Several patients from The Children's Hospital, Sheffield assisted in the unveiling of Sheffield Wednesday's 2009/10 Puma home and away kits at Middlewood Road earlier this week. Owls stars Tommy Spurr and Mark Beevers expertly modelled the new home and away strips, which have The Children's Hospital Charity's logo on the front of the shirts.

The Chicago Fire defeated the University of Illinois-Chicago, 3-0, on Tuesday during a charity match at Flames Field. The match raised $5,300 for the Chicago Fire Foundation.
Former UIC standout Baggio Husidic (left) played on the opposite side this year with his new role with the Fire. The Libertyville native said afterward to MLSnet.

Prem's Ivory Coast stars show off their moves with R&B star Didier Drogba and charity might not be words that you automatically associate with one another, but the Chelsea striker threw a star-studded fund-raising bash at the Dorchester in London last weekend to pay for a children's hospital in his home city of Abidjan.

Sunderland striker, and beach ball enthusiast, has been signing the praises of that crafty sphere shaped object that felt duty bound to get involved in yesterday's proceedings.

Join his Twitter as he looks to crack 10k followers, it's all for charity so no excuse to not add him! CLICK HERE to do so.

D.C. United's resident rookie and all around hot-arse Chris Pontius tees off (and teases us) at the D.C. Celebrity Golf Tournament, which raises money for the United Reads charity. July 9, 2009.

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Remember the Claudio Lopez commercial for Time Warner Cable last year? Remember the young man in that video with the dreadlocks? As of now, those dreadlocks are gone.
This week, Pembroke Hill raffled off the opportunity to cut off each of eleven year old A.J. Cambric's 122 dreadlocks for charity.

There won't be any Gooners travelling to Amsterdam this summer (at least not for footballing reasons anyhow!), after Ajax announced that Arsenal aren't participating in this year's LG Amsterdam Tournament 2009. Instead, Arsene Wenger's side are replaced by fellow Premier League club Sunderland.

First there was Darren Bent speaking his mind on Twitter, now Ryan Babel announces theft in a Tweet.

By the way, If you use Twitter why not Follow Darren Bent as he attempts to get to 10,000 followers in the name of charity.

Also you can follow us at CaughtOffside on Twitter by CLICKING HERE!

It's not that often a bunch of basketball superstars take the same field as some of the world's greatest footballers, but today - Wednesday, June 24th - the Steve Nash celebrity soccer game is happening.

If you're anywhere near the New York area, head down to Roosevelt Park at 6:00pm in Chinatown (Manhattan) and witness this excellent spectacle.

Nancy Dell'Olio, the famous Italian-American girlfriend of Football Manager Tycoon Sven-Göran Eriksson over see's charity project. She posed for a few shots with photographers when she was at the Colchester Barracks, Essex, UK overseeing the charity project she helped put together. The charity helped gather soccer balls that will be shipped to Afghanistan for the [.

Arsenal will continue their pre-season excursions to Austria with the news that the Gunners' will play a Viennese amateur team next month. SC Columbia have announced a friendly against Arsene Wenger's side which has been scheduled for the 21st July. The game at the Wiener Stadtliga is already being dubbed the biggest in the Floridsdorf-based [.

Morning/afternoon/evening/night to whoever you are from wherever you are reading. If I were you I would head for that red cross in the corner of your browser because quite frankly, there is bugger all going on at the moment.

I think it goes to show just how quiet things are when all four of Newsnow's top stories are "Wenger talks about Balotelli".

I don't even think this was for charity, just for ESPN Mag.

With J Hutcherson -- After last week's fun and games with a coach quitting and what I'll politely refer to as The Columbus Incident, maybe Major League Soccer lays off with the discipline. Let the Committee take a break, maybe watch some hockey or something. Instead, it's Kansas City Wizards coach Curt Onalfo's turn to pay the fee for questioning the officiating.

Former Real Madrid player Steve McManaman called it the "Disneyfication of Real Madrid"; others scoffed at the idea as a bad science experiment gone wrong. If there was ever a time where football was a peak of absurdity, this was most definitely the time.

Los Galacticos. The mere mention of the two words together conjure up memories of watching some of the world's great names in the sport Beckham, Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo and Owen stepping onto the same pitch wearing the same kit and playing together in a match that wasn't a friendly for charity.

Zinedine Zidane has been in Canada for the past few weeks now traveling from Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. His charity matches helped raise money for UNICEF and other causes.

Zinedine Zidane at Montreal Charity Match

His match in Montreal drew the largest crowd of over 15,000 people with Toronto trailing at 10,000 and ended with Vancouver in a shameful 4,000.

Houston Dynamo forward Brian Ching was fined $500 by MLS today for the following tweet he made during the Houston/Seattle match last weekend.

"Ref in seattle just cheated the dynamo. What a joke. Not even close. Ref is a cheat"

Myself and many others believe this fine is ridiculous and completely unnecessary.

Since man first emerged from the forests he has been obsessed with one question : How fast can a person visit 92 English Football Grounds?
FreeKicks 92 Football Grounds in 92 Hours
A mate of mine is gearing up to cover 2000 odd miles over 3 days and go to every single league football ground in the country.

Welcome to the first in a new weekly series in which longpier takes a local look at the week gone by. I've come up with a working title of Newsblitz Southend. It may just work.
Award for most extraordinary story of the week must go to Mark Norton and the Echo. The 'Gun siege fugitive' (as the Echo described him) somehow managed to escape the clutches of police following a three hour siege at his mother's house in Elm Road, Shoebury on Good Friday.

The top two teams in CONCACAF World Cup qualifying square off tonight at Estadio Saprissa as the U.S. national team visits Costa Rica.

You know all the background by now. The Americans have never won at Saprissa. Costa Rica is very strong at Saprissa and a win for either team tonight would go a long way toward helping that team qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

So if you were outraged by the fine handed down by the league yesterday to Houston Dynamo forward Brian Ching for his tweet last weekend, you can now do something about it. Ginge Talks the Footy has started an initiative to match Brian Ching's $500 fine for criticizing MLS officiating on Twitter.

Even if you weren't offended by the fine, I encourage you to have a look at the initiative and, if you can afford it, donate a few bucks or more to the cause.

UPDATE: Donation has been made to Dynamo Charities!
Well I wasn't able to get to $500 but we did get $200! Not too bad.
Fundable.com has taken their 10% usage fee (part of the deal) but because I'm such a nice guy, I'm kicking in the difference to get the final donation back to $200.

D.C. United's resident rookie and all around hot-arse Chris Pontius tees off (and teases us) at the D.C. Celebrity Golf Tournament, which raises money for the United Reads charity. July 9, 2009.

We've added more information including an auction you can participate in today.

As you know, as a reader of MLSR, we support good causes and that is why we post the following story about the Nicole Cup. In the interest of full disclosure, we should note that one of our contributors' cousins was awarded a scholarship by the Nicole Megaloudis foundation.

This is few days old, mind you.

Adrian Mutu, after having two appeals against his FIFA fine for breach of contract dismissed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), is now seeking another alternative to paying the 17-plus million euro fine to his former club, Chelsea.

Now he wants to make a substantial donation to several charities, including one of Chelsea's choice.

"Charity is not the right word when you pit two important teams against each other." Houston Dynamo defender Craig Waibel on his team's match with Mexican club CF Monterrey on Sunday night, Oct. 11. Billed as the 'Dynamo Charities Cup,' the match featured four red cards after a fight in the 69th minute.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update: Here's the official video! Enjoy. And shame on you if you ran away from a floppy eared bunny with a bucket.

Original post below.

Sometimes it's best not to find out the answers to the hard questions.

Arsenal players Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Andrey Arshavin, and Bacary Sagna have given up their Gunners kits for a day to team up with Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. The four players got dressed up in furry animal suits as they filmed a promotional video for Arsenal's Charity of the Season.

A charity match between Leeds Badgers and Bristol Academy to raise funds for a Meningitis trust went on for 36 hours.The score at the end was 285-255.Since they had been playing for so long most of the players couldn't remember which team had actually scored more goalsThey had to check on the video evidence and logbook keepers to be really sure.

Everton have kicked off the now traditional April sport of complaining about their FA Cup final ticket allocation. 25,000 tickets isn't that bad for Everton because we don't have the huge corporate presence of other clubs.
Still it's going to be tricky to get a ticket...there were 32,000 blues at the semi and now everyone is going to want to go to Wembley.

So we're 409 days away from the opening game of the 2010 World Cup, about 440 days until the Final game that will crown a world champion and the game I want to be at.
How am I doing on the Road to the 2010 Final?
Good and bad.
The good?
- I've learned a great deal about Africa, the World Cup and football in general.

Arsenal will be playing German side Hannover 96 just days before the Emirates Cup as Arsene Wenger's squad plan their pre-season preparations for the 2009/10 campaign. The AWD Arena is home to Dieter Hecking's experienced team and strong line-up's are very likely. An Austrian tour is also planned this July.

Gooners of the world....to you all i say.......HELLO!

I go by the name of HarregasTheGooner and would like to say a big hello to you all.

I am a new addition to the arsenal-highlights team and would like to introduce myself.

I am a life long arsenal fan and am very excited over the prospect of putting my views across and waiting to hear what the best fans in the land have to say about my posts.

1. Cristiano Ronaldo will not face any charges after writing off his Ferrari in a crash, police said today. [@ The Independent] 2. Win an all-expenses trip for two to the 'Showdown in Chinatown', a charity match between some...

Zidane held a midweek charity match in Toronto and it seems the locals were a tad overexcited to see legend walking among them. After the match, a few fans who simply could not contain their psychotic joy jumped out of the stands and attempted to charged Zidane as he left the pitch. Luckily the security team did a masterful job of taking down those crazed crazies, thus protecting the French phenomenon from whatever dry-humping mayhem they intended to inflict.

It's sad when you type in 'AC Milan' into photo slug boxes and Kaka's Real Madrid Welcome Party is the first result to come up. Can't Uncle Fester Galliani and gang organize a golf tournament or charity match to keep the fans occupied? Have Milan even been doing anything at all?

Zidane was set to play a charity tribute game in Vancouver Saturday, though it seems he will have to sit this one out. He suffered a back injury after picking up his kid as they watched the fireworks display on Canada Day in Vancouver.

Fans from all over the Vancouver area have tickets to see the French living soccer legend, though without Zidane the game must go on.

Iker Casillas is in Mali, Africa doing a bit of charity work with the children there and apparently a dance party broke out right in the middle of it. Iker shows off his "diabetic jitters" style dance moves before taking on a few penalty kicks and playing some football with the kids.

All in all, for Iker to be doing this with the very limited free time he has after the Confederations Cup and before Real Madrid's training begins is pretty impressive.

Last year around 200 turned up ... this Sunday, there will have to be almost ten times that amount to break a world record.
We're talking about women ...in bikinis... on a Southend beach.
The aim? To raise money for a great charity - The Bosom Pals Appeal at Southend Hospital.