider what they're singing.

Well its now official. I have a Blog Store opened in conjuction with Amazon.co.uk and you can access my Blog Store via the Blog Store link at the top tab menu. Make sure you come and check it out. I have just opened the store and will be adding more and more Chelsea related items asap! There are over 48 pages of carefully selected Chelsea goodies for all of you to have a look at.