Frustrated at not being able to join the coaching ranks of US Soccer or the MLS, former US International, and current Fox Soccer Channel analyst Eric Wynalda has joined Mexican club Murcielagos in the northern state of Sinaloa. His job title is President of International Operations. Eyebrows might be raised at Wynalda's choice of clubs to get involved with.

For those of you who are unaware, I'm not originally from these shores (editors note: make sure you check the byline of this post). I'm an Englishman. A Limey, a Sassenach, a Rosbif, a Pom. Part of the cultural stereotype that I am obliged to fit into - aside from insisting on spelling words differently, crowing about the good old days of the Empire, and being emotionally stunted - is that I look down my nose at any soccer that isn't "English".

Today in an online chat with Washington Post sports columnist Tracee Hamilton, Steven Goff unloaded this broadside against DC United.
Quote: DCU has become a second-class organization: the results, the decision-making, the stadium, the fan experience. New York and Los Angeles, with their deep-pocketed investors, are miles ahead on most fronts.

Blogger extraordinaire Thad Bell got some killer quotes from our VP of Development David Ficklin about the new stadium and why we are calling it the First Authentic American Soccer Stadium. SF still isn't impressed, saying it will be the 3rd best park in MLS. What do you think about that?

More from this guyWhat does a man who has just signed on as the president of international operations for a lower division Mexican club do as a follow up? Well, give an interview to Soccer America in which he questions the quality of American coaches, paints himself as unfairly ostracized and moans about American soccer stagnating, of course.

He's arguably the most significant American soccer player ever. He was the first draft pick in MLS history, the first American to score in two World Cups, and he was a legend and former captain of English Premier League club Fulham, where they thought so highly of him the club named a stadium pub in his honor.

I wrote recently about Dave Brett's archive of old soccer videos. I received a copy of one of Dave's DVDs since then: the 1977 NASL Soccer Bowl, New York Cosmos vs. Seattle Sounders. This was the league championship, complete with the "bowl" name, a clear attempt to place it on par with NFL's Super Bowl (which itself is kind of a dumb name, if you think about it).

Rumors were trickling in this past week that Jeff Cooper, owner of the USSF D2 Pro League team AC St. Louis had found a new owner. On Friday the story seemed to be taking shape and by Friday evening it was confirmed by numerous St. Louis soccer insiders. Here what IMS has learned.

I was thinking about Non-League Day as I fell asleep last night. If you don't know about Non-League Day, here's a bit of background:

"The "non-league football day" is the brainchild of James Doe, a lifelong football fan, supporter of QPR and follower of Harrow Borough FC.

The North American Soccer League (NASL) announced this afternoon the addition of the Puerto Rico Islanders to it's list of eleven D2 teams. Baltimore, Carolina, Miami, Minnesota, Montreal, Rochester, St. Louis, Tampa, Vancouver, and expansion team Edmonton had previously decided to affiliate with the organization.

The United Soccer League announced today it would merge its second division with its third division under the name USL PRO. USL PRO, like the North American Soccer League, will have to meet USSF D2 standards to play division 2 next year.

Instead of just telling you the main points, I'll let you read the whole thing first.

RailHawks owner Selby Wellman said Tuesday that the North American Soccer League would be submitting its bid to the United States Soccer Federation this week, with hopes of getting approval to play in 2011.

Ten teams make up the proposed NASL: Carolina, Puerto Rico, Montreal, FC Tampa Bay, Miami FC, Rochester, NSC Minnesota, Crystal Palace Baltimore, AC St.

Via Du Nord - David Beckham and Jack Warner have done so much for American soccer. Now, they're going even further, helping to spare the United States from the crippling financial responsibility of hosting the World Cup:
Quote: David Beckham will guide players and coaches in Trinidad this weekend to help boost support for England's World Cup bid.

Let's start today off with a bang: Eric Wynalda has been named Director of International Operations for Mexican Segunda division side Murcielagos (that's the third division in Mexico). Wynalda will scout players and try to facilitate player exchanges that will bring the talent to Murcielagos that will move them up to the top.

A couple of important D2 stories hit the internet this week. First was Mike Blake's story in the Cary News Observer.com. Blake interviewed the Carolina Railhawks majority owner Selby Wellman who let the cat out of the bag that Puerto Rico has switched alliances from the United Soccer Leagues (USL) to the North American Soccer League (NASL).

On the live edition of the American Soccer Show last night, I was joined by AOL Fanhouse soccer writer Brian Straus to talk about four more years of Bob, then took a few Skype calls on the matter to close things out.
If you missed it, don't worry - you can listen to it in this post, download it here, or wait for the show should to be up on iTunes a little later.

If there is such a thing as an American soccer icon, Brian McBride is it. Before Landon Donovan and last minute heroics, there was McBride paving the way as an example of how the game should be played. Fearless and relentless, he was also the very first draft pick in the inaugural MLS draft.

So McHead is retiring. You probably read that on ________ blog because on a slow news day like today that is the only thing worth mentioning so far. I would write some glowing, adulatory exposition on what he's meant to American soccer but how can I top the Lego tribute? I can't, I just can't.

There's a full slate of MLS action this weekend, but we begin the weekend preview with a farewell to Brian McBride.

McBride, former Fulham captain and U.S. international, announced that this season would be his last for the Fire on Friday.

It's the end of a long and successful career for the target man, who was a faithful servant to every shirt he pulled on.

American soccer will lose one if its most venerated heroes at the end of the MLS season when 38-year-old Brian McBride finally call it quits after a 16-year career.

McBride is most known in the United States as a star for the national team. A decade of solid performances punctuated by moments of absolute brilliance.

As expected, the Galaxy today formally removed David Beckham from the disabled list ahead of Saturday's game against Supporters Shield challengers Columbus Crew at Home Depot Center where the midfielder could make his season debut coming off the bench after returning from a torn Achilles tendon injury.

The United Soccer Leagues, which held a monopoly over the minor leagues of American soccer for years before a several...

Andy Najar is one of the most exciting young players in Major League Soccer, and a strong MLS Rookie of the Year, but the teenager is still so new to the American soccer scene that he can still go completely unnoticed standing in a sea of soccer fans.

This was the case last month when Najar took in the USA-Brazil friendly at Giants Stadium.

It's that time again SBI readers. Time for you to send your soccer (and pop culture) questions my way in the latest SBI Live Q&A.

If you want to talk American soccer or international soccer, MLS or EPL, U.S. national team or European qualifiers, you can do it now. If you want to discuss it, send your questions my way.

Marc Weber in Vancouver has an interesting story today; per his sources, USMNT defender Jay DeMerit is set to sign with the Vancouver Whitecaps as the the team's first Designated Player.
DeMerit's efforts to find a team after his contract expired have come to naught, and rumors linking him to Wolfsburg and Everton have proved to be nothing more than rumors.

That string of characters in the headline of this post that starts with the pound sign is called a "hashtag". A hashtag is an identifier inserted in messages on Twitter to help make topics easily searchable. "#LAvNY", as I'm sure you've figured out, is the hashtag being used for the upcoming clash between the Galaxy and Red Bulls at the Home Depot Center on Friday night.

A listener of the American Soccer Show sent me this email yesterday, asking an interesting question. While I could wait to use it on the next show (and I probably will mention it), I thought I'd share it here first. It's obviously in response to the debate over Thierry Henry's punishment for injuring Kevin Hartman.

Here's a little something for the stadium porn addict in you. The Backpost caught up with David Ficklin, OnGoal Vice President of Development and lead honcho in charge of making the Wizards Stadium rise from the Kansas earth and came back with nearly 10 minutes of hot stadium talk from atop the under-construction supporters section.

The Globe & Mail's piece on season ticket price hikes in Toronto ends on an interesting note for me:

In officially announcing next year's season-ticket price increases Tuesday, Toronto FC owner Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment has clearly decided to hit the hard-core fans the hardest.

What draws you to soccer over the silky swings of Golf or the wonder rallies of Tennis? I believe, good sir or madam, it is because you are a social creature. You crave and delight in human interaction. More succinctly, you marvel at coordination sans communication. Some American soccer bloggers look down their nose at "throwball" (American Football), rejecting the mainstream sport for the supposed counterculture value of "soccer.

Some people are just idiots, plain and simple. A drunk LA Galaxy fan was heard taunting David Beckham after the Galaxy match against the New York Red Bulls and Becks clearly had enough. We all know that this sort of stuff comes with the territory when you are one of the most high profile human beings in the world but at the end of the day he is still a human being.

Eric Wynalda has never been one to sit on his hands and do nothing. Love him or hate him, Wynalda has continually put himself in the American soccer conversation because he speaks his mind, a habit that has sometimes landed him in hot water. It's a reasonable assumption that Wynalda's loose lips policy is partly to blame for the USMNT and MLS great being unable to land a coaching job in the United States.

San Jose manager Frank Yallop believes Chris Wondolowski should be in the discussion for league MVP, and many others will likely join the bandwagon after the player's hat trick performance against Toronto FC on Saturday.

Wondolowski's three goals, the first by an Earthquakes player since 2003, earned him Player of the Week honors for Week 26 as voted on by the North American Soccer Reporters.

If Beau Dure had waited until today to release "Long Range Goals," the last sentence would read "On August 30, 2010, it was announced that Adidas renewed their sponsorship with Major League Soccer, in a deal that will run through 2018 and is worth two hundred million - that's right, two hundred god-damned million American god-damned dollars.

Another week is almost halfway done. Why not kick back and taste some of the finer things that the Inter-Net-Blogo-Sphere has to offer in the world of beer and soccer!
Free Beer Movement News
* We're still looking for fans of the Free Beer Movement to send in their "Free Beer Movement in Action" stories and pictures.

We've been compared to English fans in our ferocity and to Seattle fans in our proud defiance of America's soccer-phobia. Thanks to the fans, PPL Park (itself a testament to the devotion of Philadelphia to the team and the game) has become the new Mecca of American soccer. If you don't believe us, look elsewhere [.

Well, not HuffPo per se, obviously. But they offer the surest vision of a CPM/CPC-driven New Media future (in caps, natch!). Let's peruse the so-called Huffington Post "Sports" page and tease out the two soccer-related headlines to get a sense of this rosy future where journalists get half of what they used to get to write stories one third of the length but at a minimum of 15 times a week.

The playoffs are getting closer but first there are bigger fish to fry. We discuss the CCL controversy with Jason Davis from the American Soccer Show and spend 18 quality minute with the great Bobby Rhine. On the phone this week are correspondents from Dallas, Seattle, Salt Lake, Kansas City and San Jose.

They make it hard, don't they? Some of us want to support the US Open Cup - the tournament has history, provides the only tangible evidence that the US soccer "pyramid" is actually interconnected, and gives the sport here a knockout competition in-line with what we see in almost every other serious soccer nation.

With a resolution finally coming on the USMNT head coaching saga, we thought it was time to bring back the live edition of the American Soccer Show.
Ginge is on the road tonight, so we've recruited AOL Fanhouse soccer writer Brian Straus to sit in on the proceedings. Jason and Brian will give their take on the re-signing of Bradley, and as always, we'll have open lines.