I suppose this post is unavoidable. When 70,000 people show up and a significant number can see the game on a widely available national TV outlet, a drubbing like the MLS All-Stars took last night at the hands of Manchester United is bound to be a talking point. It certainly was during the game.

Wycombe's Jon-Paul Pittman, who was born in the United States, shocked Premier League champions Chelsea with a second half hat-trick in a span of four minutes. Pittman, a former Aston Villa youth player, only joined the League 2 minnows in February last year and his performance against the Blues on Thursday night underlines his ability in front of the goal.

Will Juan Pablo Angel and Thierry Henry be the offensive dynamo everyone expects to see? Red Bull fans will get their first glimpse this afternoon as both are expected to start the game against Manchester City in the Barclays New York Challenge.

Currently, the second place Bulls have accumulated 18 goals through 16 games; hardly a score line to hang their hats on.

Xavi's pure brilliance in the midfield has been rewarded as the Spanish playmaker has been honored with the World Soccer Player of the Year for 2010. Xavi received 25.8% of the votes and edged out Lionel Messi for the award. Messi wasn't far behind however as he received 24.1% percent.

As for Barcelona, they were rated the third best team in the world.

Home again, home again.
Yeah, it's been a bit. I've been raving away on Yahoo, both for Mother Country and for the rest of the world who are content to tell me, a total stranger, that I'm an idiot (there is a particular obsession about whether I've gone to high school or not. Well let me tell you I did, and I LOVED it!

Having now seen every team perform twice at the 2010 World Cup it is difficult to determine just who is going to win the tournament. Argentina have been the most impressive side yet nobody would dare say they have been the most balanced. What is interesting to note, after the first couple of rounds, is the types of systems which are resulting in success.

By JOSE M. ROMERO

The team that Blaise N'kufo will suit up for, perhaps as soon as tonight, might not be the team the Swiss international figured he'd line up with.

Injuries are a part of that, but N'kufo will be a veteran among plenty of youngsters when the Seattle Sounders take the field against D.

By JOSE M. ROMERO

The team that Blaise N'kufo will suit up for, perhaps as soon as tonight, might not be the team the Swiss international figured he'd line up with.

Injuries are a part of that, but N'kufo will be a veteran among plenty of youngsters when the Seattle Sounders take the field against D.

Believe it or not, the Rapids actually won on Saturday night! They took a Rob Green-level own goal from San Jose keeper Jon Busch and made it stand up for the 1-0 win. While the scoreline makes it seem like a pretty even game, the rapids were clearly the better team on the field. Its just, yet again, the Rapids couldn't finish.

DaMarcus Beasley has joined Germany's Hannover 96, his fourth club in four different countries since he left the Chicago Fire for the Netherlands PSV Eindhoven in 2004. After he enjoyed a stellar start in Europe, the tricky dribbler's career went into an injury-plagued decline and we saw only 10 minutes of him 2010 World Cup, where the brilliance he displayed in his early years was sorely missed.

Shh, don't tell Jonathan Wilson, Zonal Marking or the trio of Richard Farley, Kartik Krisnaiyer or Laurence McKenna, but I believe that formations are sometimes overrated.

In most matches, they have a massive impact on how teams play and how they match up against each other. But in certain circumstances you may as well throw the formations out the window.

Javier Hernandez netted his first goal in the English Premier League. Indeed the Mexican isn't a fluke. He already showed his brilliance in the pre-season games. But yesterday was special.

Scoring in a Premier League game is something, or a dream of every striker because goals are hard to come by in this league.

Robert Green made one great blunder and one great save to preserve the draw today. His Dr. Jekyll moment was saving a blast from Jozy Altidore at the near post from close range. His Mr. Hyde moment was allowing Clint Dempsey's long range shot to bounce off his gloves and into the goal.

Although Robert Green wasn't the only reason for the draw, his individual efforts or lack there of were the defining moments.

When Siphiwe Tshabalala gloriously fired home the first goal of the World Cup it looked like we had a tournament on our hands. Unfortunately, France and Uruguay took to the pitch straight afterwards and in a heartbeat the previous match was a distant memory, I can't remember the last time I watched a game that was so bad it hurt to watch it.

Rarely do I agree with the NY Post but this time they got it right

In the USA, the World Cup is always almost the only portal to the sport for the non soccer fan.

There are hundreds of thousands who come alive every four years and take to the forums, some to understand this other world phenomenon.

We lost at Dunkirk but that doesn't stop us celebrating or remembering our fallen heroes, and we lost in South Africa.
Pim Verbeek blew the World Cup in the first game in Germany perhaps caving into all the incessant media about how we must play over the previous years perhaps not. Perhaps he thought Jason Culina on the left for the first time ever was a plan, Richard Garcia should take on the Germans with Tim Cahill up front.

While Holland has played more like a team in this World Cup than Brazil, this game was all about Arjen Robben. Robben cut up Brazil's left side, leaving them no option but to give away fouls. Fouls that lead to yellow cards, substitutions, a red card and goals.
Brazil sacrificed Júlio Baptista, substituted after hacking into Robben for much of the game.

Never meet your heroes, they say. It is possible that a lot of people met theirs yesterday in the form of the 2010 version of the Brazilian national football team. A team that was widely-tipped to win the competition is out at the quarter-final stage for the second time in a row, and it seems unlikely that many people will actually miss them that much.

I have no idea why I got in the car with him.She promised me that she'd use the $20 for food. If you had seen his eyes when he asked me... would you have called him a liar? She seemed so sincere. I really did think she had changed.He said someone must have stolen it when he wasn't looking.

Funniest own goal ever @ Yahoo! Video
Truly, truly amazing. Here's the down-low lowdown from the Emerald Isle, where this piece of brilliance took place (via Yahoo):

An Irish football league player has scored a surefire candidate for the unluckiest own goal of all time.

And so we have our two finalists, Spain and the Netherlands, both have never one the World Cup and have a great generation of players that both deserve to win it. On one side you have Wesley Sneijder's brilliance, and on the other you have Xavi's calculating mastermind. On one side you have Robben's deadly speed, and on the other you have David Villa's precise finishing.

Spain, if you're the "Best Team In The World" according to Joachim Loew, why do you have to be so bloody boring?

Watching Spain's 1-0 victory against Germany Wednesday, I was bored several times during the match. No, not because of the lack of goals. But because of Spain's methodically slow tempo.

Manchester United have announced their roster for their upcoming tour of the United States and Only Time will Tell will be there for their stop in Philly to play the Union. Despite their being no Rooney and Carrick, there are still some players out there, that I'm interesting in seeing

• Chris Smalling: The young defender was brought in from Fulham.

It was 1986. Mum and Dad bought a video recorder, which enabled us to watch Mexican time football after school in England. One of my first memories was waking up and finding a note on my pillow: "England won. Gary Lineker scored a hat-trick" and if that doesn't set you up for the day when you're ten years old, nothing will.

Leather-flavoured chewing gum One of the best flashes of individual skill and brilliance of the entire World Cup came not during any of the matches, but the warm-up for the third-place play-off. Germany's Mesut Ozil shows his class - as a footballer, if perhaps not a human being - by spitting out his chewing gum, kicking it [.

Locust from 15th to 16th St. on Sunday June 11th.

Four years ago, all you could do was bemoan the lack of outdoor viewing opportunities as you continuously saw clips of thousands of fans huddled together in outdoor fan parks in Germany, let alone in Times Square and Boston's Government Center.

Just a few short months ago, Barcelona could do no wrong. Relentless in La Liga, the press were fawning over Messi's brilliance, the hatfuls of goals they scored every weekend, and how entertainment was winning out over pragmatism. That they were heated rivals with Real Madrid, whose stock had fallen with the resurrection of the Galacticos, only enhanced their reputation in the eyes of the neutral.

A Football Report turns one year old today! To celebrate we're going out for a night on the town... But we're also going to highlight some of our favourite posts from the past year that are in our archives. One post a day until Chelsea takes on Manchester United in the Community Shield on August 8th.

Motagua 2 Toronto 2 (Toronto advances 3-2 on aggregate)
Metapán 1 Seattle 1 (Seattle advances 2-1 on aggregate)
With a bar set low enough that even a stumbling step might clear it, it wouldn't have taken much for MLS to have its best collective night ever in the CONCACAF Champions League.

The Earthquakes have brought Geovani to the MLS to play for San Jose as their "Designated Player".

It seems a fit. Geovani brings the attacking creativity and quality of finish often lacking from the Quakes workmanlike play the Quakes desperately need a playmaker in the middle.

It takes more than a single player to make a team worthy at a given level and Geovani was unable to keep Hull in the Premier League.

American soccer will lose one if its most venerated heroes at the end of the MLS season when 38-year-old Brian McBride finally call it quits after a 16-year career.

McBride is most known in the United States as a star for the national team. A decade of solid performances punctuated by moments of absolute brilliance.

Photo by Michael Janosz/ ISIphotos.com
So who got the better of the New York Red Bulls' trade of Macoumba Kandji to Colorado for Mehdi Ballouchy?

Plenty of observers will point to Kandji as the better prospect and chalk up the advantage to the Rapids, but the truth is the deal makes much more sense, and has the potential to do far more, for the Red Bulls than Colorado.

Watching repeats of old football matches can be an unsettling experience at times. Watch any match over around thirty years old and everything looks and feels different. The levels of technical expertise and fitness may be lower than they used to be, and the look and feel of the spectacle of the match is strangely other-worldly.

Khalid Askri is a Moroccan football goalkeeper who plays for FAR Rabat.This is why he gave up goalkeeping.
First he made a brilliant diving stop to a firmly taken penalty.The he walked off the field patting himself on the chest -egging the crowd to applaud his brilliance.

Instead of doing the usual wrap up where I tediously go mention every score of every game in the Champions and Europa League, of which there are 40 in total every midweek. I've decided that when there's midweek action in European tournaments, I'll be mentioning the most influential players which played in the tournaments.

SEATTLE - The Los Angeles Galaxy took command of their Western Conference Quarterfinal Series with the Seattle Sounders with a 1-0 victory in front of 35,521 at Qwest Field.

A moment of brilliance by Edson Buddle was the difference in what was, a physical and fast paced match. The deciding goal came when Omar Gonzalez played a ball into Buddle, who silenced the Qwest crowd with a turn and shoot goal from around 25 yards out.

I will keep this short and sweet for today's group matches. Benfica v. Lyon will be the most attractive match with wide open, attacking football. You will regret having missed it. Schalke will play Hapoel Tel Aviv. Despite having just read that last sentence, any consciousness you may have had of that game will immediately dissipate.

The quotation being heard round the world today:

"I feel that Mr Hodgson he doesn't understand. Every single press conference is worse than the last one. He's talking about things he doesn't know. Some people cannot see a priest on a mountain of sugar.

Reina
Kelly Carragher Skrtel Konchesky
Meireles Gerrard Lucas Maxi
Torres Kuyt
Goals:
Torres 11' 44'
All Torres all the time in the first half – yes, British media, he's back. All hands on deck, and everybody behind the ball, in the second, but Liverpool held on thanks to some terrific team defending and Reina and Carragher's refusal to concede.

Juan Agudelo had a dream debut for the United States national team as the 17-year-old scored the only goal of the game as the United States beat South Africa 1-0 at a sold-out Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. The win closed out the year for the U.S. but also gave hope for the future of the national team as five players earned their first cap.