Examining the state of MLS's youth development, Part 1

Heading into Year 4 of Major League Soccer's Homegrown Player Initiative, we are starting to see real signs of progress. Here's part 1 of my look at the state of youth development in MLS.

The defending NBA champions are heating up. On Monday night, they went out on the road and destroyed the Phoenix Suns. However, the Suns did have an excuse: they were without future Hall of Famer Steve Nash.

The Mavs led 96-70 heading into the fourth quarter before cruising to a 122-99 victory.

The Philadelphia Union's Veljko Paunovic has decided to announce his retirement from professional soccer for the second time, according to the team. His beginning in Philadelphia wasn't a celebrated one, but by the end of his time in the city, he was appreciated.

"It is with great sadness that I announce my retirement from soccer due to family reasons but I will never forget the Union fans and the atmosphere at PPL Park every game," Paunvoci said to PhiladelphiaUnion.

It's rare that expectations are low for Manchester United, but after the back-to-back disappointments against Blackburn and Newcastle, United were the clear underdogs heading into last weekend's FA Cup showdown at City. But as has happened time and time and time and time again, United delivered when the chips were down, and while the 3-2 [.

Shortly after his contract with the Revolution was not renewed, Steve Nicol entertained an offer to fill the vacant heading coaching job in Colorado according to a Goal.com report in November. But, according to Nicol, it wasn't he who to reneged on the opportunity.

In a Jan. 10 report from the Boston Globe, the former Revolution manager stated that he never said "no" the Colorado job, but rather, it was the club who declined his services.

To look closely at the associated regulations is to acknowledge the Football League's existing loan system as nothing less than a free for all. ‘Temporary loan transfer' is the umbrella heading which comprises the following three types of move permissible under the current system: • ‘Standard Loans' (half or full season in length and arranged during the two transfer windows); • ‘Emergency Loans' (28-93 days in length and arranged both within the two transfer windows and during fixed periods outside these dates); • ‘Youth Loans' (identical to ‘Emergency Loans' but applies to scholars or new professionals on a work experience-type.

Liverpool's Andy Carroll fails to convince in defeat by Manchester City

Paul Hayward: striker's heading is improving but, without Luis Suárez, Liverpool remain short on attacking options.

View the full story here: The Telegraph

A news article on 2012-01-04 00:06:50 from: The Telegraph

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Another match, another dazzling display off the bench for Steven Gerrard. Only this time it led to three points, with the captain once again changing the complexion of a match with his introduction. Like the appearance against Blackburn, the boost was both sentimental and practical, with a notable change in confidence and quality in the side.

The Dallas Cowboys are facing a must-win game against the New York Giants on Sunday. Unfortunately, quarterback Tony Romo won't be completely healthy. He bruised his throwing hand in Week 16 and has been practicing with a wrap heading into Week 17.

That said, the Cowboys and Romo are confident that he will play this week.

Freddy Adu is hoping to make 2012 the biggest year of his career, and he will be kicking off that year in Spain.

Adu is on his way to Spain, where he will train with La Liga side Rayo Vallecano. The training stint will run through the first week of January.

Rayo Vallecano made a play for Adu's services in the summer before Adu settled on MLS, and will now get a chance to have a closer look at the attacking midfielder.

(Lot of news snippets today).

Oui Paris for Beckham

Reports out of Paris today that's Le Parisien's (a Paris daily) on the left that David Beckham will at long last make his way to Paris Saint-Germain for the tidy fee of $18.7M over 18-months.

Ligue1 will represent the fourth league that Beckham will attempt to win a championship in (The Premiership, La Liga, MLS); his legacy of a nomadic footballer championship-seeking footballer will be cemented with a win in Paris.

1. At last, a Sky Sports Super Sunday match that lives up to its sub-heading billing. This really was a Christmas Cracker. 2. Forget gold, frankincense and myrrh, it was all about Silva delivering the goods. 3. The Arsenal crowd are not usually that noisy at home, never mind away. Samir Nasri must be the [.

The score was a lot closer than the scoreline appeared, but the Comets saw their 4 game winning streak snapped last night in Baltimore as the Comets fell to the Blast 17-9. Playing without captain Byron Alvarez and defender Bryan Harris, the task was already a big ask for the Comets. Some defensive mistakes once again cost the Comets early as Shaun David capitalized on a poor back pass to Danny Waltman a little over a minute into the game.

LFC set for Africa with Tony Blair

Liverpool Football Club will this week be heading for South Africa to discover whether the highly-acclaimed Tactics 4 Families initiative will scoop a prestigious Beyond Sport award.

View the full story here: Liverpool FC

A news article on 2011-12-05 09:43:16 from: Liverpool FC

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

The United States Under-23 national team will find out its road to London soon enough.

CONCACAF announced that it will hold its draw for the Olympic qualifying tournament on Tuesday at the organization's headquarters in New York.

The eight teams in the draw (United States, Canada, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and Trinidad & Tobago) will be split into two groups of four, with one group playing its games at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.

Frank Klopas -- Getty ImagesBy Charlie Corr
ESPNChicago.com
In the coming weeks, the Chicago Fire should be announcing an abundance of player options that they are picking up heading into 2012. The Fire have yet to officially state the return of midfielder Pavel Pardo or comment on other players' contract status, but in all likelihood a large portion of the 2011 squad should be on board next season.

Craig Bellamy has played alongside some fantastic players in his two spells at Liverpool, and also during his career generally, but who is the best he's ever played with?
Bellamy, who created both of Liverpool's goals last night against Chelsea, enthused:
"Stevie is still special.

After we suggested that William Gallas would walk straight back into the side for Monday night's game against Aston Villa, it was obvious, following Younes Kaboul's performance in the match that the younger French defender has become one of the first names on Harry Redknapp's team sheet.

Harry himself hailed Kaboul after the match,

"Younes Kaboul's heading was incredible, he dominated," said Harry, before going on to claim that the centre half is finally beginning to realise his potential.

It's every schoolboy's dream. You're in the Cup Final, it's heading for stalemate. Then, right at the death, you pop up and score the winner. Arsenal are past masters of this; think Alan Sunderland in 1979 and Andy Linighan in 1993.
In yesterday's Singapore Cup Final it was the turn of Frederic Mendy to live the dream.

Martin Kelly has all the attributes to play at centre-back in the future, according to first-team coach Steve Clarke.
The Reds have no plans to move the 21-year-old from the right side of defence, where his performances have helped him become an England U21 regular.
However, Clarke would not be surprised if Kelly one day returned to the central position he regularly played during his years at the Academy.

You'll remember a couple weeks ago when I discussed how MLSsoccer.com is hiding content to boost the search ranking of images. Today Aaron Wall has a great piece which takes the quote in the heading from Matt Cutts in 2008, and contrasts it with Google's current experiments with cloaking content and it's current message to other publishers:

On the one hand they tell you to optimize your ad placements & on the other they tell you that those were not optimal & are so aggressive that they are spam.

I doubt it had anything to do with my criticism of the other scoreboard, but in the immediate aftermath of the post, MLS rolled out a new, faster, prettier heading that has a freshness expectancy of about a week:

Ooh, brushed metal background with a two-tone fake gradient. So tough. So hard.

Sporting Kansas City and the Houston Dynamo squared off in the Eastern Conference Final in front of 20,839 fans at LiveStrong Sporting Park in the win or go home match.
Both teams had experienced an up and down season but each were bringing impressive late season results into the match. Although Sporting KC might have been the favorite heading into the match Houston had developed a stouter defense of late and were undefeated in their last 6 matches heading into the Conference Final.

Photo: Courtesy of the Houston Dynamo

Houston Dynamo's Dominic Kinnear is the guest on the latest installment of the KYW Philly Soccer Show podcast as KYW's Greg Orlandini and Philly Soccer Page writer Eli Pearlman-Storch sit down with the two-time MLS Cup winning coach to discuss the Philadelphia Union's series with Houston.

Andre Villas-Boas lashes Chelsea flops and Kolo Toure heading for Manchester City showdown

Andre Villas-Boas accused his Chelsea flops of 'broken promises' in a furious training ground outburst yesterday. And Kolo Toure will today contest any decision by Manchester City to give him a substantial fine for his failed drugs test.

Now these are the Philadelphia Eagles we were expecting heading into the season. In a dominant performance, the Eagles destroyed the Dallas Cowboys by a final score of 34-7. And honestly, it wasn't even that close.

Michael Vick had one of his best games of the season, finishing 21-for-28 for 279 passing yards, 50 rushing yards and two passing touchdowns.

This was a tough test for the New York Red Bulls as it would be a single game that would determine them to advance into the Conference Semi-Finals of a goal aggregate playoff, or heading back home wondering if their ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com for the rest of the story.

By Chris Wright

'Twas a damn fine effort Sir!

A second-half double from a fizzing Luis Suarez was enough to see Liverpool into the quarter-finals of the Carling Cup at the Britannia last night, after Kenwyne Jones had put Stoke one up a minute before half-time with a neat near-post diving header.

Week 29 filled all but one playoff slot, with the order in the Eastern Conference still to be determined. After a multi-goal stoppage time finish to the DC - Chicago game, New York, Portland, Chicago, and DC remain in contention for the final wildcard slot. Portland 0 - Houston 2 Home field counted for very little for the timbers on Friday, shutout by Houston.

Getty ImagesBy Charlie Corr
ESPNChicago.com
The elements were not in the Chicago Fire's favor.
They had three suspended starters. They were playing on the road. They were playing down a goal heading into stoppage time. And anything less than a win would have officially spelled the end to Chicago's small, but lingering, playoff hopes.

With the Big Ten Conference women's soccer standings jam-packed behind leader Penn State heading into the final two weeks of the season, the University of Wisconsin gave up a late goal and dropped two points with a 1-1 draw against last-place Northwestern on Friday night in Evanston, Ill.

Junior defender Joana Bielefeld (Brookfield Central) scored her first career goal for the Badgers (8-4-3 overall) on a header in the 73rd minute, but freshman Niki Sebo did the same in the 87th and the Wildcats (2-11-1, 1-5-1 Big Ten) held on for the tie despite eight shots by UW in the two overtime periods.

All three divisions of the NCAA women's soccer national goal-scoring charts this week feature Wisconsin players at or near the top of the list.

UW-Milwaukee senior Sarah Hagen (Appleton North), right, led Division I players in goals per game (1.231), points per game (2.85) and game-winning goals (eight) and was second in points (37) and tied for second in goals (16) heading into the week.

As the US national team cruised to a 1-0 win over Honduras on Saturday night, midfielder Maurice Edu is upbeat heading into Tuesday night's friendly against Ecuador.

Jack Wilshere has no intention of becoming the next high-profile departure at Arsenal and has described the club as his 'perfect home'.

The Gunners endured a difficult summer transfer window, with Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy heading for pastures new.

Fabregas returned to his Catalan roots with Barcelona, while Nasri and Clichy accepted the riches on offer at ambitiousManchester City.

Massimo Paolone / Iguana Press/Getty Images (Bleacher Report) Liverpool have reportedly been inquiring about the availability of Juan Manuel Vargas from Fiorentina. The Reds have had previous dealings with the Florence-based Serie A club, as Fiorentino looked to sign Alberto Aquilani on loan earlier in the summer window.

Wednesday was one of the most exciting days in baseball history. And the most exciting play of the night had to be Evan Longoria's walkoff homer that clinched a playoff berth for the Tampa Bay Rays and eliminated the Boston Red Sox. Check out the Evan Longoria walkoff home run video below.

As you can see in the video, Evan Longoria's homer wasn't overly impressive.

The Tampa Bay Rays never say die. They were way behind the Boston Red Sox heading into September. In the final game of the regular season on Wednesday night, the Rays were trailing 7-0 against the New York Yankees. But the Rays came roaring back to win and, after the Red Sox choked again, advance to the 2011 baseball playoffs.

Freshman defender A.J. Cochran scored his first collegiate goal on a diving header in the 81st minute to give the University of Wisconsin a 1-1 draw with state rival Marquette in a non-conference men's soccer match Wednesday night at the McClimon Complex.

Cochran finished off a free kick by junior midfielder Tomislav Zadro from the right corner as the Badgers (4-3-2) extended their unbeaten streak to four heading into their Big Ten Conference opener Sunday afternoon at home against No.

The Boston Red Sox completed their choke. In their final game of the year, the Red Sox blew a ninth inning lead against the Baltimore Orioles. Leading 3-2 heading into the ninth, the Orioles pulled out a 4-3 victory.

Now the Red Sox play the waiting game. If the Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees, the Rays make the playoffs.

Denz of RSL SoapBox, SB Nation's Real Salt Lake blog, and I exchanged three questions a piece ahead of tonight's Union-RSL match at Rio Tinto. Read my responses to Denz's questions by clicking on the linked text here.

tBG: What has sent RSL into such a freefall (though that may be hyperbole)?