Down in Orlando tonight, the KC Athletics meet Orlando City SC at 6:30pm in their 2nd round US Open Cup match. The winner will make a trip to Livestrong Sporting Park to take on Sporting KC in the 3rd round on the 29th. The Athletics are the heavy underdog against the defending USL Pro champions, who are 3-0 in the year's young season.

Yes, our top Premier League players are skilled athletes but even they are susceptible to the odd mistake. Especially in those high-pressure training sessions. You know, the ones that take place in a cauldron of atmosphere with the defenders hounding you for possession. And you're desperately trying to get your shot away before somebody closes [.

Knowing that just one Milan goal would effectively end the tie, and despite struggling to contain my pre-match excitement, I entered the game with a little apprehension. However, little did I know, I was about to witness one of the greatest halves of football in my life don't forget, I'm still only 20 years-old.

Today, Sporting KC announced the partnership that the vast majority of the fan base has wanted since Livestrong Sporting Park opened last year. That partnership, that would see Boulevard beer being served inside the stadium. The announcement brings the most popular local beer into LSP for fans to be able to buy and enjoy during games.

I don't particularly like the Houston Dynamo. Outside of them beating Sporting KC in last year's Eastern Conference finals, I even don't really like them. Their fans as well aren't my favorite MLS fans in the league. A couple of KC fans who went down there for the Western Conference finals a few years ago were told to stay away from their supporters because they didn't really get along with opposing supporters.

That's of the fire kind, not dodgy trousers Wigan's DW Stadium is not exactly renowned as a Turkish-style cauldron of atmosphere, and that's not likely to change any time soon after 17 fans were banned for setting of a flare at their away match at Bolton. A 16-year-old was charged with possession of a flare [.

Writer Mike Manson remembers his initial English football experience in the cauldron of a 1986 Manchester derby.

That's the campaign for Sporting KC this season, "Live for It". The team debuted their commercial last night during the Grammy Awards. The team will be advertising with the commercial (another that will debut during the season opener), along with online, outdoor, print, and radio. The team will be doing billboards around the city, the billboards will include two of Sporting KC's newest national team players, CJ Sapong and Graham Zusi.

The full gallery from the draft Sporting KC's first round pick. @DDwyer14

I think right now as a Chelsea fan we want two things from today. First and foremost we want and desperately need three points and secondly, a performance would be nice!.
No one would have imagined that we would find ourselves in the position we are in at the moment and no one would have predicted the result on Saturday against Aston Villa.

Time for another year of wishes for 2012. Here's a look of what I am wanting and wishing to see in 2012.
1. Silverware - Is anything else really that important? I want silverware, as Robb Heineman put it tonight on Twitter, #paintthewall. I want to add more stuff to the wall that shows our accomplishments.

The SPL works off the turkey and mince pies with a full Wednesday evening fixture. The eyes of the world upon us once more. Or at least the eyes of those Sky viewers not tempted by the tungsten superheroes at the Ally Pally.
Celtic v Rangers
Apparently recent form has left some Celtic supporters confident about this one.

Time for a bit of the armchair psychoanalysis. Take a depressed crowd and lay them on Dr. Freud's couch. These mobs are suffering from a condition known to shrinks as SimonandGarfunkelitis – symptom – the sound of silence.

December 2011 presented us with an excellent case study in this horrible affliction that curses certain teams.

Who knows more about success than University of North Carolina women's coach Anson Dorrance. A resume that includes 20 NCAA championships in 28 years, a winning percentage of over 93 percent of the team's games and 20 National Players of the Year tend to speak for itself.
Success in sport is often emulated in the business world, and Karl Moore of Forbes Magazine wrote a great article outlining lessons that can be learned from the blueprint of Dorrance.

Chelsea, Newcastle fight for Champions League as Man Utd face must-win situation - originally posted on Soccerlens.com

Man United is in danger of slipping to third as Spurs step up their game as Newcastle and Chelsea face-off for the UEFA Champions League spot. The Gunners are expected to cruise to victory in their visit to 19th place Wigan.

Today MLS announced the dates for all teams' home openers for the 2012 season. Sporting Kansas City will have their first home game on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. That's certainly going to make for a fun day for the Cauldron enjoying St. Patrick's Day and a game at the same time. KC will open home season the same weekend as 3 other teams, Montreal, Salt Lake, and Philadelphia, which means that any of the other 15 other teams could be KC's first opponent.

photo courtesy of Jarred Donalson
It's amazing what a new stadium, with a capacity over 10,385 can do for a team's average attendance. Combine that with a team that is doing well on the field and an atmosphere that has vaulted the Cauldron up into the upper echelon of supporters' groups and you'll see a massive increase in attendance.

Earlier this week, FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, caused a stir in the football world, by intimating that racial abuse on the pitch could be fixed in the same way as a foul or a shove; with a simple handshake. Blatter's comments suggested a naivety – or even an outright ignorance to the effects of racism – that prompted calls for his resignation.

Home-and-away series in MLS playoffs tend to play out like the company Christmas party: things may start out a little slow, stodgy and cautious. But pretty soon furniture is being tipped over, fights are breaking out, things are gettin' wacky and, by the latter stages, you just don't know what kind of craziness may claim the night.

Last night the Kansas City Cauldron hosted a playoff rally at Power and Light District. A bunch of fans and most (maybe all) of the Sporting Kansas City players came out. One of the songs that was sung was a new one called because we got Kei. He is a fan favorite in Kansas City. He loves the fans and the fans love him him.

Last night the Kansas City Cauldron hosted a playoff rally at Power and Light District. A bunch of fans and most (maybe all) of the Sporting Kansas City players came out. One of the songs that was sung was a new one called because we got Kei. He is a fan favorite in Kansas City. He loves the fans and the fans love him him.

Sir Alex is determined United will keep calm in the Anfield cauldron on Saturday and finish the game with 11 men on the pitch. Sendings off have seriously hindered the Reds' hopes in recent years.
"In my time, we've had about nine players sent off in games there which is unusual for Manchester United," declared the boss.

For the record, the scene at CenturyLink Field on Wednesday was everything you'd want, a cauldron of mean green, awash in Open Cup frenzy. And also for the record, Seattle is a deserving Open Cup champ, a club that takes the competition seriously and now has solid historical evidence to prove it. (The Sounders won their third consecutive Open Cup crown, the first side in 40 years to do so.

You don't need an Italian football expert to tell you Gian Piero Gasperini was off to a bad start at Inter. Even though he has lead the Nerazzurri in fewer than a half-dozen competitive matches, his team looked nothing short of horrendous in that time. It can be argued he did, in fact, deserve the pink slip handed to him this morning.

This midweek looked to be a tough week for premier league representatives in the Europa League as no teams managed to pick up three points, although the likes of Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspurs can consider the draws they got were pretty positives considering they were playing away.

Meanwhile, the same thing can't really be said for Fulham, as they picked up their one point in front of the club's die hard fans at Craven Cottage.

This midweek looked to be a tough week for premier league representatives in the Europa League as no teams managed to pick up three points, although the likes of Stoke City and Tottenham Hotspurs can consider the draws they got were pretty positives considering they were playing away.

Meanwhile, the same thing can't really be said for Fulham, as they picked up their one point in front of the club's die hard fans at Craven Cottage.

Arsenal's new Number One is making quite a name for himself in the opening weeks of the season.

He made a string of fine saves in the cauldron of Udine, including a Seaman-esque penalty stop, to effectively win Arsenal £25m and guarantee their participation in this year's Champions League.

The full gallery can be found here Not sure I am qualified to say who sings better, but I enjoy the Cauldron's singing a whole lot!

Yesterday I talked about the potential issue of Sporting KC selling tickets in the Members Stand to Chivas Guadalajara fans in the hundreds. Today some good news and a common sense move by the Sporting KC front office. Word from one of the leadership in the Cauldron is that the team has canceled all tickets bought in the members stand by Chivas fans and they've been reissued to the "away section".

Today an interesting comment was posted on the KC Cauldron's Twitter account. According to the Cauldron, Sporting KC has sold "hundreds of tickets in the members stand to Guadalajara fans". If true (and usually if things like this aren't true the team immediately takes to Big Soccer to respond) this is just asking for problems.

Liverpool winger Stewart Downing is optimistic of a successful 2011/12 season and is hopeful that they can garner back-to-back victories this weekend by defeating Bolton Wanderers at Anfield.
Downing joined the Reds from Aston Villa this summer and has started in each of their two league matches against Sunderland and Arsenal.

Is this man on his way to becoming a legend?

This was a reaffirming and exhilarating win over Udinese. The pall, the gloom, the self doubt that had dogged the club since the Paleolithic era was lifted and now Arsenal go into the group stage with a sense of momentum. Did we hear a great huge sigh of collective relief?

Mathias Kniepeiss/Getty Images(Bleacher Report)What comes to mind you think of the term home-field advantage? To some clubs it is just a saying and a hopeful truth, while to others it is a true existence as their stadium and their fans have a profound effect on the opposition.
To say that football is a game that brings out the full passion of its fans in an understatement in many different categories.

Last night was a pretty cool experience, above and beyond the result. Thanks to Dave (and Arlo, in a roundabout way) it was my first foray into GA. That is certainly a unique experience that I'd recommend to anyone (except maybe those bringing young children). On the one hand, it's a lot of work jumping around and singing for 90 minutes (or 120 minutes, if your team decides to let some Panamanian minnows into the game for some reason) and you lose some perspective on the match - both visually and emotionally - but you're putting yourself in the middle of the cauldron of fan energy that defines the fan experience in Seattle (and elsewhere in Cascadia).

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I'm certain some people find this outrageous or just off-putting and that's ok. This is simply my way of saying this blog is probably not for you, and it might be best to unsubscribe.

Good to see a large number of Malaysian fans come down for the WCQ against Singapore. Some estimates suggest about 1,000.
As far as I can make out there were numbers of Negeri Sembilan and Selangor fans in that number and I also recall seeing a Johore state flag in the away enclosure.
Plenty written about incidents both during and after the game and as these pictures show one security official was pushed to the ground after he waded into the Malaysian fans during the second half.

BBC Sport Aston Villa sign Shay Given from Manchester City on five-year deal.

In probably the most cost effective transfer in the close season to date, Aston Villa today signed Republic of Ireland international goalkeeper Shay Given to a 5 year deal.

Given is widely regarded as one of the top goalies in the Premier League despite having spent most of last season on the bench as backup to Manchester City's England goalkeeper Joe Hart.

More photos A few fireworks in front of the Cauldron... The Members stand (The Cauldron) Robb Heineman welcoming us home... Some more fireworks. I like this shot... While some did not see it, the Stealth did fly over. Rumor is that he had to vear off center because of an unauthorized helicopter in the area.

On the outside looking in. Through the fence peering into LIVESTRONG Sporting Park.A magically night for American soccer in Kansas City as LIVESTRONG Sporting Park made its debut in Major League Soccer. The on-field product couldn't match the beauty of the stadium itself as Sporting KC and Chicago Fire settled for a 0-0 draw.

Once again it was another special night for Major League Soccer and those who have supported the Wiz, Wizards and now Sporting Kansas City as Livestrong Sporting Park opened up to rave reviews. A mid-west stadium with a European feel has created another crown jewel of stadiums within MLS.