With the Red Bulls poised to sign Swedish defender Markus Holgersson, I had the chance to exchange e-mails this afternoon with Torbjörn Dencker, editor, presenter and reporter at Helsingborg Dagblad's TV channel, 24HD. Torbjörn also contributes to a Helsingborg IF-focused blog, which can be found here.

With the Red Bulls poised to sign Swedish defender Markus Holgersson, I had the chance to exchange e-mails this afternoon with Torbjörn Dencker, editor, presenter and reporter at Helsingborg Dagblad's TV channel, 24HD. Torbjörn also contributes to a Helsingborg IF-focused blog, which can be found here.

Holgersson: Defensive Help on the Way?"Quiet" doesn't begin to describe the New York Red Bulls media profile since the 2011 season ended. The only addition to date has been young homegrown signing Connor Lade, while a whopping ten players have departed, according to the club's official "Transaction Central" page.

Nicklas Hult produced this Torres like open goal miss for Elfsborg vs Helsingborg.

Writing a blog about football means having to admit that you are wrong more often than not. In this latest instance, it was my idea about whom Hamren was going to select for the friendly against the Ukraine tomorrow. I was wrong about Mellberg (vacation), Ibrahimovic (vacation), Martin Olsson (who knows why?

A lot of crazy things can happen in football. For example: teams favored in a game can end up losing by disproportionate numbers. Of course in the end the better teams tend to win out. Time is a factor in every season and as things wear on, the smaller clubs with their tiny budgets just cannot keep up.

One of the things that sets soccer apart from the standard sports in America is the crowd atmosphere, often created by the supporter groups of the clubs. Want to experiment this summer? Go to an MLS match one night and an MLB game another night and compare how the fans at an MLS match create the atmosphere while the scoreboard at an MLB game tells fans when to clap and cheer.

Unfortunately, the (not so) fresh (anymore) Allsvenskan season has already seen a couple of moments which could be considered less than optimal. A match was abandoned recently for flying flares, and yesterday saw Helsingborg v Malmo called for a player attack.

However, approaching a silver lining: lovely to see some solidarity among players of opposing teams, no?

Keeping goal is former Guatemalan international Edgar Estrada. He picked up 80 caps for the national side between 1995 and 2003. A back four of Emmanuel Eboue (Ivory Coast and Arsenal), Erik Edman (Sweden and Helsingborg), Emad El-Nahhas (Egypt and Al-Ahly) and Nigerian Eric Ejiofor.