Seven Reasons Why Football (Soccer) and the United States do not really need each other.

1. Not enough Stats

American sport lovers, love stats, as do I. Football (Soccer) doesn't have enough. A game like Cricket really should do far better stateside, that sport has more stats than just about any sport known to man.

Yes it's American Football but that doesn't make it any less of an incredible idea! Surely it's only a matter of time before something similar kicks off this side of the pond...please! The moment we discover video evidence of this momentous ground breaking sport we will let you know.

More images follow, oh yes more images just for you!

Before I wind up any Americans reading this, let me preface this by saying that I too am American. Just as much as any other American, I'd love to see the United States become a footballing powerhouse. We've certainly got the numbers - 300,000,000 citizens - and the melting pot effect means we've got people from all walks of life (Brazilian, English, Italian, etc.

Sometimes getting sent off by a referee can be a contentious issue. Perhaps a player is wrongly adjudged to have committed a professional foul, or a keeper did in fact touch the ball before the man and therefore should not have been shown a red. This on the other hand is the most blatant red card offence you will ever see.

It's the perfect time of the year to catch up on reading, so what better choice is there to read than some of the greatest football books?

In conjunction with our sister site EPL Talk, we've put together a list of the top 18 recommended football books for this summer. Some of the highlights that US soccer fans will enjoy include:

• Soccer In A Football World by David Wangerin.

Miami native, Chad Ochocinco (formerly known as Chad Johnson) is a supporter of the beautiful game here in the United States and as evidenced by the picture supports Miami's bid for the World Cup. The American Football star who plays for the Bengals as a wide receiver is also said to be a Fan of the Miami FC Blues!

Two of the biggest stars in the Confederations Cup for the United States have been Jay DeMerit and Charlie Davies. Both are players that did not come up through the traditional development system for US Soccer (including the National Academy in Bradenton, Florida which neither attended) and both are players Bob Bradley avoided playing for long period of time on a regular basis.

The following article is a summary of events this summer regarding the American football radio show World Soccer Daily, which went off the air last weekend after a sustained campaign of protest by Liverpool supporters' groups. In the interests of brevity, it skips over some of the finer details of what has become an extraordinary story involving alleged death threats, anti-semitism and even the involvement of the FBI.

Two weeks ago Commissioner Don Garber made some very disturbing remarks to the Associated Press. He indicated that MLS has to sign more foreign players and resemble European football more than it does currently to win over masses of football fans in the United States. My sense is that this is absolutely the wrong course for the first division of American football to undertake.

The United States is sometimes derided for its lack of football culture and traditions. For at least one night, the Lamar Hunt U.S Open Cup filled that void admirably as Seattle Sounders F.C. defeated D.C. United 2-1 in the 96th edition of the oldest competition in American football.
Spurred by a war of words between the two team's front offices, the game drew more interest than the U.

Finally, Chelsea found their "hand" and used it to great effect in their 1-0 win over Manchester United yesterday. The match was a rough and tumble affair that featured very little in the way of scoring opportunities for either squad but did feature virtual girth of tension and upheaval at Stamford Bridge.

Are we at all sure that Youri hasn't been hired by Red Bull already?

The French legend has been planting seeds in France, playing Red Bull ambassador in the hopes of attracting his countrymen stateside through interviews like the one he had with football-ravageur, a French footy outlet.

He has some great insights on the successes and short comings of David Beckham, the measure of MLS against other leagues and the possibility of including more French players to the league structure.

Sometimes it's pretty easy to bash MLS. Attendance is sparse at times. There are still fields with American football lines. The play can be downright awful. And now the champion is a team that has never compiled a winning record.

Some random thoughts on the US win and the upcoming game against Costa Rica

The Greatest US Win I Have Never Seen. A lot has already been said about how absurd it was that this game was not broadcast to the average US fan, so there is no reason to continue to beat this dead horse.

Some people might complain that sport ticket prices in this town are expensive. In Baseball they can range from $315 to $12-$16 for upper nose bleed. For American Football it's even worse $41.00 to $700.00! Not to mention parking! But when you talk about Football Soccer then you really can't complain.

As we have seen from the excellent reporting by Kartik and Brian Quarstad this week, the future of the United Soccer Leagues is very unclear and very much up in the air.

Whether or not some will admit it, the USL is very important to American soccer. Some have said the USL has no reason to exist, and that Major League Soccer and the USSF the latter of whom sometimes seem to be allergic to work can hand both the professional game and player development.

This is difficult to admit, but until I heard Steven Cohen ask Seattle Wolves General Manager Andrew Opatkiewitz what was below the PDL in the American Football Pyramid, that the PDL was it. Anything else would be the local pub league that was only worthy of a good way to stay fit.Maybe I should have actually looked when I was curious back then, because not only was I dead wrong, I found out

Darren Tilley's Rochester Rhinos will not repeat their feat of 1999. The US Open Cup Final will feature two MLS teams and two coaches who are part of the US system. USL-1 with its British flavored football and coaches who tend to promote defensive tactics have been eliminated from the tournament.

After the 2006 World Cup I launched a one-man campaign to change the name of American Football to All-American Pig-Pile. It was time this country embraced the sport's true name, I thought. I received many chuckles but few converts. One who went along with it was my friend George from Manchester, England.

GA_googleFillSlot("Sb_Home_Right_1_120x240"); North American football broadcaster GolTV has acquired the rights for the German Bundesliga in the US and Canada until the end of the 2011-12 season. GolTV has been the rights-holder in the territories since 2006-07, prior to which Fox Soccer Channel (FSC) held them.

FC St. Pauli is a German sports club based in the St. Pauli quarter of Hamburg. The football department is part of a larger club that also has Rugby, American football, baseball, bowling, boxing, chess, cycling, handball, skittles, softball and table tennis teams. While the footballers have enjoyed only modest success on the field, the [.

In the 71st minutes, Ronaldinho picked up the ball and walked to take his corner kick. Spontaneously, the red-and-black clad fans stood in ovation to their new hero. This wasn't Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milan. It was M&T Stadium, an American football stadium in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. It was the World Football Challenge (WFC).

The issue of immigration and soccer is bouncing around the internet recently; several articles have come out on the issue in regards to the US National Team. I haven't completely wrapped my head...

American sports company Under Armour has launched its first line of soccer boots / cleats. This follows a period of rapid growth during which Under Armour introduced form-fitting, moisture-wicking performance apparel that became popular with athletes across many sports. The launch of Under Armour's soccer boot collection follows its forays into the American football, baseball [.

The NFL has been revenue sharing for decades and because of it American football has become the most highly attended and anticipated major sport in the US.

Andy Burnham's most controversial proposal if implemented will have the top four Premiership clubs share their revenues with the league have nots.

New Jersey, the Garden State, is famous and infamous for many things: the Mafia, Atlantic City, Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, stone-washed jeans, the Pine Barrens, Bruce Springsteen, teased hair, the Meadowlands, the Jersey Devil, pharmaceutical companies, the Turnpike, the Lindbergh Kidnapping, diners, and soccer, yes, soccer.

So Ronaldo is going... I for one won't miss him! Yes, there is no doubting that he has an incredible talent but I never thought he was worthy of 'Player of the Year' title. I don't think there'll be too many tears shed for Ronaldo when he's gone. There have been far more worthy wearers of the number '7′ at Utd and there will be again.

Today, I'm testing out an idea I have.

I could blah blah about Mathew Upson (sure, let's break all traditions and sign the former Gunner), I could join the chorus of voices that are saying that the Cesc to Barca story is crap, I could give you an analysis of Cesc's goal against some footballing backwater, or I could link some more speculation about so and so coming to Arsenal.

Setanta Enters Administration

Yesterday, having failed to secure the funding needed to keep the UK business going, the UK version of Setanta sports went into administration or as we call it in America, bankruptcy. Basically, as I write this lawyers and accountants are picking over Setanta UK's corpse looking for something salvageable.

In Brazil's 3-2 victory over USA at the Confederations Cup, Brazil made a spirited come-back after being 2-0 down at half time to the USA, this piece of tactical analysis aims to inform you at how the USA almost beat the brilliant Brazil.

It is granted, that in the first half, Brazil had most of the possession but failed to make any clear-cut-chances, while USA scored 2 goals out of their 2 main chances, but how did it to come to this?

Today I'm reading an article at MLSnet.com about Dallas committing to what the writer called "attacking" soccer. I like to call it "Soccer at warp speed".

Let me give you some background. Soccer was the only sport I played as a kid and I played like a lunatic. We ran hard, we kicked hard, we tackled hard (I even once broke a kid's leg slide tackling him.

Standard Liege, the former club of Oguchi Onyewu gave an English club a hard time for the third time in two seasons yesterday in a 3-2 loss to Arsenal. Meanwhile, Gooch didn't even make the match squad for his new team, AC Milan in a 2-1 victory Tuesday over Marseille.

Despite my initial excitement about Gooch's move, it's now become obvious that his current lack of playing time could affect his USMNT form.

Here's the latest on whether the U.S. qualifier will be moved, which could well help the American cause if it's played in another country:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Soccer officials are watching the security situation in Honduras, hoping they won't have to move next month's World Cup qualifier against the United States.

Hello there everyone. A fine Monday to you all. Hope everyone had a good weekend even though there was no Arsenal. Mine was pretty good. My Under-9 boys team got their first win of the season in our third match of the year. We won 6-1 after losing 8-0 and 7-0 in our first two matches. So it was a big victory for us and we'll be looking to keep that run going.

MLS explores playing indoors to shift schedule:

"Perhaps we have to start thinking about roofed stadiums at some point. But do we have to have a fan base that is developed enough to be immune to the weather, like they do for American football where they will come out to watch a game regardless of the climate?

Fellow soccer bloggers Caught Offside yesterday offered up seven reasons why football (soccer) will never be a major success in the U.S. It got lost in all of the hullabaloo over Charlie Davies' accident but I wanted to take the time to address it now.
First things first: Caught Offside are wrong on all but one count, namely that the sport is not stat-intensive enough to become a major deal in the U.

For American fans of the English Premier League, there will be several quality matches televised, thanks in part to ESPN2's coverage this season.

Saturday, October 17

7:45am - Aston Villa v Chelsea (ESPN2)
10:00am - Sunderland v Liverpool (FSC)

Sunday, October 18

11:00am - Wigan v Manchester City (FSC)

These games will be shown live.

This is Part Two of our extremely popular weekly look at the weekend's Mexican Primera cheerleaders. We ran into more images of the Mexican Apertura Week 11 cheerleaders (or porristas) this week, so we're bringing some bonus coverage to the masses. We've also thrown in a couple of eye-catching American football cheerleader shot.

It turns out that HVS, a sports and entertainment consulting firm, put a nice little presentation on MLS finances together for the Portland 2011 bid. There are some interesting tidbits in there, and... pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/VgLCZ_QGdJMsN0FzzJ2IxJAGKp0/a"img src="http://feedads.

Sportspages is back!

Charing Cross Road used to be all about books. As the years have marched on and the rents have gone up, bookseller after bookseller has packed it all in, to be replaced by temporary nonsense that really does nothing for the area. For the teenage me, living in rural Bedfordshire, Sportspages was London.