Currently there are 53 countries affiliated to UEFA. These are countries who are allowed to play in tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup and of course the European Championships. But there are only 52 which actually have a league of their own as Liechtenstein do not organise a league, preferring to play in the Swiss leagues.

If I told you Rino Gattuso opened a shop near Milan and asked you to guess what kind of shop it is, the smart guess would be one that sells various weapons, torture devices, and rabies medication.

Well, Rino actually did have a grand opening for his new shop in the town of Gallarate, which was attended by thousands of people including Davey Becks and Ronaldinho.

With MLS having very closed finances, and Forbes only doing a report on the 2007 revenue streams, judging financial impact is rather difficult. The sole set of numbers that can be looked at are attendance. Those that think the DP has an impact might be surprised, as the Beckham effect was big, but everything else is tiny.

US Soccer has sent out an advisory this morning that there will be a press conference today at 2:00 CT in regard to Division II professional soccer league for the 2010 season.

Those in attendance will be U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati, U.S. Soccer CEO/Secretary General Dan Flynn, USL CEO Alec Papadakis and NASL Acting Commissioner Jeff Cooper.

A chill wind blew threw the Emirates this afternoon and of the 50,000 odd thousand there (the official attendance is ticket sales not turnstiles), only the foolhardy will disagree that Arsenal were lucky to escape with a 2-2 draw.The line-up was generally as expected, with Denilson, Diaby and Ramsey in the middle trio, leaving Nasri, Eduardo and Arshavin the so-called strike force.

In the last 20+ years, every one of the so-called "major" sports leagues in America has gone through some sort of work stoppage. Whether it was the NFL in 1987, MLB in 1994, the NBA in 1998 or the NHL in 2004, every stoppage damaged the respective leagues. Attendance declined, playoffs were canceled, interest levels dropped and it took time (and in the case of baseball, two steroid-fueled power hitters) to get the leagues back to their pre-work stoppage levels of success.

Historically this category has been owned by the Galaxy. More than half of the 20 best seasons belong to the team from Los Angeles. If you look closely, there's some proof that TFKA Metro hasn't always been inept at getting people to come see soccer. With their new home in Harrison opening next year, it will be interesting to see if they might be able to get their attendance back into this lofty company.

Cup matches are often prone to getting a little over-heated, but last weekend in Northern Ireland an Irish Cup Fifth Round match between Newry City and Larne was abandoned with eight minutes to play when a fight broke out between the two teams. Newry were leading at the time, but both teams face the likelihood of being thrown out of the competition.

The New York Red Bulls will open their new stadium, Red Bull Arena, on March 20 with a friendly against legendary Brazilian club Santos FC.

The Red Bulls had been scheduled to open play at Red Bull Arena in their MLS season opener, on March 27 against the Chicago Fire, but the friendly vs.

Landon Donovan has scored the first goal of his Premier League career, notching Everton's second tally in a 2-0 victory over Sunderland on Wednesday. The on-loan Los Angeles Galaxy star opened his account in the 18th minute of the match, calmly controlling a ball that had been flicked into his path by the head of Tim Cahill, with the U.

On Tuesday, Curt Onalfo will be officially introduced at a morning press conference. That evening, you'll have a chance to shake hands and hear directly from the sixth head coach in club history.

Join us at Black Finn (1620 I Street NW) from 6-8pm for free appetizers and happy hour drink specials - and a chance to meet Curt.

The English FA Cup 3rd Round began on Saturday, January 2, 2010 with several matches including Sunderland hosting Barrow. Sunderland were the huge favorites heading into the match as Barrow are not a league team and play in the Conference. It was a chance for Barrow to be giant killers which is what the FA Cup has a rich history of providing.

The late match on Saturday, January 2, 2010 in the English Football Association (FA) Cup 3rd round was Reading v Liverpool. Reading, who are in the Championship, have been struggling this season after being in the EPL only a few years ago. Liverpool, who are out of the EPL title race, could redeem their season with a deep run into the FA Cup.

Tomorrow morning, we'll officially introduce Head Coach Curt Onalfo to the media at a 10 a.m. press conference. You'll be able to watch the entire thing live on dcunited.com and see the first exclusive interview with Onalfo immediately following. Tune in a little before 10 a.m. for interviews with United players.

Earlier this year I had a mad posh to see which teams had been seen by the largest percentage of fans in a given season. It was interesting enough (to me at least) that I've created this post to update at the conclusion of each year.
The 2009 season didn't change the leaderboard in the least bit, which is not too surprising as each additional team makes it progressively harder to reach the top twenty.

Here's the year-end update to which teams had been seen by the smallest percentage of fans in a given season. Mea culpa -- I somehow managed to exclude data from 2008 in the post from earlier this year.
You might notice that this list has a lot of teams from the last couple of years. Thinking about this a bit more, that makes sense, as more teams in the league means each team should receive a smaller slice of the overall attendance pie.

BMO Field, the home to MLS club Toronto FC is getting another upgrade, a gift for the new year. As reported earlier the Toronto City Council voted to remove turf field and replace it with natural grass. Well now it looks that the organzation will be investing 2 million bucks to add 1,249 seats before the 2010 season.

The USA Bid Committee will announce next Tuesday the 18 cities included in their bid to FIFA. Kansas City is one of 27 metro areas still in the running to make this list, with nine cities set to be trimmed next Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. CT live on ESPNews.
We will host a watch party live at the Plaza 810 Zone beginning at 2 p.

Every news story to come from the actual games will likely come second to anything involving Togo, as it should. So easily the second biggest of the CAN's second day is the thrashing Malawi gave Algeria, proving World Cup participation means nothing. But on the grander scale, the game itself may mean nothing compared to the gate.

The game may be in us, but it's certainly not in Chicago.

"We are going to announce 18 cities with an average capacity of 78,000 seats adjusted for World Cup," said Sunil Gulati, president of US Soccer. Gulati was preparing the crowd who had gathered for the US World Cup Bid press conference for the announcement of 18 final cities that would host World Cup should the US get the tournament for 2018 or 2022.

As a followup to the post on the teams seen by the smallest percentage of fans I thought it would be interesting to see the worst seasons in terms of average home attendance.
year team home avg
2000 Miami 7,460
2003 Dallas 7,906
1998 Kansas City 8,073
1999 Kansas City 8,183
1999 Miami 8,689
1997 Kansas City 9,058
2004 Dallas 9,088
2000 Kansas City 9,112
2000 Tampa Bay 9,452
2001 San Jose 9,635
1997 Dallas 9,678
2005 Kansas City 9,691
2009 Kansas City 10,053
1996 Colorado 10,213
1998 Miami 10,284
1996 Colorado 10,213
1998 Tampa Bay 10,312
2003 San Jose 10,466
2001 Tampa Bay 10,479
2008 Kansas City 10,686
From these numbers, it looks pretty grim for soccer in Kansas City.

By the looks of things, not a lot of folks. Now that the Philadelphia KiXX have become the last Major Indoor Soccer League team to open its home schedule (they couldn't get 10 dates at their new home at Temple University, so they're only playing 8 home games this year), here's a look at the attendance figures for each of the five teams in what's left of top-flight indoor soccer:

Team G Total Average Median High Low Baltimore Blast 5 32,801 6,560 6,511 9,614 4,208 Philadelphia KiXX 1 4,584 4,584 4,584 4,584 4,584 Milwaukee Wave 4 12,706 3,177 3,298 3,857 2,254 Monterrey LaRaZa 5 13,754 2,751 2,678 4,150 1,572 Rockford Rampage 5 5,793 1,159 846 1,900 690 MISL TOTAL 20 69,638 3,482 3,104 9,614 690

As they have for years, Baltimore sets the pace in indoor attendance.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...Who is the fairest of them all? Well in terms of football in Europe it comes as no surprise that at the halfway point in the season, Germany leads the way in terms of attendances.

A country that scoffs at the idea of ripping off the fans and consequently charges an average of 26 Euros to watch a top level game.

The average attendance in the ISL thus far this season is 10,107. That figure would be higher had Arema v Persib and Persib v Persija been played in front of supporters.
Four crowds have been recordedin excess of 35,000, three were Arema home games (Persija, Sriwijaya & Persema) and Persija v Pelita Jaya.

Photo by ISIphotos.com

By ADAM SERRANO

When the U.S. men's national team takes on Honduras at Home Depot Center on Saturday night, there will be plenty of Honduran fans in attendance and the player they are most likely to cheer the loudest for won't be wearing a Honduran uniform.

The New York Red Bulls will open their new stadium, Red Bull Arena, on March 20 with a friendly against legendary Brazilian club Santos FC.

The Red Bulls had been scheduled to open play at Red Bull Arena in their MLS season opener, on March 27 against the Chicago Fire, but the friendly vs.

Freddie Ljungberg has once again taken to his personal website to share his thoughts, this time under mounting pressure to explain why he wasn't in attendance during the opening of Sounders FC training camp on Monday. His absence, coupled with an odd back-and-forth public exchange between the star and team officials had led to speculation that Ljungberg may have been trying to book his way out of town before the transfer window closes on January 31st.

So I'm guessing you've all seen the numbers. We have 32,000 season ticket holders. And we could have more, but we capped it.
Now, I know that I've busted hard on no less than Creepy Jose for talking attendance smack, but you know what? Fuck it. I'm so drunk on power and money right now that I don't care.

I don't discuss a lot of women's soccer on this site but when I do it is usually some fairly large news (though if you are interested in writing about the WPS contact me). Unfortunately that is the case today. Arguable the best club on and off the field, the LA Sol will be ceasing it's operations tomorrow.

A day before our clash in London against Arsenal, Sir Alex Ferguson made sure he was in attendance of the 3pm game at Craven Cottage.

Fulham take on Aston Villa, who United are set to play in the League Cup final, and Gabriel Agbonlahor will have certainly grabbed our manager's attention after scoring two goals.