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In the modern world of football, Europe is the most powerful confederation in FIFA and its a shame that FIFA's most powerful confederation doesn't lead the way in how it runs its World Cup qualification.

When it comes to World Cup qualifying, Europe can look to other FIFA confederations on how it should be done.

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VS. ,,
In the modern world of football, Europe is the most powerful confederation in FIFA and its a shame that FIFA's most powerful confederation doesn't lead the way in how it runs its World Cup qualification.
When it comes to World Cup qualifying, Europe can look to other FIFA confederations on how it should be done. Click to continue reading...

I read Anson Dorrance's book "The Vision of a Champion" a while back, his 2nd book where he talks about the competitive cauldron system they use for UNC Women's Soccer. He talked about a coach who had adapted it for youth teams, but the links provided don't work anymore and Google failed me, so I'm working on my own adaption.

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Or should I saw Wolves 3-Arsenal 2? We come away with 3 points on a scoreline which flatters us a little bit, on the back of 2 early Wolves own goals which put us up 2-0, a vantage point from which we never looked back.

Wolves strategy was pretty obvious, and wasn't a bad one as far as these things go.

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The Major League Soccer Playoffs continue on Thursday, November 5, 2009 with the second leg of the Columbus Crew and Real Salt Lake. RSL had a 1-0 lead on aggregate heading into this match. So, who won and advance to the Conference Finals? Here's a recap of the match along with video highlights.

Real Salt Lake beats the Columbus Crew 3-2 (4-2 on aggregate) Video Highlights (will be added later)

1st Half

Real Salt Lake nearly took the lead in the 10th minute as a through ball was sent for Andy Williams.

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The Clock Is Ticking on Rafa's Reign, here are ten ways he can buy himself more time.

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1. Put Yossi Benayoun in First Team Sheet EVEN if we have no injury problems!

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The UEFA Champions League had a full set of group stage matches on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 including AC Milan hosting Real Madrid at the San Siro. Here's a recap of the match along with video highlights.

AC Milan draws with Real Madrid 1-1 Video Highlights

Real Madrid started the match with most of the possession and chances early.

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The second Class 1A Girls semifinal of the day saw the Cloquet Lumberjacks (19-3-1) take on The Blake School Bears (16-3-1).

Blake took the lead at 34:10 with a goal by Morgan Oie and assisted by Andi Foss.� Foss come into the box from the right side with a defender on her side. The Cloquet keeper Kaitrin Rathe came out of goal and Foss saw her chance.

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The second Class 1A Girls semifinal of the day saw the Cloquet Lumberjacks (19-3-1) take on The Blake School Bears (16-3-1).

Blake took the lead at 34:10 with a goal by Morgan Oie and assisted by Andi Foss.� Foss come into the box from the right side with a defender on her side. The Cloquet keeper Kaitrin Rathe came out of goal and Foss saw her chance.

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The Spanish Copa del Rey continued on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 with four matches. In action were Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Sevilla FC, and Sporting Gijon. Here's a recap of Tuesday's Copa del Rey matches along with video highlights.

Spanish Copa del Rey Recap Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The upset of the night was Alcorcon crushing Real Madrid 4-0.

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FC Barcelona extended their lead at the top of the league to three points with a marvelous 6-1 thrashing of Zaragoza. It was quite a night with Keita scoring a hat-trick. Not many times you will see Keita outscoring the likes of Messi and Ibrahmovic. There were serious doubts about Barca's form, but the players put them into rest with a sensational display. Click to continue reading...

I'm not read to give up the dream of post-season play for Real Salt Lake yet, but things look pretty bleak. As Coach Jason Kreis lamented after the 1-0 loss in Toronto on Saturday, this has been a frustrating season for RSL where one can look back at missed opportunities at every turn.

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There was one more CONMEBOL (South America) qualifying match left on the weekend as Bolivia hosted Brazil. Both teams had little to play for as Bolivia was out of contention for qualification and Brazil had already clinched their spot in South Africa. Here's a recap of the match along with video highlights on Sunday, October 11, 2009.

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Dirty, dirty Leeds. Dirty fucking Leeds. After reading David Peace's novel The Damned UTD these words cycled through my head for days. They work as an obsessive refrain in David Peace's account of Brian Clough's infamous 44 days as the manager of (dirty, dirty) Leeds.
I knew nothing about Clough, Leeds, and this bizarre story before reading Peace's novel - that I enjoyed the book, and felt as if Clough himself, in all his puerile genius, had wormed his way into my head is as good a testimony as I can give to the intensity and distinctiveness of Peace's writing. Click to continue reading...

Roy Keane has been under siege after a slow start this season at Ipswich, but as
Matt Dickinson of the Times Online reports, a distanced manager has apparently separated himself from his locker room.
One of the most troubling stories about Roy Keane's management did not involve him screaming, shouting or karate-kicking the tactics board in the dressing room, as Dwight Yorke has described so vividly in his forthcoming autobiography. Click to continue reading...

Well that was bloody fantastic.

It was probably one of the best attacking displays I have seen and the scary thought is that at the start of both half's it took quite a while for us to get going, if we had been at that intensity for 90 minutes Blackburn and their fat manager would have still been totting up all the goals 24 hours on.

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Since the start of the new season, there has hardly been week go by that hasn't seen a full roster of midweek matches take place. This, however, hasn't ever been thus and until surprisingly recently football under floodlights was all but barred by the Football Association. Much as many of us feel that three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon is the "natural" home for matches, there remains something special about matches played in the evening.

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Fortune and poor Portsmouth finishing rather contributed to Everton's three point haul.� With one genuine shot at goal and nothing much else to discuss on the long drive home, I wonder why Moyes chooses to restrain the plethora of attacking options now available to him.

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Striker Dirk Kuyt believes summer signing Glen Johnson has provided Liverpool with a different emphasis this season.
The England defender, who moved from Portsmouth in the summer, has probably been the Merseysiders' best player so far, scoring twice and providing a much-needed cutting edge from right-back. Click to continue reading...

Cruz Azul advanced the the CONCACAF Champions League Quarterfinals on Wednesday night, beating Columbus 2-0 at Crew Stadium. Pablo Zeballos scored in the 14th and Alejandro Vela followed in the 39th. Cruz Azul keeper Yosgart Gutiérrez made five saves for the shutout. "We did enough to merit the win," Cruz Azul coach Enrique Meza said. Click to continue reading...

I missed this when it happened, but, luckily, Dan was there for me.

"I'd scrap the playoffs and gladly take what projects out* to be tied for fourth place in the overall standings with Chicago," Sacha Kljestan didn't say.

There's this notion, perpetuated by people who have an insane love for how things are done in countries they've never visited, that if you scrap MLS' conference-based setup and the playoffs, that everything will be just hunky-dory.

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Oh dear! After Saturday's lovely clear sunny skies across the country, Islington was completely covered with a grey lid of cloud yesterday. It was as if the sky was in mourning for our result against Manchester City.

First things first. We didn't play THAT badly. City's opener was against the run of play.

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DENVER — Now that's how to break in a new stadium.

The University of Denver men's soccer team sent an overflow crowd home happy as Alex Tarnoczi scored 3 minutes, 4 seconds into overtime in a 2-1 victory over Dayton on Saturday.

The game was the first for the men's team at Pioneer Field, built just to the west of the Ritchie Center.

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The matches to watch after you realize Michael Ballack got a little more into the World Cup Qualifiers than you did.

Saturday

Manchester City v Arsenal at Eastlands Emmanuel Adebayor has continued to run his mouth about Arsenal fans (and his feud with Nicklas Bendtner), while praising the undying love Man City fans have shown him in the few weeks he's actually played for them.

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Ok, we got the season underway and ground out a win, posting a 4-3 victory.

We went 3-0 up, then 4-1 and died a little in the last few minutes of the game and gave up a tap in and a penalty.

Most importantly, we notched our first win of the season and we are very grateful.

We looked fantastic for about 70% of the game.

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Steven Gerrard has shrugged off suggestions that Rafa Benitez singled him out for criticism and feels Liverpool got their just rewards after twice coming back to beat Bolton on Saturday.
The Reds responded to Monday's disastrous 3-1 humbling by Aston Villa as Gerrard netted a thunderous winner at the Reebok to reignite the Merseysiders' 20-year-long quest for domestic glory and silence a few critics along the way. Click to continue reading...

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger provided an update on some of the squad's injured players, including captain Cesc Fabregas and Tomas Rosicky.

The Frenchman told Arsenal TV Online on Thursday afternoon:

He had a training session today that was quite positive. He will have a definite test tomorrow where we will decide if we include him in the squad or not.

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What a piggish little game this was. You might have assumed that Liverpool's first league defeat at home since 2007 would have been an exhibition of high drama, or at least of reasonable intensity, but the Kop was languid, the crowd left early, and the Liverpool players were fierce only in their complaints.

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Over the past few years, we've got used to playing European matches against sides close to home Chelsea, Liverpool and United have all been recent opponents in the Champions League, and all three have knocked us out.

This time our opposition do not come from the Premiership, but north of the border, and some will say Celtic should be a breeze after watching us dispatch Rangers so ruthlessly in the Emirates Cup.

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"The difference between this season and the last is the team spirit.

"From the moment we arrived back for pre-season the manager has been drumming it in to us about how we had to be better and mentally stronger this season.

"He said we had to have a better attitude and he was right.

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Bachelors - watch out! Fatherhood has gone all modern and you will be expected to do things your father probably only had a vague understanding of: cleaning, cooking, childcare, the list goes on. You will still be required to work full time, and because you are not likely to be any good at cleaning or cooking you won't get full credit for your efforts there. Click to continue reading...

Santista Nation,
I confess that I did not even want to write on the game. The score was a great disappointment. It was painful because before the game we all had that feeling that the team was going to get to the upper side of the chart. Sure we know our team's limitations but we came from two straight winnings on the road and things were looks a little better. Click to continue reading...

Former Arsenal legend Liam Brady warned the North London club that it will not be easy to get past Celtic in their Champions League tie this month.

He said:

Our players have been all over the continent but they will never have experienced anything like it. The atmosphere at Celtic Park is unique.

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It was the right result. Adelaide dominated the first half. Clearly Adelaide missed out on a straight forward penalty in the first 2 minutes as Jacob Burns had his first touch on an Adelaide leg entering the penalty box from the right. Later, justice was made when Chris Coyne pushed/pulled down Robbie Cornthwaite for a linesperson's decision. Click to continue reading...

Liverpool lost 3-0 to Espanyol tonight, as the La Liga outfit celebrated their first game in the new Estadi Cornella-El Prat in style, with goals from Luis Garcia and a brace from Ben Sahar sealing an impressive victory for the hosts.
Reds manager Rafa Benitez acknowledged that his side were very much second-best, with the Spaniard admitting the home side thoroughly deserved their win. Click to continue reading...