Big Story
The American soccer blogosphere has been getting very hot and bothered in the past week, prompted by Jason Davis at Match Fit USA's tongue-in-cheek post questioning Columbus' suitability for remaining in MLS, following poor attendance in their last playoff game: a mere 10,109 showed up at Crew Stadium last week to see the defending champions crash out to Real Salt Lake.

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There have been a few stories rattling around the blogosphere lately about how the cratered economy has decimated fans' ability to pay ever-spiraling ticket prices for professional sporting events.
Yesterday the always biting Field of Schemes linked to Wright Thompson's experience in the absurd seats at Yankee Stadium, and highlighted an interesting statistic from the piece:

A recent poll discovered an unsettling trend emerging for the first time.

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Greetings loyal readers...
I apologize for the lack on content lately, I've been rather busy working on some various business issues and now I've managed to catch a light respiratory infection. Basically my creativity and drive to write are a bit zapped at the moment, but I should be better soon. Click to continue reading...

Arsenalinsider.com brings you in advance the Wikio rankings for this month, known as the most influential blogs in the UK blogosphere.

We are delighted to come straight into the listing at no 32 and thrilled to see so many Arsenal blogs in the list.

As always, our mission is to provide you up-to-date views, news, analysis, exclusive interviews, videos and more on our beloved club and this leap in the Wikio rankings show how much you appreciate our efforts.

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Time to break out the littering of ESPN fails across the blogosphere. ESPN will not be showing the US-Honduras game or at least it sounds that way when you look at the upcoming TV schedules. WorldCupBuzz.com is reporting that the US-Honduras game on October 10th will not be broadcasted live on an ESPN channel.

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Somehow it seems appropriate that the funeral for Teddy Kennedy should be in the rain. Late summer rain. A grey day sad and kind of empty-feeling. A pause. The end of a season. And much work, many beginnings ahead.

Speaking of work, I have a full plate of it for the weekend so the rain is a relief in some ways.

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It's nice to see the discussion in the comments of Dan's article eventually expanded to include issues of homophobia and gender. My regular reader knows I've been posting on that stuff quite a bit this summer and it's nice to see the topic break into the mainstream fan culture, if only for a minute. Click to continue reading...

Tic, Toc, Tic, Toc Hmmmm, let's see; On 8/2/09 the last PQT games were finished and by 3pm the results were posted. On 8/9 the final CQT games were finished and by 3pm the results were posted.
You would have thought that by 4pm on 8/2 the Gold bracket would have been determined and then by 4pm on 8/9 all the other brackets should have been determined. Click to continue reading...

If anyone is leading the charge against vuvuzelas, especially in the blogosphere, it's Unprofessional Foul.
Not hard to believe they weren't a bit perturbed to hear the once in a lifetime opportunities you have with your cell phones in South Africa:

There is an ad on TV for the VUVUZELA RINGTONE.

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It was a great night for Americans in the CONCACAF Champions League. Two teams from American leagues, that play in the United States or associated territories triumphed in Continental play.

DC United's penalty shootout victory over Firpo demonstrated the resilience of the American player- new Red and Black signing; Danny Szetela played a key role in the extra time and shootout.

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I am a football writer, but I am football reader too. I demand fresh information. I want it now. I want it in abundance. Coming up to a match, I scour the net for preview. Is player X still injured? Did player Y travel with the team? Did player Z's red card get overturned?  An hour before kick-off, I'm "handcuffed" to my laptop hitting the refresh button again and again until the starting elevens finally emerge through the haze.

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Hello all. I'm back. I needed to re-charge my blogging batteries so I stopped for the summer when Arsenal's season ended - after the champions league exit against United.
But I'm starting to get excited about next season in a most unusual way.
Normally, signings are the things that gets the modern football fan out of his seat and into the blogosphere. Click to continue reading...

It has taken me a bit to catch up on my RSS feeds lately, so when I checked through them today I found this gem from Paul Oberjuerge. Holy $hit that man can write! And he fleshes out his thoughts brilliantly.

From his post: Becks-Bashers Do Galaxy Proud

AC Milan is, of course, Beckham's real team, the one he wanted to play for so much that he bought himself out of his obligation to play the first half of the Major League Soccer season with the Galaxy.

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I mentioned the Szetela-to-United rumors in the omnibus WIWFC post yesterday, and today the deal is done. So what are we denizens of the dank blogosphere to think? Has United just upgraded its core of promising youngsters, or did we just import a... Click to continue reading...

Jason Davis of Match Fit USA is leading a collective effort of those of us in the blogosphere who cover and support the USMNT to take action to help ensure maximum exposure for the US-Mexico qualifying match at Azteca on August 12th. I'll be back with some thoughts later in the day on television rights for the USMNT and soccer in the US in general and how important this situation may be historically.

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The technology world's attention shifted to Sprint-Nextel this week with the company's announcement that it would hand off management of its wireless and wireline networks to Ericsson. Some time around or after September, 6,000 Sprint employees will begin working the system under the Swedish mobile maker's supervision, the new partners say.

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On Sports Blogging, Sports Journalism, and the Scary Fate of Humanity

Alright, alright, fine – blogging isn't journalism. Lines divide the two fields. Professional journalists get paid, for example. Us amateur bloggers usually don't. We toil in the nervous spaces between working on the internet and "working" on the internet, or between trips to Starbucks and withdrawing more trust-fund money.

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It's been a few weeks since I've had a chance to update you on the latest news stories affecting English football fans from around the world. So even though some of these stories are stale, most of them have not been covered by the blogosphere and remain topical to us die-hard football fans.

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Michael Bradley showed his passion at the end of the Egypt game when he told us all off. That for me wasn't a rebuke but a proud moment. The United States National Team which for years lived in a bubble with nothing but a few media who followed them and passionate, sometimes uncritical fan support had become big time.

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Do you want to win a pair of Chris Rolfe's autographed brand new NIKE cleats? The retail value on these bad boys is about $185. The fact that they're signed though... well, that is PRICELESS!

In case you don't know Chris Rolfe is a forward for the Chicago Fire and U.

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American midfielder Michael Bradley, after the USA's 3-0 win over Egypt Sunday that, combined with Brazil's 3-0 win over Italy, got the US through to the semifinals of the FIFA Confederations Cup:

"All the f experts in America, everybody who thinks they know about soccer, they can all look at the score tonight and let's see what they have to say now.

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MLS Daily, one of the up-and-coming blogs in the U.S. blogosphere has touched base with our favorite Blue Valley West grad and convinced him to do a weekly update via their site. Head over to MLS Daily to read the details of the upcoming series or post questions for Matt. Check MLS Daily often, as they have some good information on our League and U. Click to continue reading...

An Attempt to Make Sense of the Noise By Jason Kuenle Today the US soccer blogosphere is filled with excuses, claims that there can be no excuses, and choruses of "I told you so" and "Fire...

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Just a quick note to give you a heads up as to some MLSR worthy things around the blogosphere you should be reading this morning.
Allen Ramsey Goal.com has a great article featuring a shortlist of MLS Designated Player targets.
Our "Punk Rockization of MLS" feature editorial proved popular and continues to resonate with supporters and bloggers. Click to continue reading...

Morning all, it's fairly quiet now that the Wenger to Madrid stuff has calmed down.

We head into the final weekend of the season, a game against Stoke, and then we have the whole summer to look forward to.

Really the most interesting thing about this morning are the pictures of the new kit going around.

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Monday night saw chief executive officer Ivan Gazidis undertake his first question and answer session with members of the Arsenal Supporters' Trust. FÃ bregas The King blogged on this yesterday so I won't go over the ground he covered, except to make a few brief comments of my own.

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Monday night saw chief executive officer Ivan Gazidis undertake his first question and answer session with members of the Arsenal Supporters' Trust. FÃ bregas The King blogged on this yesterday so I won't go over the ground he covered, except to make a few brief comments of my own.

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The mouth watering Champions League clash between FC Barcelona and Chelsea is upon us and if you are still sleeping wake up. For FC Barcelona this is a much win match and they should also make sure that they don't concede against Chelsea. But with FC Barcelona's defensive fragility and aerial weakness, that is going to be difficult. Click to continue reading...

Brucio is back from sabbatical!
Certainly du Nord would be on the Mount Rushmore of soccer blogs. I'm glad to see he's returned -- heck, he provided this wonderful picture.
The soccer blogosphere is a much better place now.
You think we'll see the return of Lali Alexus? Click to continue reading...

Word around the blogosphere is that uber-WAG Danielle Lloyd has backed off her love for Tottenham dudes and is cunoodling with rival Cesc Fabregas of hated Arsenal.
She's really (99% sure) not. It's all surely a spoof, but I'm not looking into it.
I'm just posting a picture. Surely a Google image search could keep you busy for a while. Click to continue reading...

By SEAN RUBIO

If you have ever been up late (or very early) and wished you had some quality soccer stories to read, your fix is on the way. We will be introducing SBI Late Night, a new feature in which we work to fill the overnight void with some interesting stories that you may have missed during the day.

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Out. Many connotations in that three-letter word; and not many of them are positive.

As far as football goes, out could be out of the Starting Eleven, or out of favor with the manager, or in the case of a few, ahem, boys, a variation of out "outed" might not be good for the marketing angle of one's career.

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It's not often you get to see enterprise work in the blogosphere. But the best out there I think is Adam S. over at TiAS.
He has a great, in-depth profile on Clint Dempsey that I think all American soccer fans should check out in their spare time.
Here's a particular enjoyable passage. Click to continue reading...

As loyal STO readers may recall, a Houston Dynamo fan blog, Nutmegged, challenged STO and just about everyone else in the MLS blogosphere to a friendly game of fantasy football (er, soccer) on the web's premiere MLS fantasy site, MFLS.com. Well, twenty-four weeks are now complete, and I am happy to report STO has been dominating [. Click to continue reading...

Let's just say things out west aren't as good as they've been in years past. There's been plenty of talk today all over the soccer blogosphere about how bad the western conference is in Major League Soccer. Most of you already know my feelings on the western side of the ball compared to the eastern [. Click to continue reading...