After a hectic weekend in European competition which didn't go particularly well for some of the Premiership teams, we're back to the bread and butter (or should that be the champagne and caviar) stuff. No doubt about this weekend's biggest game: Liverpool v Manchester United on Sunday.

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Cristina Cubero, a writer with the Catalan newspaper Mundo Deportivo appeared on the TyC Sports show, Gol de Medianoche, and talked about the views that fans and football writers in Argentina have about Messi.

In every poll that has appeared in the Argentine media recently the majority of the people voted that Messi should no longer be in the starting lineup.

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Colin Smith's (author of keepie-uppie.blogspot.com) email about the opportunity Toronto FC gave him as an aspiring sports journalist speaks mostly for itself, so I've included it in full below. I would only add that, while I'm proud of what I've done here on AMSL, I was struck reading Mark Bowden's piece in the most recent Atlantic in which he describes newspaper columnists who sit at their desk writing columns about whatever news lands on it instead of going out and finding the story, "thumbsuckers. Click to continue reading...

Why England Lose & and Other Curious Phenomena Explained
Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski
ISBN: 0007301111
HarperSport;
Hardback, 352pp
After Football Against the Enemy announced his arrival with a bang in 1994, every Simon Kuper book carries a huge weight of expectation. Click to continue reading...

Liverpool fans, superstitious? Yes, judging by the hundreds of comments left on the Guardian's Liverpool FC pre-season profile, in which the newspaper's football writers collectively predicted that Liverpool will win the league this season. A sample of the reaction...

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by CARL ELDRIDGE Newspaper sales will surge this morning as thousands of football fans keenly anticipating the big kick-off pick up a tabloid or two to get their club fix.

And they haven't disappointed. The Press is packed with analysis, observations, likely line-ups, in fact pretty much everything you'd want to know as the Arsenal head for Goodison to take on Everton in our Premier League opener. Click to continue reading...

But this time Puerto Rico beat an MLS team in CONCACAF play, once again reigniting a debate which MLS apologists do not want to have.
I have to say I am somewhat offended that many of my colleagues and friends in the soccer blogger community have seemingly chosen to ignore the success of USL sides in CONCACAF competition while continuing to discuss MLS' failures in a vacuum. Click to continue reading...

Liverpool fans, superstitious? Yes, judging by the hundreds of comments left on the Guardian's Liverpool FC pre-season profile, in which the newspaper's football writers collectively predicted that Liverpool will win the league this season. A sample of the reaction...

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Wayne Snowden, Australia's funniest football cartoonist has just submitted his first cartoon. Don't take my word for it ask anyone to come up with anyone better!
Do not miss it. Out Wednesday sign up on this blog. It's free.
Thirty pages of pure Australian/NZ football. Is this Australia's best group of football writers ever assembled. Click to continue reading...

Eamon Flanagan (The Nearpost blog) and Con Stamocostas (A Football Story blog) are pulling together a monthly fanzine called "Half Time Heros".
Some of Australia's most committed Football writers have joined, including Tony Tannous (The Round Ball Analyst & The Roar), Mike Salter (The Football Tragic), Fiona Crawford (A Girl Called Fred) and Bill Skinner (A Spawning Salmon/A Pissant Town) plus many, many more (including myself looking a look at the Young Socceroos and other youth issues). Click to continue reading...

No one likes us, we do care.
My recent trip to England revealed a few interesting tidbits of info, c/o of some seasoned overseas football writers with whom I had a nice stout-soaked chat. Perhaps the most interesting was the revelation that it is near impossible to watch a full, live, 90 minute MLS match in the UK. Click to continue reading...

We've fired up the media department. What have they been doing all year. Anyway Half-Time Heroes has taken up another office in Sydney and has released it's first official release.
And look who we got to launch it!
Half-Time Heroes: Australian Football Media Release
Tuesday July 28, 2009
Frank Lowy the chairman of Football Federation Australia (FFA) says that the desire that underpinned the revival of football at a local level is the same desire that motivates the World Cup bid. Click to continue reading...

News today that makes you realise there's more to life than just football. Former Arsenal, West Ham and Celtic striker John Hartson will undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with brain cancer, according to reports in today's papers.

The striker, was scored 89 goals for Celtic and was named Scottish Player's Player and Football Writers Player of the year in 2005, was diagnosed at the weekend after undergoing tests.

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As the popularity of Twitter skyrockets, more football supporters are signing up to stay updated on the latest football news. Trouble is how to know which people to follow on Twitter.

To help, I've compiled a list of the top 10 English football bloggers you should follow on Twitter.

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This is not a drill...
Happy now? After more than a year of "will he, won't he?" nonsense, it's happened, for real this time: Ronaldo is off to Madrid, if he still wants to go.
A statement issued by the English champions read as follows:
"Manchester United have received a world-record, unconditional offer of £80million for Cristiano Ronaldo from Real Madrid. Click to continue reading...

And now it's time for all good little football writers to predict the winner of today's final. No dodging the question. No avoiding the responsibilities of punditry. Well, Clyde, I think it's too close to call. I mean, if we don't pick a side, we're being wishy-washy, right? Readers want deliberate statements.

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This won't be new to many of you, but I absolutely love the Guardian's "Seven Deadly Sins of Football" feature, which is essentially a compilation of shocking, outlandish, and dismaying moments, helpfully grouped according to an ancient Catholic doctrine based on Gregory I's revision of the work of a fourth-century monk called Evagrius the Solitary.

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With the 2010 Asian World Cup qualifiers and the AFC Champions League currently ongoing, Soccer City FC recently spoke with one of Asia's top football writers, Antony Sutton. Mainly covering the sport in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, Sutton kindly answered our questions regarding the entire region. Click to continue reading...

A heavyweight clash of the England captains Steven Gerrard v John Terry (Group C) A very tough opener for England's skipper, against a former England skipper who has just won the Football Writers' Player of the Year award. Sorry, JT,...

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Steven Gerrard has opened his heart on a season of personal turmoil and glory - and confessed he couldn't have coped with his court case hell four years ago.
Liverpool skipper Gerrard, named Football Writers' Footballer of the Year after an outstanding season pursuing Manchester United, has revealed vast reserves of mental strength in blocking out a probable July court appearance after an incident in a Southport bar. Click to continue reading...

Steven Gerrard will lead out Liverpool for the first time as Footballer of the Year at West Brom on Sunday.
The Anfield skipper won the Football Writers' award this week, but will no doubt now be expecting to take the field at The Hawthorns knowing that Liverpool's title bid has failed. Click to continue reading...

Steven Gerrard had barely had time to digest the news that he had been named Footballer of the Year before some critics had started questioning the Liverpool captain's right to the award.
Just like an A-level student who has just got a string of A grades only for the usual parade of mealy mouthed media mouthpieces to take the wind out of their sails by claiming exams ain't what they used to be, Gerrard discovered that success in this country may well have a thousand fathers it also has many more naysayers. Click to continue reading...

Steven Gerrard rarely likes watching games from the sidelines, but he was all smiles last night as he watched a Liverpool legends side featuring some of his boyhood heroes Kenny Dalglish included defeat an all-stars team managed by the unlikely duo of Ricky Tomlinson and Jamie Carragher, in the Hillsborough/Marina Dalglish Memorial Match at Anfield.

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The Guardian's Kevin McCarra is one of my favourite writers over at the paper. For the most part he's levelheaded and shares his opinions in a very unbiased light. However his recent article on why Vidic deserved the Football Writers' Player of the Year award over Gerrard left me questioning his reasoning.

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The Guardian's Kevin McCarra is one of my favourite writers over at the paper. For the most part he's levelheaded and shares his opinions in a very unbiased light. However his recent article on why Vidic deserved the Football Writers' Player of the Year award over Gerrard left me questioning his reasoning.

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It was announced today that Steven Gerrard is the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year for the 2008-2009 season.

Despite missing a handful of matches due to injury, Gerrard has matched his career-best goal return with 23 in all competitions this season with two league matches left to play.

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Well in, Stevie.
As I'll expound upon in a few weeks (when the season is actually over), and as I wrote a nearly two months ago, Alonso is my player of the year for Liverpool. But Gerrard's been utterly fantastic as well, consistent throughout the season, and it's nice to see him reap the personal rewards. Click to continue reading...

La FWA (Football Writers' Association) ha concedido el galardón de mejor 'Jugador del Año' en la Premier League a Steven Gerrard, capitán del Liverpool. En la votación, llevada a cabo por la asociación de periodistas ingleses especializados en fútbol, el centrocampista de los reds ha superado a Ryan Giggs y Wayne Rooney, ambos del Manchester United, sucediendo de esta forma a Cristiano Ronaldo, ganador del premio en la pasada edición.

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Steven Gerrard was voted the Football Writers' Player of the Year, after dragging Liverpool through the season, whilst Ryan Giggs was voted runner-up and Wayne Rooney came in third.

Rooney has played all over the shop this season and has made a success of every role he's been asked to play.

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Celtic defender Gary Caldwell was Monday named as Scottish Premier League Player of the Season, just a day after he scooped the Scottish Football Writers' award. Click to continue reading...

Writing about Exeter City gaining promotion is starting to become an annual occurrence. This, perhaps, isn't a sentence that I expected to write for Soccerlens. Not that you'll get many complaints from this end.

After finally making it back into the league last season after five long years in the Conference, the Grecians have now won back-to-back promotions for the first time in their history.

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Every so often I send emails to football writers, often attaching samples of my writing, asking if there's anything I might be able to do for them.� � It hasn't really got me anywhere, but they say that persistence is key in these things, so I will keep trying.

The Indy's Glenn Moore has been most encouraging both times I've written to him, so in my book he's one of the good guys and I always try to read what he writes.

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Firstly, let me make one thing clear. Ryan Giggs is a fantastic player. He's a credit to his club and to the game. If anyone deserves a player of the year award, it's the Welshman. You could definitely argue that there were other nominees that have played much better this season. However, as I suggested on the Onion Bag this week, you get the feeling that, like John Wayne in True Grit and Paul Newman in The Colour Of Money, it was quite simply Giggs' turn and that is good enough for me. Click to continue reading...

In the wake of Ryan Giggs being crowned football of the year, we revisit our initial article on the subject - when Giggs was available at a juicy 8/1. We thought it would be a vote for sentiment rather than a true reflection of the season's form; but deserved for his incredible record. Most now seem to agree with us.

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Our resident professor, Frank Lampard, spoke candidly regarding youth players a little over a week ago. Here's what he had to say:

"There are good young pros out there but nowadays it's made much too easy for them.

"We're all lucky to be where we are, leading nice lifestyles, but that lifestyle is coming earlier and earlier.

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