When US National Team defender signed with Italian giants AC Milan July, it was rightly declared a watershed moment in the history of American soccer. One of our boys had been snatched up by one of...

Remember when I talked about the MLS strategy to win over its three target demographics? Yeah, Sean Michelle reported in the Columbus Dispatch today that the strategy is working:

Tailgaiting outside of Crew Stadium, Matt Beaven resembled a typical American soccer dad as he rounded up his kids an hour before a recent match.

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.

First came talk of labor unrest when Major League Soccer's collective bargaining agreement expires next year. Then a corporate shake up at United Soccer Leagues. Now a report that a new professional soccer league might be formed to compete with USL and MLS alike next season. These developments, all within the last few months, threaten to shake U.

Maybe you had too much too fast. Maybe you had too much too fast.
Or just over played your part.
Nothin shakin on shakedown street. Used to be the heart of town.
Dont tell me this town aint got no heart. You just gotta poke around.

Freddy Adu was once pure potentiality.

It's Friday and it is time to start a new series, which is more like the old series.

Every Friday, I will touch on some of the week's popular subjects being discussed by readers, as well astouch on news stories SBI may have missed.

The first subject today is Jermaine Jones.

This past week it was officially announced that Vincenzo Bernardo had opted out of his contract with Italian Serie A club Napoli and is now a free agent. For some weeks there has been speculation that the New Jersey native, who joined Napoli's primavera squad in 2006, would be coming to Major League Soccer; however, no MLS side has publically expressed a strong interest in signing the small but talented Italian-American midfielder/striker.

Reliant Stadium

Tomorrow, Major League Soccer, the Houston Dynamo, and Lone Star Sports and Entertainment will officially announce that the 2010 MLS All-Star Game will be held at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, not Robertson Stadium.

While Reliant Stadium, which was officially opened in 2002, is a multiple-use stadium, it is primarily known as the home of National League Football League's Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo.

DIRECTV will officially be on every North American soccer fans Christmas wish list this year, after they just announced that they have exclusive rights over major soccer matches. DIRECTV has announced today that they are partnering with major European sports networks to deliver more soccer games than any other TV provider.

Los Angeles illustrator and artist Noe Valladolid begins his illustrated soccer biography

The TIAS Diary Project returns with the first part of a series put together by a young man in Southern California. This is his life's story, his soccer story in words and pictures. Consider it a stab at a TIAS comic book.

This week saw yet another much-hyped series of columns on the internet that put the US Soccer Federation squarely in the cross-sights. This time it was freelancer and Big Lead contributor Ty Duffy laying into US Soccer with his three piece series. I hate having to, to paraphrase Wiilliam F. Buckley, stand athwart the nonsense being thrown the USSF's way, yelling stop, but in this case, I will again.

Something to read while you experience 45 seconds as a Luton Town fan, with Oxford United about to take a penalty against your team... Meet Jim Lovetoy, who is in no way related to Tim Lovejoy (The Football Ramble) The future voice of American soccer broadcasting? (Pies) Delayed podcast triple whammy @ (Podcast Offside) Someone wants to employ Bryan [.

Ever oppose an idea just because of the people who agree with it?
Well, something that will be good for MLS takes effect next year, and it will make sensible, rational, peace-loving folk tremble. And for once, I'm not talking about Philadelphia sports fans.
Ladies and gentlemen, MLS will play in a de facto single table league next year.

From Pitch Invasion:
Quote: What would happen to American soccer if influential anti-immigration lobbying organisation FAIR had had their way in the past thirty years of their campaigning? As the debate on immigration reform heats up again in DC with FAIR lobbying Congress this week on their near-zero immigration platform, Imagine 2050 considers the potential impact on diversity in soccer.

Big Story

Flying in the face of traditional cross-border political alignments, the debate about MLS salary caps heating up in the soccoblogosphere this weekend seems to have Canadians playing the role of Whiggish free-marketers on the one hand, and Americans playing protectionist, Tory nationalists on the other.

Shep, Jason and Greg on American soccer exceptionalism, a subject that is the topic of an exhausting yet insightful book from a few years ago.

In honor of tonight's USA-Trinidad & Tobago World Cup qualifier, coverage of Paul Caliguiri's goal 20 years ago this November in Port of Spain that put the US in Italia '90 (their first World Cup berth in 40 years).

Today's Johnny-Come-Lately American soccer fans who believe the US has always qualified for the World Cup and always had a top-flight league yet dammit-hurry-up-and-be-a-great-soccer-nation drive me nuts.

Amos Magee

I've known Portland Timbers Director of Soccer Development and Assistant Coach Amos Magee for 15 years. He played for me both with the A-League Minnesota Thunder and several times as a call up with the Chicago Fire. Amos was one of the most tenacious and savvy players I've ever known.

The Kansas City Wizards first played in Arrowhead Stadium (home of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City, Missouri), and created quite the echo chamber with attendance barely in five figures in a stadium holding 80,000. Then in 2007, they moved to a stadium that barely holds five figures, CommunityAmerica Ballpark (home of minor league baseball team the T-Bones in Kansas City, Kansas), an oddly angled fit for soccer and too small for the Wizards.

Because he says what I'm thinking, only he says it more succinctly and he's funnier than I can ever hope to be:

"This is the national team that can beat Spain and sweat bullets against Trinidad. That's life as an American soccer fan, and it's actually way better than it was.

Hey everybody, wanted to pass along a few bits of MLS news before Friday comes to a close and the weekend really gets going. Two pretty big names in North American soccer made the move from Europe to MLS today as U.S. National Team defender Heath Pearce joined FC Dallas and Canadian National Team star midfielder Julian DeGuzman -- formerly of La Liga's Deportivo La Coruña -- returned to his hometown to join Toronto FC as the club's first ever Designated Player.

Labor Day has come and gone, the sun is setting earlier, and, even here in Houston, the air contains a slight fall crispness. Yes, the Summer of Soccer is over, and what an interesting summer it has been. Back on Father's Day, like a Phoenix, the US National Team rose from the ashes of its first two group stage matches in the Confederations Cup to advance to the semifinals where it shocked the football world by easily beating Spain, which was ranked by FIFA as the top national team at the time.

American soccer, just like the big professional sports in the country, follows a franchise model. This means that each club is wholly owned by an individual or group, whom are free to sell or move...

Raise your hand if any of the following criteria apply to you:

- have you been a football supporter for ten years or less?

- have you "picked" a top European club to follow?

- do you currently reside in one of the 50 States that make up this fine country?

If you answered Yes to any or all of these questions, you very well may be eligible to also have a "2nd team".

Via Laurie at THE OFFSIDE
http://www.theoffside.com/files/2009...cksmontero.jpg
"Hey! Fredy! C'mon, Dude, I need you to get up and act like I didn't just stomp you on the chest hand. C'mon, man. Please? I know I used to play for your Portland and you guys hate Portland, but Prus is talking with the 4th official and they look pissed.

Alright, over here in the States we don't get as much Soccer coverage as we should. I admit that.

I get ESPN The Magazine and there was an interesting piece in there about the "Everton Way" and how it is used all over the place to train young players because... Everton has to be better at training.

Americans Abroad / USMNT
Jones Will Not Have Another Surgery - Soccer By Ives
No Additional Surgery For Jones - Yanks Abroad
Joy Signs Ingolstadt Contract - Yanks Abroad
Gooch And Milan: A Bad Deal? - MLS Talk
Europe's Not Always Better - Yanks Abroad
Chicago Fire
Chivas USA
Chatting With The ChivaGirls: Liz - Dentro del Rebano
Colorado Rapids
Friday's Rapids At San Jose Game Notes Guide - Undercurrent
Supporters Tailgate Details For Next Wednesday - Undercurrent
MLS Endgame: Rapids Head To San Jose - American Soccer News
Columbus Crew
Crew Make History In Costa Rica - Match Fit USA
An Unexpected Victory - Covering The Crew
Marshall: 'Moderate' Knee Sprain - Covering The Crew
DC United
Video: Access United, Episode 27 - Behind The Badge
FC Dallas
FC Dallas Signs First Academy Player - Soccer By Ives
Practice Observations: A Problem - 3rd Degree
Preview: FC Dallas at Kansas City Wizards - The FCD Blog
Pearce Excited By MLS Challenge - Soccer365
Houston Dynamo
Kansas City Wizards
New KC Stadium Renderings - WVHooligan
Former Wizards Update - Down The Byline
Kei Trains - Hillcrest Road
Video: Kei Kamara Interview - The Back Post
Los Angeles Galaxy
Galaxy Doin' Work - The LA Galaxy official blog
New England Revolution
Broadcast Booth Bits: New Snark, New Snark - Revolution official site
New York Red Bulls
Preview: Red Bulls vs.

Eddie Gaven scores the game winner at The Monster's Cave

While most people were still nursing their hangovers from a two day orgy of UEFA Champions League matches, the CONCACAF equivalent was contested at sites around Northern and Central America the past three nights. So perhaps you missed what is arguably the finest result yet by an MLS team in the 2009 edition of the tournament.

Meta: I'll be away until Monday, which is really quite handy given the transfer window's just closed and it's an international break. I will miss the three-year anniversary of this blog tomorrow, but that's no great shakes. Here's a book review to hold you over. Don't break anything.
Why England Lose and Other Curious Phenomena Explained
Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
HarperSport
The title's obviously intriguing, it got a rare five-star review in FourFourTwo, and the blurbs have compared it to Moneyball.

Big Story
We've praised DC's marketing effort for the US Open Cup final tonight, fueled by their spat with the Seattle Sounders over hosting of the final, but DC supremo Kevin Payne is on the ball when he says efforts by clubs themselves are not enough for the tournament to thrive.

A selection of the best footy-related videos I've seen this week. Pour yourself a cheeky glass out of a bottle – make sure that bottle has the % symbol on it somewhere though – and enjoy...
First up, an awesome goal from Turkey's top league, featuring a quite brilliant "non-finish" by Roberto Carlos (yes, that Roberto Carlos, who now plays for Fenerbahce):
LINK LINK
I love how Carlos instinctively applies the brakes to let his team-mate (Gokhan Gonul) take the shot; the hallmark of a quality player.

The story was written by Steven Goff from the Washington Post and I have to say that once again supporters of the US Men's National team are going to get screwed. If you thought that you couldn't find the Mun2 channel for USA Vs Mexico in English then you will be completely out of luck on a possible clinch to South Africa when the live event won't be on Pay Per View.

Richard Whittall over at Pitch Invasion draws an interesting conclusion from the salary cap debate that's been going on, characterizing yours truly, among others, as American Exceptionalists:

For the former group—let's call them MLS Exceptionalists (includes Dan Loney, Fake Sigi and Bill Archer)—MLS should be the embodiment of an exceptional American Soccer identity.

The seven hard working former Chicago Fire executives pictured above averaged about seven years each with the organization. The institutional knowledge and relationships they took with them when they left was significant.

A key for successful chief executives is to surround themselves with talented, hard working people with good character.

Colin Jose, the preeminent historian of the sport in North America joins us on the podcast. This show is a must listen for anyone interested in the evolution of the game in North America. Soccer history in the US/Canada did not begin in the late 1980s, and the sport is not a new one in this part of the world, as has been argued by some.

New post from Richard Whittall this morning that is an altogether better effort than what lead to my takedown yesterday.

I think we can all agree that the bizarre world of North American soccer, from the Hexagonal to the USL Premier Development league, is a niche interest pretty much completely absent in any meaningful way from mainstream print media in North America.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

The kids are coming and you aren't going to want to miss it.

Hey everybody, kind of a slow news day for the Fire (so far anyway...) so I'm taking a little break from writing and simply sharing some links today. I'll be back to the grind tomorrow with a Fire Practice Report though, so keep an eye out for that.Steve Davis of ESPN Soccernet writes about the somewhat surprising fact that tickets are still available for Saturday's World Cup Qualifier between the U.

U.S. professional soccer at the crossroads (again) By ASN Staff (http://american-soccer-news.com/?author=61) • Sep 2nd, 2009 • Category: Op-Ed (http://american-soccer-news.com/?cat=8) First came talk...

In addition to being the Chicago Red Stars President and CEO, I am also an owner of the team...and I am a Red Stars fan. None of that needs to be mutually exclusive.

In the Red Stars case, thousands are fans of the club, hundreds are supporters and only a select few are actual owners. While that is true, it is my goal to have the role of Red Stars fan equate virtually to the role of Red Stars owner for all Red Stars fans.