STORY OF THE DAY
James Montague of the New York Times with an article on one of the surprise teams in all of world soccer right now - Ironi Kiryat Shmona in Israel.
Argentine-American Bryan Gerzicich is a key member of the team.
LANDON DONOVAN V CLINT DEMPSEY
FA Cup Match
-Fri Jan 27
Everton v Fulham - live at 2pm CT on Fox Soccer
TEAM USA - EL EQUIPO DE TODOS
The team is done with the annual January training camp.

STARTERS
Lots of thoughts on MLS post season awards today. See section below.
dN
Rise & Shine: The Jay DeMerit Story - coming soon to Movie Theaters.
Twin Cities
AMC Rosedale 14
-Thu Nov 3
Marcus Oakdale Cinemas
-Thu Nov 10
Marcus Parkwood Cinemas
-Thu Nov 10
Duluth
Marcus Duluth 10
-Thu Nov 10
See the schedule for the whole rest of the country.

Tomorrow the guys will take on the Philadelphia Union at PPL Park. We all know how poorly they play on the road, but tomorrow's game is a hugely important match up. Looking ahead to the remainder of the schedule (and we'll have more in depth analysis on this later next week) there are only three home games left and, after tomorrow's match, four very challenging away games at the New York Red Bulls, Vancouver Whitecaps (home opener!

IN MEMORY OF BOBBY RHINE
Sadly, long time Dallas player and staff member Bobby Rhine died of a heart on Monday while vacationing in Florida with his family. He was just 35 years old, and was married with two children.
Buzz Carrick who has cover Dallas from possibly day 1 directs us to a video of Bobby Rhine speaking that Carrick feels is a great example of who Bobby was.

Akron players celebrate their National Championship

We have decided to do some detailed game analysis during the college season this fall. We will do our best to cover a couple of games on a weekly basis live out of Southern California as well as some games we see on TV (FSC game of the week) or online video feed.

Akron players celebrate their National Championship

We have decided to do some detailed game analysis during the college season this fall. We will do our best to cover a couple of games on a weekly basis live out of Southern California as well as some games we see on TV (FSC game of the week) or online video feed.

STARTERS
From Twitter this morning: "Stay tuned" - Freddy Adu
And a few hours later we hear this from the rumor mill - Freddy Adu signing with Philadelphia Union. Reunites with coach he should have listened to a lot more way back when - Peter Nowak!
The story is that MLS signed him and Chivas USA had the first selection to pick him, and as with Benny Feilhaber, they passed.

We're Looking for a New Contributing Editor!

Stumptown Footy is now actively looking for a new contributing editor to help us patch some of the editorial holes that Ryan and I just can't seem to get to on a weekly basis (jobs and social lives... damn you for taking up so much time!).

Essentially what we need is for somebody to do at least one training report each week, meaning you'd get to go to the training sessions and interview John Spencer and the players.

Many of you remember the points per game analysis I did during the quarter mark of the season. At that point the Portland Timbers had just won their 5th straight home game and were riding a huge momentum wave. Well they now are at the lowest of lows just over midway through the season.

Once again the calculations are really easy and I will just quote myself from the previous post:

So to get the calculations I am going to share with you I did some simple spreadsheet math.

STARTERS
My beloved NSC Minnesota Stars brought an end to the Carolina RailHawk's 10 game winning streak on Saturday night! Oh! Yeah!
dN
Mexico has won the U17 World Cup for the second time in 6 years. They were also the hosts. Damn, its really hard to congratulate them.

STARTERS
As you would expect the Gold Cup final is sold out at over 91,000 for Saturday's huge USA-Mexico showdown.
dN
Huge congrats goes out to Santos for winning the South American - Copa Libertadores - championship last night.
THE FIFA SCANDAL STORY NEVER ENDS
Owen Gibson of the Guardian gives us more on the leaked FIFA ethics report that damned Jack Warner into resigning.

Throughout the first few decades of sports broadcasting, the role of the so-called "sideline reporter" was relatively straightforward, and very limited. They were called upon to conduct brief player and coach interviews at various pauses throughout the action, and, if there were any player injuries, they were also tasked with trying to gather a report from team officials on the exact nature of the injury, its severity, and whether the individual's ability to play the remainder of the game was impacted.

After an entertaining first half from both sides the Fire ultimately concluded another match at home in much the same fashion as the previous four games at Toyota Park, without a full three points. That's not to say there weren't positives to be taken away because there were. Set piece defending was much improved after an emphasis was placed on improving the way the team approaches dead balls during the week.

Even though the Portland Timbers game vs. D.C. United isn't on until Sunday there's still some choice previews being thrown up around the web. Most notably, most of them point to star striker Charlie Davies as missing Sunday's game altogether. Personally, I'm more than a little disappointed by this.

Chelsea travel to Manchester today to play in the only quarterfinal match that remains winnable by either side. The Londoners head into Old Trafford a goal down and perhaps lacking the confidence to steal it back. It doesn't help matters that their floppy-haired central defender David Luiz is cup-tied and cannot play, nor that the £50M man up front can't seem to find the back of the net.

Because we love you, we occassionally bring you the best in LA Galaxy and worldwide futbol videos. Today that means the video highlights from Saturday's game and the recap from the LA Galaxy media team, plus a fun video of one of the youngest LA Riot Squad members leading cheers during the game. And finally, from our friends at Soccer America, a video from last week's internationals, in this case Uruguay vs Ireland.

Like a record on repeat, FCD drops another one 2-0 to an opponent most felt they should beat, and I'm late on the season to talk about it. Apparently Matchday Live won't let you watch games that are blacked out until 48 hours after they air. Not cool, and will certainly affect how I report on away games this season.

STARTERS
A Spanish court has ordered the Primera Division to play their games this weekend. The teams had been prepared to walk out over a dispute of TV revenue.
STORY OF THE DAY
The Guardian reports that the Chinese government paid for the rebuilding of the national stadium in Costa Rica.

Apologies for being a tad late on this one...my weekend got the best of me. Nonetheless, not much worth noting, considering our beloved Red Stripes fell Saturday night to the Chris Wondolowski show at Pizza Hut Park. Last year's Golden Boot winner put on a finishing clinic in the first half, netting two goals in the first 23 minutes of a 2-0 loss to the Quakes.

I wasn't going to write a post on this match, but feel compelled after seeing it live and close to the pitch at the Meadowlands last night. This is one where the box score sort of tells you what happened:
Stats Summary: USA/ARG
Shots 7/13
Shots on goal 4/6
Saves 5/3
Corner Kicks 2/6
Fouls 12/9
Honestly, I didn't even realize that the U.

I wasn't going to write a post on this match, but feel compelled to after seeing it live last night at the Meadowlands. This is one where the box score kinda sorta tells you what happened:
Stats Summary: USA/ARG
Shots 7/13
Shots on goal 4/6
Saves 5/3
Corner Kicks 2/6
Fouls 12/9
Honestly, I didn't even realize that the U.

Hopefully Michael will give a more detailed post-game analysis. But to me there are two takeaways from the US draw with Argentina tonight. First, that we are better off with a 4-4-2 than a 4-2-3-1. Second, that the second half of the 2 should be Juan Agudelo.

The first half was like a bad display of catenaccio for the US.

Our beloved Red Stripes fell last night in Monterrey, Mexico to the UANL Tigres in the first round of what could be the annual Rio Grande Plate. FCD took on Tigres a couple of years back in a home-away set that drew thousands of fans to PHP. The game wasn't televised, and the only real way to follow it other than the FCD Twitter was in Spanish on 1270AM.

Opening night! I have to admit, it feels so good to be back in the thick of things. Speaking of the thick of things...plan on tuning in here every week for a little thing I like to call "Match Musings". Basically it's just me, spouting off my armchair quarterback (or perhaps linking midfielder if you prefer) noise about the previous night's match.

It is two hours to the home opener and Los Angeles has become the south pacific. My wife laid down in no uncertain terms that I am not subjecting my children to two hours of this weather, not even for our beloved Galaxy. After stepping outside for only a couple of minutes, I am frankly surprised the game is still on.

What is the role of the media in developing football? Does it even have a role? Should it blindly regurgitate quotes and saws from the great and good as it does with politicians, should it be positively critical or should it be just staggeringly negative?
I had hoped to have put the Young Lions v Geylang United game to bed now.

Marvin Chavez / Photo by Harlan Bowling

Just a few days after making the trek up to Frisco to catch FCD against Houston Baptist University, I once again found myself on that familiar field 4, this time for a night scrimmage that saw FCD cruise past SMU 3-1. During the Schellas Hyndman regime, SMU has become a sort of minor league farm system for FCD recruits, so I was interested in catching this one.

The Vancouver Whitecaps have officially partnered with TEAM 1410, and the radio station will have the exclusive radio broadcast rights to the Whitecaps's matches for the next couple of years. It's good to know we can listen to the Whitecaps matches along with pre-game and post-game analysis.
Here's what the Vancouver Whitecaps FC website says about the partnership:

Vancouver's TEAM 1410 is now the official voice of Vancouver Whitecaps FC, with exclusive radio broadcast rights to the club's matches for the next two years.

STARTERS
Honduras won the Central American championship on Sunday. Huge congrats to them. Cerveza Hurra!
dN
Dempsey and Spector scored goals again this weekend, while Jermaine Jones made his debut in England.
dN
The three favorites Japan, South Korea and Australia are all in the Asian Cup Semifinals, joined by big surprise Uzbekistan.

The Globe and Mail is a good place to begin this series because their soccer page illustrates the core problem with online newspaper coverage of football in North America (actually, the soccer page speaks to the problem with online newspapers full stop, but we'll get to that later).
The home page looks nice enough, but there is almost no original content apart from a generic "Globe staff" by-line attached to a few articles and a La Liga piece from the excellent Paul Attfield dated December 22nd.

The Globe and Mail is a good place to begin this series because their soccer page illustrates the core problem with online newspaper coverage of football in North America (actually, the soccer page speaks to the problem with online newspapers full stop, but we'll get to that later).
The home page looks nice enough, but there is almost no original content apart from a generic "Globe staff" by-line attached to a few articles and a La Liga piece from the excellent Paul Attfield dated December 22nd.