Philadelphia Union

The Union announced on Friday morning the signing of goalkeeper Chris Konopka.

From the Department of Is It March 12 Yet, handbags in Costa Rica between the Union and Belen resulted in the abandonment of team's final scrimmage game with them down 2–0 in the first half.

If you're in the market for a Barca shirt that's not as nice as the one you currently own, you're in luck: the yet-to-be-released strip for next season has apparently leaked on eBay.

This eighties-tastic red center stripe design has been doing the rounds on the web for some time and Catalan newspaper/Barcelona cheerleader Sport suggests this purchasable example is an accurate precursor of the real deal.

Inspired by the recent story at The Sporting News regarding Eric Wynalda, his engagements over Twitter and some small parallels between Kasey Keller and Wynalda as vocal players, Sounder at Heart conducted a 30-odd-minute conversation with the US Player of the Decade for the 1990s. It quickly became apparent that the topics would be far reaching, circling back and then shooting off in another direction.

An undisclosed location in Kansas City. A temporary Sigi-bunker has been erected in an underground location and is currently host to a predraft party. The computer monitors are flooded with bright colors and visualizations mixing with a reel of Sounders highlights. My World by Iggy Azalea is pumping through the speakers, continually being remixed over with bits of Justice and LMFAO by the Sigibot who is serving as DJ for the night.

On Goal Scored blog collected 100 football from many football clubs and associations and put it in one picture to see how the football is depicted in a 100 different way:
Here are some of them, the first ball (from left) is for Chelsea and that was my favorite, it reflects classic history, authenticity, and heritage for the club, also, remind the English fans about the ball that were played in 1966 World Cup.

By Chris Wright

In which Chelsea urchin Daniel Sturridge, like Robin Cook before, stumbles across a case of gross age discrimination after seeing himself, Salomon Kalou and Romelu Lukaku knocked out of a shooting game (insert Ashley Cole pun here) during training and sent back to the changing rooms by senior pair Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka and immediately embarks on a stint of amateur investigative journalism to expose the racket all while Kalou fiddles with Lukaku's rubbish hair.

While the FIFA franchise has reached an amazing amount of success in the past few years, the FIFA Street videogame series has slowly faded away. After FIFA Street 3, it didn't seem like EA was interested in developing the fourth instalment of the series. Yet now, an awesome Youtube trailer has been put out by the EA Sports France channel, showing off what could be the best FIFA Street game yet:
EA is obviously taking this seriously, and they're ditching the cartoony style which they used for FIFA Street 3.

FIFA 12 is all about authenticity, but they've taken it to a new level with the upcoming release of FIFA 12 by painstakingly upgrading Wayne Rooney's hairstyle so his new hair transplant is plain to see. In the above photograph (before, on the left,...
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The 2011 Kicking and Screening Soccer Film Festival beings July 20th and several high-profile flicks will make their world and/or New York premiere (which we authored a drinking guide for), but the one movie that really caught our eye is "Sivan".
"Sivan" is a documentary short shown on the festival's opening night.

I'll be honest, I haven't bought or played a FIFA game in about two or three years now. I was tempted to buy it this past year for my iPad and never did. I kept saying, I'll wait until next year and when that came I still never bought it. Oh well, I don't have the same time for gaming that I used to.

I don't think I'd classify this as a good day to bury bad news although your tastes may cause you to disagree, but while we're all wailing and gnashing teeth over the Alex McLeish debacle, it appears that the new 2011/12 away shirt may have found its way on to the internet.

I stress may because unlike the 2011/12 home shirt, which I have very high resolution pictures I obtained myself, I'm not sure of the authenticity of this one.

I don't think I'd classify this as a good day to bury bad news although your tastes may cause you to disagree, but while we're all wailing and gnashing teeth over the Alex McLeish debacle, it appears that the new 2011/12 away shirt may have found its way on to the internet.

I stress may because unlike the 2011/12 home shirt, which I have very high resolution pictures I obtained myself, I'm not sure of the authenticity of this one.

God does indeed work in mysterious ways. I had the overwhelming good fortune to partake in a temple trip spanning the state of Maharashtra (read: my parents held an Uzi to my head and took me along) and my Mom had told me to be very specific in my prayers, for this was to be a magical, all wish-fulfilling trip that would satiate my every need if I asked coherently enough.

According to the L.A. Times and Paul Doyle in the Guardian, a secret recording has emerged of Laurent Blanc actually saying the horrible things he has recently been accused of having said.

So I owe Mediapart an apology for some references to their being media whores. And hacks. Sorry.

But some of you would not be fit for jury duty.

I was sent a link yesterday to what is claimed to be Arsenal's home shirt for next season. Of course, the kit will be going along with the 125th anniversary theme and to be honest if this is it I will be wholly disappointed:

original source

I had seen some prospective designs for next season a little while ago and there was one quite similar to this, however there were far better designs there.

Over the last couple of years, we have conducted interviews with a number of marketing professionals throughout MLS. These Q&As have provided great insight into the marketing strategies and goals of various franchises. Within the league, the Portland Timbers are one of the most exciting marketing stories of 2011.

I've talked before about being a marketer by trade, so my intrigue about a number of recent MLS marketing related news items should come of no real surprise. What was a bit more surprising was my inability to immediately tie them into a neat and tidy theme, with the exception of the inevitable thoughs about how these items affect, or compare to, our local New England Revolution.

Apologies for the title taken from a Robbie Williams song. I would have preferred another song, more earthier, more direct but there you go.
Questions are being raised about the authenticity of a fax allegedly sent from FIFA to the Indonesian FA, PSSI, calling on the Indonesian body to impose sanctions on the breakaway Liga Primer Indonesia.

My Mom is a dear, but she can be very trying at times. Aside from committing the marked blasphemy of not letting me watch the occasional match (some nonsense about ‘studying' and ‘making my career') she has also repeatedly advised me to ‘support the winning team no?