Whether FOX's coverage of the 2011 Champions League Final between Manchester United and Barcelona will be deemed a success or not will depend largely on the TV ratings that the broadcast garners. FOX pulled out all of the bells and whistles on this...
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CARSON, Calif. – The next man looking to step into the breach for the United States at center back will on the Home

Depot Center field on Sunday. You probably knew that.

But it may not be the one you're thinking about.

Yes, Omar Gonzalez is having a fantastic season, just named MLS Defender of the Year, and deservedly so.

TORONTO, Ont. TSN has acquired the broadcast rights for Major League Soccer previously held by CBC and Rogers Sportsnet, sources say. The public broadcaster and Sportsnet have been carrying Toronto FC games and league championship matches since the team was formed in 2007, but the national package has now been purchased by CTV/ TSN.

Eurosport enhances its football offer with a 4-year agreement signed with FIFA for the 2011-2014 years

Italian Serie A title favorites AC Milan have unveiled their adidas 2011/12 home kit. It is now available at the World Soccer Shop AC Milan Store. The new Rossineri shirt was officially launched today in Milan via a web broadcast that also allowed invited attendees to ask questions regarding the new kit.

Here's an awesome video find: highlights of an (original) MISL broadcast from January 1985 as the Cleveland Force take on the Pittsburgh Spirit. Not everyone knows that the dean of American soccer broadcasters, my man JP Dellacamera, got his start with the Spirit. Check out the first half of play and the halftime with highlights and features and enjoy a trip back to the mid-1980s.

The Trinidad Guardian is reporting that suspended CONCACAF president Jack Warner will release email correspondence involving recently reelected FIFA president Sepp Blatter that he claims will exonerate him and "send shockwaves through the football world." The presentation will be part of a rally that he will be conducting at his parliamentary office in Trinidad & Tobago this afternoon and broadcast all over the country.

With the first matches of the Women's World Cup occurring today, the U.S. team took the chance to switch from players to spectators, watching a bit of France-Nigeria in their rooms and then piling into the team lounge to watch Germany-Canada via Slingbox, so they could hear the English commentary and see the ESPN broadcast.

Paul Kennedy of Soccer America reports of the tv viewers and coverage for the USA-Mexico friendly on Wednesday night.
Despite ESPN2's late start to its coverage of the USA-Mexico friendly, its broadcast was watched by 1,084,000 viewers.
The game's broadcast began on ESPNews because a Little League Southeast regional semifinal game from Georgia went over its two-hour time slot by 35 minutes.

Dare I say the game is overtaking these lads?

An overseas video on how Beckham and MLS are viewed by dare we say xenophobic pundits.

Interesting here that the two ex-players involved in this exchange has interesting backgrounds:

Dion Dublin played some of his best ball at Coventry in partnership with none other than MLS star Darren Huckerby he featured for about 15 games at Manchester United but over 140 at Aston Villa as well.

The annual MLS SuperDraft, presented by adidas, will take place Thursday at 11 a.m. CT, with the 1st round broadcast live on ESPN2 and the two remaining rounds broadcast live on MLSsoccer.com.

The event is being held in Baltimore, also the location of the NSCAA convention this week.

Sporting Kansas City currently controls the following draft picks:
10th overall (1st round)
32nd overall (2nd round, from Real Salt Lake)
46th overall (3rd round)

For the full draft order, click here.

It's draft day in Major League Soccer, and once again, ESPN2 will offer coverage of the first round in Baltimore. As in past years, the draft is in the middle of the day, requring working fans to DVR the draft, watch online or follow one of the many blogs that will offer coverage. On Thursday we will offer a business blog of the draft and draft coverage.

In case you missed the Telefutura's broadcast of the US v Chile on Saturday evening, the call by Pablo Ramirez on Teal Bunbuy's penalty kick goal celebration is one that I think is going to stick with the US National team front man for a long time. It's already gone viral with it's own remix to Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow.

Let me qualify what I am about to say by stating that I love football and its potential to thrill, excite, inspire and unite us. However, in recent times football has become harder to love.

You go to see your team play, and you have to sit there listening to the screaming swearing of thousands of depressed men using football as some form of therapeutic escapism.

Saturday's 1-1 tie in Seattle, the first MLS game between the old North American Soccer League rivals, drew a 3.0 rating in Seattle/Tacoma and a 2.2 rating in Portland. In the ESPN2 broadcast, no other market registered higher than a .7 rating and the national average was a .2 rating.

Yesterday we talked about the upcoming Fox broadcast of the Manchester United/Barcelona Champions League final. Last year, Fox felt so strongly about the ratings potential for the game that the network elected to show the match in lieu of its typical Saturday afternoon baseball. The Yankees/Mets game was bumped back a couple of hours and the Final was shown in its entirety.

After a very fun 6-2 clobbering of one of the worst teams in Major League Soccer, the 1st place Philadelphia Union (6-3-2) are travelling out west to take on the defending MLS Champions, the Colorado Rapids (4-3-6). Kickoff is scheduled for 9:06:30 ET.

If you have not already, be sure to check out the following previews from The Brotherly Game staff: [Ben's Match Preview] [Scott's Preview for SB Nation Philly] [Saturday Afternoon Union Freekicks] [Scott Has A Conversation With The Enemy].

BROADCAST INFORMATION SportsTalk 790 (ENG Radio) La Ranchera 850 (SPN Radio) Galavision (SPN TV)
REFEREE: Alex Prus - MLS Career: 182 games; FC/gm: 27.5; Y/gm: 3.2; R: 42; pens: 50
HEAD-TO-HEAD: ALL-TIME (7 meetings): Earthquakes 3 wins, 10 goals ... Dynamo 3 wins, 11 goals .

Here are highlights of the first USL Pro Game of the Week broadcast from this past weekend. Rochester beat Harrisburg 1-0 to take over first place in the National Division.

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For the first broadcast out of the box, it was fine. We still have some things to work on, as you might expect.

Here are highlights from our second USL Pro Game of the Week broadcast on Fox Soccer over the weekend. We had a great atmosphere and pretty exciting game in Orlando between City and the Wilmington Hammerheads.

This week we travel to Wilmington, North Carolina as the Hammerheads take on the Charleston Battery.

Having allowed the Portland Timbers to walk into Qwest Field (now CenturyLink Field) and come away with a 1-1 draw on May 14, Sunday's 3 p.m. (CT) rivalry rematch at Jeld-Wen Field is even more significant for the Seattle. Timbers Insiders calls it Love Fest '11

The All-Star First XI, as determined by the fans, will be announced during the ESPN broadcast of of the game Sunday.

Those of you tuning in to ESPN today may see O'Brien's Pub in San Diego featured on the broadcast. The Official U.S. Soccer Bar will be part of a series of live feeds ESPN is setting up, showing U.S. fans around the world following the U.S. WNT. In addition to O'Brien's, you may also see feeds from Japan, Afghanistan and Times Square.

When the league announced before the season that Opta was being contracted to gather in-depth stats in league play, stat nerds like myself went giddy at the opportunity for more in-depth analysis of the events that make up a soccer match. But for the first half of the season, the only output we could see was the occasional tweet from Opta which amounted more to trivia than to statistics.

Will Shalrie play the boss man tonight?

Kickoff promptly....that is about 55 minutes after the broadcast start time of 5pm PT. 5:55 PT for the kickoff.

It's the MLS All-Stars vs. Manchester United and this time Kevin Alston won't be playing rightback.

Red Bull Arena is the site as Manchester United continues their raucous North American tour.

It was an obvious slip of the tongue Saturday, but Steve McManaman referred to his former club Manchester City as ‘Manchester Sh*tty' on ESPN2 during the Fulham against Aston Villa broadcast. McManaman said in the above video that Manchester City...
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Venue: St James' Park, Newcastle Date: Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 Kick-off: 3:00pm Referee: Neil Swarbrick Roberto Martinez brings his Wigan squad up to Tyneside this Saturday, as Newcastle United will look to continue their undefeated record in all competitions so far this season. There is no live UK broadcast of the match, but due to [.

From Brian Lewis' piece in the New York Post over the weekend on MLS ratings:

"The top-viewed league game on ESPN _ not including World Football matches _ was the Red Bulls' June 26 tilt against Chicago, which drew 622,000 viewers, to edge out the Galaxy's March 15 game vs.

First off, I didn't see Koman Coulibaly anywhere. So, good for... everyone supporting red white and blue. The game was played in the midst of a bizarre fog bank that bathed the broadcast in an eerie white sheen, and the visible breath condensation in the knife blade-cold air sort of gave off the kind of bitter, November non-WC qualifying game this would turn out to be.

NBC Sports announced today that it has hired Arlo White as the play-by-play voice of its MLS coverage starting in 2012. White had served as the voice of the Seattle Sounders the past two seasons.

His first broadcast with NBC Sports will be March 11 on opening weekend.

"It is a tremendous honor for me to join the NBC Sports Group, an organization that I have revered from afar for many years," said White in a news release.

NEW YORK, NY — Satellite radio provider Sirius XM Radio Inc. announced Monday an exclusive, multi-year U.S. broadcasting deal with Manchester United Football Club, the U.K. soccer team that has won 18 English Premier League titles. Under the agreement, New York-based SiriusXM becomes the first U.S.

Satellite radio giant Sirius XM has agreed an exclusive, multi-year deal with Manchester United to broadcast live coverage of the club's matches in the US.

Watch this hilarious Soccer am Dance Off broadcast on Saturday on Sky Sports. Be warned do not try busting these move's on the Dance Floor.

VANCOUVER, BC The Vancouver Whitecaps surprised many by selecting 17-year-old forward Omar Salgado of El Paso, Texas, with the first overall pick in the 2011 MLS SuperDraft on Thursday morning. Salgado is a 6-foot-3 member of the U.S. under-20 national team with great touch, but he's considered more of a project than the other [.

Andy Gray has been let go by Sky Sports following comments made about females during a recent broadcast.

Gray, who some might know from lending his voice to FIFA video games, was suspended on Monday and then let go today.

Sky said that new information was discovered today which led to the firing.

LONDON, England One of British soccer's leading television commentators was fired Tuesday, a day after being taken off the air and temporarily suspended for making sexist remarks about a female match official. Andy Gray, the face of Sky Sports' soccer coverage for the past two decades, was dismissed by the broadcaster after "new evidence [.

Arsenal take on Huddersfield Town at the Emirates Stadium in a FA Cup 4th Round tie in a few minutes time, and here are the places where you can catch all the action live, on your computer.
Sopcast:
sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/6001
sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/73169
sop://broker.

NEW YORK. NY — ESPN has acquired U.S. broadcast rights to soccer's European Championship in 2012 and 2016 and will televise every game of both tournaments. The Union of European Football Associations planned to make the announcement Tuesday. ESPN purchased U.S. broadcast and Internet rights in all languages.

Arseal take on Everton today, in a crucial Premier League clash, without some of their key players, which include Samir Nasri, Sebastien Squillaci, and Thomas Vermaelen. Its certainly going to be tough to get past the Toffees, will the Gunners do it?
Catch all the action, right here on your computer:
Sopcast:
sop://broker.

Kickoff from Stamford Bridge at 16:00 GMT and 11:00 EST.

Ways to Watch:

Match live on Sky Sports 1 in the UK and Fox Soccer Channel in the US.

MyP2P.eu
Atdhe.net
ChannelSurfing.net

Liverpool:

Team sheet when it's released.

I don't hate football anymore. That's a big step for me; I used to actively loathe the game, and would be vocal about that whenever possible. In my mind, a man could have only been a fan of one football, and I was an adamant supporter of what was clearly the farer game. Now, of course, things are slightly different, as while it would take a strong effort to care any less about football, my feelings have shifted more towards a content indifference.