Fresh off a round of 16 exit in the World Cup at the helm of Chilé, a source with ties to Bielsa's native Argentina has informed me that the USSF is pursuing Marcelo Bielsa to take over as manager of the U.S. National Team. Bielsa has also received interest from other countries, including Japan, Mexico, and an extension offer from Chilé.

You may not have seen much of them during the FSC broadcast, but D.C. was out in force down in Philly this weekend. Outfitted in more red & black than a typical beefeaters convention, the Screaming Eagles, Barra Brava and assorted other United fans rolled deep into the Lincoln Financial Field parking lot with the amount of buses ferrying them up I-95 going into the double digits.

So I was down in Philly for all of the madness/awesomeness of the Union's debut/beat down of D.C. United on Saturday. I've got a couple of different pieces that I'm working on that I'm trying to get out in the next 24 and while looking through some of the video I caught I found one of the funniest moments of the weekend that I didn't feel like waiting to share.

By ANTHONY ZILIS

During the first half of Sunday's 1-0 loss to AC Milan, the ball bounced toward Patrick Nyarko. With midfielder Ronaldinho running at him, Nyarko touched the ball over the Brazilian star's head and ran on to the ball.

"It was great, I was laughing it off with my teammates," Nyarko said.

There was a story in yesterday's Times that I had trouble believing was true. It involves the American Ambassador to London and the British Ambassador to Washington D.C. arranging a friendly food-based wager over the result of the USA vs England World Cup game on June 12th.

After careful consideration, and with special attention paid to the fact that it makes a pretty good blog post, I'm going to go ahead and take the story as true.

It looks as though Will Young will be a very disappointed man, if rumours for the past decade are to be believed, with John O'Shea tying the knot with his long term girlfriend, Yvonne Manning.

O'Shea's sexuality has become an obsession for some rival fans, particularly Manchester City, who seem to sing about him every time we play.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Beninian trickster Sessegnon sticks Sporting Lisbon's Grimi on his arse with a couple of stepovers and then gets penalised! Go figure...

Is it the end of Fat Ronaldo's career... Caught Offside

Brazil's other darling Ronaldinho is battling the bulge by being put on his own fitness regime.

Go ahead, debate it. You know in the last day or so you've though about the impact of David Beckham vs the impact of Thierry Henry to Major League Soccer. Both have their pluses and minuses but each in my mind do the same thing, make the league that much better with them in it.

I've seen a lot of banter over the last couple days about each guy and what they've done or will do for the sport here in America and for MLS in general.

Photos copyright Outside Magazine/Peggy Mirota

We're coming around to the Landon Donovan situation, Kickettes.

It's not just because we're all over the L.A. Galaxy/USMNT star's fun and sarcastic tweets, banter about his hairline with both fans and chit chat with his woman. (FYI, we kind of love her because of her best lyric tweet eva.

Alan Hansen on top form last night as he was sneeringly patronising about New Zealand. His failings as a pundit are being highlighted this year by the excellent performance of new BBC signing Clarence Seedorf. Seedorf is everything Hansen could have been, maybe once was, if he hadn't settled for the lazy route of interminable banter with Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer.

More Twitter 'banter' from Mr S Robbie Savage seems to think his bitchy Twitter war (or banter as he likes to call it) with Rio Ferdinand has come to a conclusion with his posting of this picture. He tweeted: "There is no comeback!" Everyone knows Rio's true lookalike is Joseph Goebbels.

CHELSEA sources have revealed Ray Wilkins may have been fired as assistant manager following a boardroom snub to owner Roman Abramovich.

Wilkins, linked with Chelsea for 37 years before the club announced last week he would be leaving with immediate effect, is understood to have sailed close to the wind in a recent management meeting with a swipe at the Russian billionaire's non-football background.

As the Chelsea versus Manchester United game approaches, the office banter reminds me how many fans come out of the woodwork around the time of the big matches regardless of the team they follow.

For many fans defeat will be more painful on the Monday, than on the Saturday

Beating a rival or top club is about more than league position to most, whenever two teams that have support in the office clash the build up is always intense and highly amusing.

Popular blog search engine Wikio recently got in touch with Just Football to offer us advance notice of the Top 30 Football Blogs this month as per their highly scientific data. Here are the results:
1Arseblog (=)
2BBC Sport - Football blog (=)
3Gunnerblog (=)
4West Ham Till I Die (=)
5SoccerLens (+5)
6BBC Sport - Phil McNulty blog (-1)
7East Lower (=)
8Republik of mancunia (=)
9Goodplaya (+2)
10Bitter and Blue (-4)
11Off The Post (-2)
12Football Banter (=)
13Twohundredpercent (+3)
14Goonerholic (-1)
15Just Football (-1)
16Harry Hotspur (+10)
17Studs Up (+61)
18The Gunning Hawk (-3)
19Lord of the Wing (-2)
20Some People Are On The Pitch (-1)
21Blue Days (-1)
22Arsenalinsider (+13)
23Scotzine.

Opinions, in football as in life, depend on one's perspective. There are those of a positive nature who will instincitively pick up on what's going well while others of a more negative persuasion quickly point at the empty half of the glass.
Few people in football seem to polarise those two extremes as much as Rafael Benitez.

The catty British press, I'm told, has labeled Group C with the acronym EASY: England, Algeria, Slovenia, Yanks. And it is true that by on-field stature there is not much here: England were probably lucky to be seeded, the US ranking of 14th in the world is widely understood to be inflated by a weak region, while Algeria (ranked 31st in the world) and Slovenia (ranked 23rd) are decidedly middling.

Hitler - A Spud!?

Summer is here & the transfer market is rife with speculations. Every day a new name pops up linking him with a possible move to the Emirates. Even more frequent is the 'calling' for Cesc to his spiritual home i.e. Camp Nou. All this has made me sick to the point that I've avoided dwelling into them right from the offset.

United States vs. Turkey. 2 PM EST. The last opportunity for the US to send a message to the world. Join in on the banter with us as we live blog the event!

Covered By Eric Beard (moderator) and Jordan Beard (doing play-by-play)

It's been reported that Scotland fans are cheekily buying up U.S.A. and Argentina shirts in defiance of the old enemy, for this Summer's World Cup Finals in South Africa, with both shirts selling nearly two to one of England shirts in the U.

Before I get into the World Cup banter, it's worth mentioning that I stumbled upon a moment of unintentional bit of comedy about an hour ago. The scene: Fenway Park. The situation: Red Sox-Diamondbacks pre-game festivities. The individual: Khano Smith. Yes, that Khano Smith. In a Red Sox jersey. The action: the ceremonial first pitch.

Some more Robert Green and England jokes for you as we check in quickly from a cyber cafe...

- What's the difference between the England team and a tea bag? The tea bag stays in the cup longer.

- What do you call an Englishman in the knockout stages of the World Cup? A referee.

- Three hours of football and Robert Green is still England's top scorer.

Here at In The Stands we try to give you the best football writers on the interweb. So without further ado here is our latest addition, Dave from football-banter.com...

Ever since England were knocked out of the World Cup in embarrassing style by Argentina there's been a growing support for Howard Webb.

By Ollie Irish

Spain play with their shiny new toy

In terms of viewing figures for Sunday's World Cup final, the BBC handed ITV its arse, with almost five times as many people choosing Gary Lineker over Adrian Chiles.

The BBC claimed its match audience average was 4.

I don't mind banter. In fact I indulge in a friendly bit of banter daily.
What Carlos Puyol and Gerard Pique did to Cesc Fabregas was not banter.
What they did was cuntish and showed a distinct lack of respect to Arsenal Football Club, Fabregas personally and the rest of the Spanish squad who do not play for Barcelona.

Here are some links from our friends that we thought you might enjoy...

Are England heading towards football wilderness?... Football Banter

Finally a player worthy of pulling on the three lions... Never Captain Nicky Butt

The spending never ends over at the Bernabeu.

It appears that as the season is nearly upon us the silly season is about to start again. And it makes me wish it was 1st September already as we will have a lot fo the answers by then. I am trying not to get too excited at the moment as a Liverpool fan, with all this talk of quick take overs and millions of pounds to be given to Roy the boy before the window shuts it makes your heart start to race.

By Ollie Irish

In which Sky Sports trots out the old 'Arry is a wheeler dealer' cliché and feels the sweary wrath of Tottenham's gaffer:

Get in there Arry, you f**king beauty. He is a f**king football manager. Put that in HD you c**ts.

Memo to Sky Sports: Don't attempt matey banter with Arry after his team has just lost at home to Wigan.

By Ollie Irish

If you don't mind me indulging in a spot of kneejerk-reaction action, then I have a rather obvious and timely question for you: with Dimitar Berbatov playing so brilliantly, and not just against Liverpool (he's been United's best player this season), and Wayne Rooney blatantly out of sorts, in terms of his centre-forward play and also compared with last season's feats (of course a below-par Rooney is still better than most players), are we witness to the moment when Berba assumes the role of Fergie's No.

Written by kelsey

The Internet has seen an explosion of football sites in a comparatively short space of time, and at the last count I see there are a hundred or more just dedicated to The Arsenal.

This got me thinking, as I am of an age when if one grew up in and around North London, one either followed Arsenal or Spurs.

So, tonight brings one of the biggest games of the season and the GMP's busiest night of year, as Manchester City host United at Wastelands. No derby is complete with a bit of rival banter though, so Danny Pugsley from the popular City blog, Bitter and Blue, has taken some time out to have a chat with us at RoM.

The view from the W Hotel in Hoboken.

With the 2010 regular season in the books I decided to do a couple of posts on the most memorable road trips from my first campaign with D.C. United. Some of these posts are retroactive, as I didn't start the blog portion of the site until halfway through the year.

Following up on yesterday, so far I've read two major criticisms of my call for more journalism, less forum banter from MLS blogs. The first is that MLS bloggers would write more interesting stories on MLS if they had the time/resources/access. The second is that MLS is an inherently uninteresting league and therefore no amount of good storytelling is going to save the league from its synthetic self.

Cup fever hits Tyneside for the first time in the new decade, as Newcastle visit Plymouth in today's FA Cup 2rd Round tie at Home Park! As the last few have been relatively successful, here's another link you can just use for the match banter.Unfortunately, my better half changed our holiday plans, so as we're [.

The second Soccerlens Podcast of the new decade sees Adrian Clarke and Iain Spragg hit the spot with more topical football banter and debate.

As well as dissecting all the hottest topics in football, the duo nominate some of their own favourite writers, experts and websites in light of the upcoming Soccerlens Awards.

Last time I commented about Harry Redknapp's tax problems and shady past I was told in no uncertain terms I was in the wrong. Last time I commented on Sol Campbell I was accused of being all kinds of prejudice. Therefore, I thought why not get them both involved today and you can really go to town on me!

But the Carling Cup has been pretty damn interesting recently.
Normally the tournament is like on the fourth rung.
1. Premiership
2. UCL/Europa League
3. FA Cup
4. Carling Cup
But with a Manchester derby with Tevez revenge and Neville middle-fingers, tournament officials have to be beaming.

With the World Cup less than 6 months away, we have decided to start the build up early doors with an A to Z list of our favourite players who set the World Cup alight. Some are recent stars, some are relics from the days of black and white TV but all were mustard. The thing is, each week we will be using just stars whose surname was that week's letter, eg: this week it is letter A which gives us Ardilles, Aguas, Aldier etc etc.

Watching the Manchester derby Wednesday night I was appalled to see Craig Bellamy get hit by an object and to see other objects thrown at him as he went to take a corner for Manchester City.

Bellamy was struck by a coin that knocked him to the ground and saw a beer bottle narrowly miss his head.

Heroes from Merseyside's two Premier League clubs joined fans ahead of this Saturday's derby.
Liverpool's Jamie Carragher and Everton's Leighton Baines have picked two sides to represent their clubs and compete against each other.
The stars were at Goodison Park last night to give the lucky 16 fans their kits for the big game after they were selected from more than 80 hopefuls, who initially attended a three-week "boot camp".

New Recruites? 'None'!

There are few football managers who never fail to surprise you. Take Benitez & his eccentric team-selection. Take Sven Goran & his audaciously picking Theo for WC '06, or for that matter take Mourinho & his pre-match banter. And then there are some whom you can bet your lives on, that come what may, they won't ever change.