See that microphone, Kickettes? That could've been you! Images via SmallBar Division

Bad news for any stalkers of the USMNT. If you weren't at SmallBar, Division St in Chicago last night you missed an opportunity to get up close and personal with the delectable Carlos Bocanegra, who was in town taping a segment for web show Studio 90.

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Sigi only has two trophies to look towards now

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0 for 4 started it, but tonight Saprissa's 2-2 draw with Monterrey finished it off.

Young Arsenal frontman Carlos Vela was introduced for his good friend Giovani Dos Santos with just 17 minutes on the clock in Mexico's one nil drama victory over South American outfit Colombia.

That makes sure for Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger that the 21 years old will come back to London without any knock and injury, so that he will be available for Saturday's Premier League encounter with the Bolton Wanderers at Emirates Stadium.

This is the latest in my current Football Manager Tales series, Yanked Abroad. Go back to the beginning of this series on the FM Tales page.
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The Spring season gets started, and to add to my tactical issues and the new players not exactly setting the world on fire in the friendlies, I get the bad news that midfielder Zhou (kind of rolls off the Maoist tongue, doesn't it?

The Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie hasn't played for the Gunners for the last seven weeks since he injured his ever-problematic ankle in the match against Blackburn at the beginning of the season, but he is expected to recover in the next couple of weeks. The bad news is that he will be ready just in [.

Terrible news for United, bad news for the Premiership

The Rooney situation has a particular bad smell about it. It is different to the Beckham, Nistelrooy, or Stam departures. They all wanted to stay and were forced out by the manager, whilst Rooney is demanding a no compromise move away from the club.

BBC Sport - Football - Live - Wednesday's football2144: Bad news for England and Liverpool - Steven Gerrard looks like he's done his hamstring in making a tackle and will be replaced by Peter Crouch.

Arsenal have only played one game so far this season, but already I am thinking about conceding the League title. Usually we can be confident of having a great team with yet some more classy youngsters coming through and can look forward with hope in our hearts, but todays news about Emmanuel Frimpong has just [.

Earlier this month I was worried about our injury problems, especially in midfield. These were my exact words,

"Last year we ran out of strikers, the year before that was plagued by defensive injuries and my stomach is in knots about midfield injuries this season."

Well, that was before Nasri went under the knife and Frimpong did his cruciate.

Blackpool

Position (Last Season): 6th (in Championship), 19-13-14 (70 points, +16 goal differential)

Away Form: 6-7-10

Last Meeting: Arsenal 3 Blackpool 1 (December 1999, FA Cup)

Second-place Blackpool marches into the Emirates.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger can finally smile as he welcomes back Cesc Fabregas, Alex Song and Johan Djourou back for today's game against Blackpool. After the very bad news of injuries to Samir Nasri and Emmanuel ...

Liverpool are a little concerned with Dirk Kuyt's fitness after sustaining a shoulder injury during an international match against Finland on Monday.

Kuyt has been ruled out for Tuesday's match and has been sent back to Liverpool for further examinations to determine the extent of the injury.

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This is your future

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This week's look at Americans playing abroad will focus on those that were recently selected by Bob Bradley to represent the Stars & Stripes against Poland and Colombia in the up-coming friendlies.

Crapity crapity crap crap.

With legal issues looking to dominate tomorrow, a quick "overnight" update seems to be in order. First the unavoidable bad news: Daniel Agger and Dirk Kuyt both picked up injuries. While the severity of the Dane's is uncertain, Kuyt's looks to be a bad ankle sprain that will see the Dutch wide attacker out for two weeks.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it. | Subscribe: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Stories from Scotland and Holland feature on this week's football podcast as well as more bad news from Italy, while explanations of key vocabulary (in bold) can be found at the foot of the post.

After sustaining medial ligament damage during a match against Newcastle in the Carling Cup, Arsenal defender Kieran Gibbs will miss a few weeks of action.

Gunners manager Arsene Wenger admits that it is a blow to lose Gibbs, but that the club is hoping it isn't all that bad.

"We lost Kieran Gibbs last night," Wenger told Arsenal TV Online.

The good news for Real Madrid forward Karim Benzema is that everybody on his team is publicly voicing their support of the Frenchman. The bad news for the recent transfer is that his teammates and coach feel the need to continue to voice their support regarding the struggling star.

Benzema has been considered a big disappointment since his £35 million transfer mover over from Lyon in July 2009 and following a disappointing first season with the club (in which the forward started in less then 20 matches) this year has brought little promise to the future for the young striker.

Despite the overwrought, exaggerated doom and gloom of the last couple of months, there are plenty of reasons for Liverpool fans to be positive at the moment.
1. Winning streak?
After an unlucky run of 7 games without a win in all competitions (4 draws and 3 defeats), Liverpool have now won 4 games in a row, with incremental performance improvements along the way.

Another Friday is upon us and the main issue of the day is ... injuries.

Starting with some good news, Djourou, Denilson and Song are all likely to be back from their knocks and are in various stages of contention for the weekend. Djourou will probably start, seeing as he's the only available centre-half bar Vermaelen, Song could well come back into his midfield holding role, while Denilson should provide some cover from the bench having not played football since April.

The Islanders sour 1-1 draw against Olimpia at home in Juan Ramón Loubriel stadium, combined with Toluca's sloppy 0-0 draw on the road against CD FAS, left the Islanders tied with Olimpia for first place (with 1 point and 1 GF) in Group D action. This group was the only one registering draws in the first week of group action.

Bad news for Tottenham fans... Star striker Jermain Defoe will be sidelined for up to a month because of groin surgery that he will undergo in the coming days.

Spurs boss Harry Redknapp has stated that the 27 year-old hitman will be out for at least two weeks and could miss up to a month.

A quick preview today with part two to follow before tomorrow's games. I'm writing through the fog of a European hangover. Actually, an IPA hangover. The Euro debacle is to blame for the gnawing sense of despair.
Three games to look at. Today's predictions were made by my sister-in-law. Can probably not being any worse:
Aberdeen v Kilmarnock
A good couple of weeks for Aberdeen, flying high in the league.

England national team midfielder Frank Lampard will miss his country's upcoming Euro 2012 qualifiers due to a hernia operation, with both Peter Crouch and Bobby Zamora listed as doubtful.

Well, that's not all of the bad news of Capello & Co... Defender John Terry has also been ruled out of international action.

Both have happened in the last week, which partially accounts for my absence around here.
The bad news is the redesigned site won't launch at the end of the month like I had planned. The good news is the launch shouldn't get pushed out too much longer. I'm going to aim for the week of July 4th.

Bad news as La Selección meets before their qualifying match against Liechstein and the friendly against Argentina.

Third captain Carles Puyol did not play for FC Barcelona in their debut in La Liga over the weekend, due to some unspecified trouble in his right left leg, but he reported to the [read more]

Estonia Estonia Wherefor Art Thou Estonia

Update 3: Daylife has some pictures from our last training session up, and this one really stuck out to me. What's up with Bovo? Does he really hate Giorgio's shows that much?

Giorgio must have some really smelly feet. And is it just me or does Bovo look like Phil from Modern Family?

Spain beat Liechtenstein 4 - 0 in their Euro qualifier with Torres and Villa scoring two goals each and plenty of tiki taki for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile the good news for next door neighbour Portugal was that they also scored four goals in their game against Cyprus.The bad news was that Cyprus also scored 4 goals in return.

Bad news for Tottenham fans. Michael Dawson will miss the next six to eight weeks with ligament damage in his knee and ankle on international duty.

Following an awkward turn early in the second half of the 4-0 England win over Bulgaria, Dawson was stretchered off the pitch.

A statement on Tottenham's website read: "Scans today (Saturday) have revealed that Michael Dawson has sprained his left medial knee ligament and one of his left ankle ligaments.

Not that long ago, I came across one posting from an online forum.
The posting on the online forum detailed a fan's frustration over the state of the game in this country, with one of her grouses targetted the presence of the feeder squads of both Albirex Niigata and Beijing Guoan, which she felt had deprived some local talents from playing at the top level.

The European Championship qualifiers started last week and there were good performances from England, Germany, Holland and Italy who won both of their games comfortably. However, Portugal have had a dreadful start to their campaign with a defeat and a home draw, while there was bad news for many Premier League players as Defoe, Dawson, Walcott, Van Persie and Kuyt all suffered what could be long-term injuries.

He's new, he's French, I hope he's what we need

It's over once again. The last of the internationals were played yesterday and we now have 7 consecutive matches in the next 23 days before the next break kicks in. That run do have some tough games including Sunderland and Chelsea, both away games.

Total transfer spending this summer in Europe's five biggest leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) was 1.32 billion euros. Which is a lot of wonga, obviously, but actually represents a 29% decrease compared to money spent in 2009. According to Bloomberg, the biggest decreases by league for 2009 vs 2010 were as follows:

La Liga down 45%,
Ligue 1 down 43%
Bundesliga down 32%
Serie A down 18%
Premier League down 15%

Several possible reasons for this downturn.

Everyone is concentrating on the bad news about Theo Walcott (What bad news? At least his ankle isnt broken!), but no-one is looking at the positive news that Samir Nasri has recovered quicker than expected, and Wenger thinks that he may even be involved this weekend. Wenger was asked how Nasri's recovery was going, and he [.

Good morning to you. Regardless of the Interlull that last week seems to have just flown by. One day it was Monday and the next it was literally Friday.

The bad news about young Theodore was confirmed yesterday. He'll spend 4-6 weeks out with an ankle injury and Arsene Wenger revealed they were scared it might well have been more.

Saturday saw Godoy Cruz visit El Sur and smash Lanús 4-1 in their own stadium with no fewer than three golazos. El Granate will be happy that that particular bad news day came on the same day that Argentina's female ... Continue reading →

Anyone that has regularly had to endure the BBC's "6-0-6″ will be more than aware of the uniquely frustrating feeling of listening boors arguing with boors for hours on end about matters that neither party seems to fully understand. Football on the radio has been ghettoised by the formulaic phone-in for more years than can be healthy but there have been a couple of exceptions to this rule, not least of which has been the outstanding broadcasting of Danny Baker over the last couple of decades, which has steadily broken the mould of what we have a right to expect from football on the radio (and old episodes of which are still available here).

The only bad news on what was otherwise a great day for Newcastle United, was the injury to goalkeeper Steve Harper in the first half at Goodison Park this afternoon. Steve Harper out for some time It seemed like Harper fell on his shoulder after a 50-50 challenge from Jermaine Beckford, who was then [.

Bad news for Arsenal supporters. Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas will be out for up to three weeks with a hamstring injury, the English Premier League club said on Tuesday.

The Spanish midfielder, who has been in good form in recent weeks, picked up the injury shortly after scoring in Saturday's 1-1 draw at Sunderland and was quickly substituted.

A historic win for Northampton who beat Liverpool on PKs 4-2 after the match tied 2-2 once regulation and extra time was over. For Liverpool, it represents one of their lowest points. It all started brightly enough for the Reds as Milan Jovanovic shot them into an early lead. But the Cobblers who play in League 2 showed some real fighting spirit with Liverpool looking sloppy on defense.

Some bad news today that Steve Harper faces three months out of action, after undergoing an operation on his injured shoulder yesterday. Steve Harper after a collision with Jermaine Beckford at Goodison Park The 35 year-old goalkeeper has suffered ligament damage in last Saturday's 1-0 win over Everton, and had surgery in London yesterday.