Yes, I admit that I enjoyed American Football today, Super Bowl Sunday, but in the rest of the world, Association Football was played as usual. Especially in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, co-hosts of the 2012 African Nations Cup.Yesterday, powerful co-favorites Ivory Coast defeated co-host Equatorial Guinea 3-0.

Still being several weeks away from the start of a new season for association football in the US, much of the current chatter surrounding Major League Soccer revolves around the announcement of this summer's All-Star Game in Philadelphia and, well, oatmeal. Okay, perhaps not specifically about oatmeal, but rather the unveiling of Quaker as the new shirt sponsor for Chicago Fire SC that begins with this video of a morning bowl of Quaker Oats and has continued by sending these rather special packages to not only sports media but also prominent US football bloggers to spread the word.

Recite the last name of some of association football's legendary players and their achievements immediately spring to mind. Just mentioning Pelé, Maradona, Eusebio, Puskas, or other luminaries should arouse images--most likely fuzzy and pixelated ones from YouTube--of what made them great and become instantly vivid, incredibly tangible.

One of the saddest parts of modern football is the way in which the non-Premier League divisions have been neglected and forgotten by the mainstream media. Take a look through some old cigarette card collections or the wonderful Football League Review magazine and you'll find that although not necessarily billed as equals with First Division clubs, many of the smaller lower league sides were included and covered alongside many of the giants of English football.

At 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon, Sept. 24, the temperature in Frisco, Texas is predicted to be 91 degrees. The National Weather Service says it's going to be sunny with 0% chance of rain. Really, a pleasant day on the South Oklahoma plains for any visitors who happen to have the misfortune of actually showing up in Frisco tomorrow.

By Chris Wright

Just as the Aztec god of humongous nasal passages Phil Thompson prophesied on Norwegian television many moons ago, Liverpool have this very afternoon announced that they have agreed a fee with Newcastle for left-back Jose Enrique the cheeky buggers won't tell us what that fee it is, though we've heard it's somewhere up around the £6 million mark.

Mike Bayly went to meet a football club that is potentially at the start of a journey up through the divisions.

Non-League supporters are the Bill Brysons of the football world. Whereas a trip to most Football League grounds comes packaged with the familiarity of large urban conurbations, the grass roots experience can lead a man (and for the sake of parity one had better add ‘woman') into the wilds of the British provinces.

The fixtures are out and the pre-season friendlies have started. This is a time of year for unbridled optimism and Swansea City supporter David James can look forward to his team's first appearance in the top division of the game since 1983. They've had quite a journey to get back there, though.

Mexican powerhouse Club Deportivo Guadalajara, commonly known as Chivas or Chivas de Guadalajara, is a Mexican association football team based in Guadalajara, Jalisco that competes in the Primera División de México - the top-tier of soccer in Mexico. Chivas has the most league titles in Mexican first division history with 11.

Football, originally known as Association football and commonly called soccer, has no real origin. There are records of the Chinese around second century B.C. playing a game called Tsu' Chu that involved kicking a leather ball through a small hole in a silk cloth strung between two large poles. This was believed to help train the military.

Artículo publicado en el Programa Oficial de la Copa América Argentina 2011
Por PABLO ARO GERALDES
El genial escritor Roberto Fontanarrosa, que pintó maravillosamente la emoción futbolera, reflexionaba: "En algún lugar de la Biblia debe decir: 'y los argentinos jamás perderán al fútbol', porque nos produce vergüenza, sorpresa, perplejidad, cuando pierde el seleccionado.

Gold Cup 2011 – 'Handicapped Soccer'
Dr. Joel Rookwood
The beautiful game known globally as 'football' has a patchy history in America, barely permeating the sporting world so often dominated by baseball, basketball and American football. 'Soccer' (allegedly taken from asSOCiation football) has become a reference to a lesser sport, distancing language employed in USA and in other countries with a more dominant national variant.

I have always been a statistics nut. The love of the numbers behind sports came early for me, as a young boy "keeping book" for my Yankees (I am now a rehabilitated Yankees fan, firmly rooting for my local Phillies since the Y2K). I'd laboriously watch the games, scribble down every hit, walk, error, and out (before DVR made it easier to catch what you missed).

Swansea City will become the first Welsh team to play in the English Premier League in the 2011-2012 season, following their victory in the Championship play-off final on Monday. As I write, thousands are out on the streets of Swansea celebrating as the team bus drives through the southern Welsh city.

"Qatar #1, Russia #1... ethics...hach pewy!"
There isn't too much else we can, or want, to say about Toronto FC this week after sitting through their 6-2 drubbing on Saturday. So, we thought we'd take a look at another well-oiled football machine with no apparent problems - FIFA. Unless you've been living under a football rock (I think it's in Oklahoma) then you've heard about the many accusations and allegations of corruption coming out of The Death Star FIFA's Swiss headquarters.

By Soraya Soemadiredja, Tashkent, Uzbekistan

It would be difficult to call Mohammed Bin Hammam of Qatar an outsider as the FIFA incumbent's sole challenger in the race to lead the world's largest sport's governing body. A member of the FIFA Executive Committee since 1996, he's been the Asian Football Confederation president for the past nine years.

Game Intelligence looks at the bigger picture obscured behind Rooney's colourful language. Despite an impending two match suspension, Wayne Rooney's foul mouthed tirade will be music to his manager's ears. Forget the debate over whether Rooney should be punished for ... Continue reading →

Game Intelligence looks at the bigger picture obscured behind Rooney's colourful language. Despite an impending two match suspension, Wayne Rooney's foul mouthed tirade will be music to his manager's ears. Forget the debate over whether Rooney should be punished for ... Continue reading →

Enough is enough. The time has come to lift the lid on the plenitude of vapid clichés that pollute the language of football. Game Intelligence steps into the breach... i·ron·ic (Pronunciation: /ʌɪˈrɒnɪk/) Adjective According to common knowledge, Americans don't ‘get' ... Continue reading →

Enough is enough. The time has come to lift the lid on the plenitude of vapid clichés that pollute the language of football. Game Intelligence steps into the breach... i·ron·ic (Pronunciation: /ʌɪˈrɒnɪk/) Adjective According to common knowledge, Americans don't ‘get' ... Continue reading →

With the game up in arms about what John Terry did with his pants off several years ago and how this affects his ability to play Association Football, you'd probably be expecting a bitingly topical Friday Essay. And you won't be disappointed*, as Dotmund looks at that perennial hot potato: crows. If you're looking at this on the mobile version of the site, by the way, you might wish to click on the 'View Desktop Version', at the foot of the page.

Did you know that Sir Alex Ferguson still doubts his tactical nous? The headline leaves no room for doubt: "Sir Alex Ferguson: I still doubt my tactical nous". I find this sad. Sir Alex would seem to have it all: a long record of championships, a range of expensive outerwear, a ruddy Glaswegian complexion, a knighthood but if you can't trust in your own nous, what is it all worth, really?

Truro City's Treyew Road may seem a far cry from the Azteca stadium, however digging deeper into football's rich history reveals a shared common ancestry between the dinky West Country ground and a footballing temple that witnessed both the "Hand of God" and Brazil's legendary performance in .

Oh yes they are... the cup game tonight against a brooding Arsenal is the last game of association football they need or want.. 3 days before a potentially banana skinned CL 2nd leg against Marseilles.

With a week till the next game for us, against West Brom in the league, Wenger will surely go for the strongest available eleven.

Barcelona versus Arsenal, then. This tie might just turn out to have produced a higher acreage of newpaper stories than any other match this season, with comments thrown from one club to the other like hand grenades in the air over the last couple of weeks. The hype has added to the feeling that this isn't a mere football match being played out this evening.

An article by Rae. You can follow her on Twitter at @rachydivanerd

An oft-repeated Bill Shankly quote goes something like this: Some people think that football is a matter of life and death. I can assure them that it is much more important than that.

I reckon that any half-decent football fan, regardless of which team he or she supports, would struggle to argue with Shankly's line of thought.

There are 11 reasons that football is better than football. Or, football is better than American football. Or, even still, Soccer is better than American football. Why 11? Well, that's an odd, obscure, uneven number. And there are 11 men on a soccer pitch.

1. The Name Makes Sense

In football, they actually use their foot to kick a ball.