When I travel abroad, people often tell me that the United States is good at soccer only because they import foreigners to play for the national team. While this strategy was key in our development as a soccer nation, it is far, far less common today. The 1990s saw the US scour European leagues for players with American connections, coming up with gems such as Ernie Stewart and Thomas Dooley (both of whom had American servicemen fathers) and duds such as David Wagner and David Regis (the latter was a Frenchman whose late call-up into the 1998 World Cup squad led to great friction within the team and was a large part of the team's horrible showing in that tournament).

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Football's march into the modern era continues apace – whether the game's purists like it or not. Consider a new� aerosol spray� that is being promoted to help referees mark out the correct distance for a� defensive wall� to set up during a free-kick. The spray, which was invented by a company with the very catchy name of 9.

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Fox Soccer Channel and the Premier League today announced that Fox Sports International has won the bidding for the rights to show the Premier League on US television for the 2010-2013 seasons. Fox has also won the� similar rights for Central and South America to its associated company, Fox Sports Latin America.

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So we all know that Rio will be hosting the 2016 Olympics... but the man of the moment has to be Felipe Andreoli, the host of CQC, a popular TV show in Latin America and parts of Europe (you may remember this Chilean tipo teasing players at the Bernabeu).

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One of CQC Chile's loco characters, "Cuchillo" Eyzaguirre recently went to Madrid to meet the manos there. In case you were wondering, CQC, which stands for "Caiga Quien Caiga" is a popular TV programme which started in Argentina and has since spread to the rest of Latin America and parts of Europe including Italy and Spain.

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I've read a great deal about perceived MLS failures in CONCACAF over the last week. As many of our readers know, I am not defender or apologist for MLS. But, calling two loses to FMF sides," failures" again show many MLS fans live in an alternate reality. If anything Columbus and DC United should be applauded for competing against the best this hemisphere has to offer.

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U.S. SQUAD� OVERVIEW:� Cobi Jones is considered one of the best� U.S. midfielders ever� and currently still holds the record for most U.S. national team appearances with 165 caps� during the span� of his international� career (which ended� in 2004)� .� Jones served as a U.

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The votes have been counted, and after the Copa Libertadores was decided on Wednesday night, it's time to reveal the real question all of Latin America wants answering: who, in the opinions of the readers of Hasta El Gol Siempre and Mundo Albiceleste, has been the best Argentine footballer playing in a non-Argentine league over [. Click to continue reading...

For several years now we've heard pundits proclaim Panama the next big thing in CONCACAF. The Central Americans have certainly teased us: the development of Jorge Dely Valdes and Roberto Brown as legitimate goal scoring threats were indications that the traditional Baseball country was shifting towards being competitive in football.

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Haiti's proper name is "The Republic of Haiti", sort of like our nation is styled "The United States of America". And like our nation, it is a cultural meting� pot. Haiti though is a smoldering cauldron of� French-Creole-Caribbean cultures, and it is undoubtedly a� nation with a heroic history.

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English Premier League club Manchester City has signed a long-term partnership with Endemol Sport, a division of the TV production company Endemol - famous for producing the globe-spanning Big Brother programme.
Endemol Sport will be tasked with developing schemes to use television to build City's brand throughout the world, as well as relaunching the club website, which will be available in English and Arabic.

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Episode 89 features three reports. First off we talk with Miami FC President Aaron Davidson about the state of the team and the potential of defender Facundo Erpen being sold to a club in Europe or Latin America. Next up Brian Zygo catches up with several Dyanmo players after their 3-1 victory over FC Dallas in Frisco, Finally Robert Jonas brings us up to speed on the new look Quakes, which according to Robert are the same as the old Quakes!

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Costa Rica's home stadium is one of the most menacing in CONCACAF and provides one of the most difficult atmospheres anywhere in the world. At only 24,000 Estadio Ricardo Saprissa Ayama is just over 1/4 the size of Wembley and holds about 80,000 less people than Azteca in Mexico City. Saprissa is proof that the biggest stadiums don't always generate the most noise or most imposing environments. Click to continue reading...

For some time now, the prevailing wisdom among Major League Soccer pundits in the U.S. and elsewhere has been to tie the league's viability to closer integration with Latin America. Specifically, competitions such as the Copa Sudamericana (which MLS teams can already qualify for, though they rarely do) and Copa Libertadores are said to hold the keys to the league's future.

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As the first ever English language site devoted to Inter nears its first birthday, I'm delighted to welcome Ronald Gordo (Fat Ronald!) to the blog who will be sharing his views and feelings to us directly from Rio Grande do Sul each Friday.
This week Ronald shares his early experiences of following Inter from outside the club's home city of Porto Alegre. Click to continue reading...

ESPN International will provide live coverage of the 2009 UCL Final in the regions of Africa, Australia, Canada, and Latin America. ESPN STAR will televise the Final in English, Cantonese and Mandarin across Asia.� On-site studio and match production teams will provide content to a variety of ESPN outlets around the world, including ESPN's pan-regional [. Click to continue reading...

Here's another soccer babe photoshoot straight out of Latin America. This one is of a gallery of a model Ofelia showing off her love for German Bundesliga outfit VfB Stuttgart. Whether she is really a Stuttgart fan or she was just given the team's shirt to wear is questionable. But does anyone really care? Click to continue reading...

For those of you that have never been to a game but live near an MLS team, you really can't get the same thrill of the game and energy that you can in the stadium. While the team, crowd, etc play a large part, the supporters groups really create the atmosphere. From the players that I talk to, they really give them a 12th man. Click to continue reading...

We comb the Internet for the soccer news so you don't have to. Here are several intriguing stories that caught our eye that we believe you'll be interested in reading:

• BBC News Presenter Revisits Hillsborough (BBC News). Mark Edwardson hadn't been back to Hillsborough since the first time he had seen the crush in 1989.

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While many attribute MLS's successes in marketing to Don Garber, the reality is that they are more the doing of Soccer United Marketing's executive Vice President Kathy Carter.

Somehow, with a small staff and big ambitions, she's made it work, especially for Major League Soccer.

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Former Brazil midfielder, Juninho Paulista, is close to signing a deal with Middlesbrough that could see him acting as the club's representative and scout in Latin America.

The 36-year-old had three spells at the club between 1995 and 2004. He retired from football after a season with Sydney FC last year.

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Continuing the long-winded look at all the reform ideas people are raising for MLS, here's a hypothetical schedule if MLS had an Apertura-Clausura schedule next year, an overwhelmingly busy international year thanks to World Cup qualifying and a couple of marginally important tournaments.
We'd set it up this way:

- The Apertura and Clausura winners both get automatic berths in the CONCACAF Champions League and MLS Cup berths.

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DC United is going to Africa. Instead of their usual shopping in Latin America, the club has gone in a different direction as of late. At the start of the season they signed Francis Doe (Libria) and a month ago they signed keeper Louis Crayton (Liberia). Now they are set to bring on two more Africans [. Click to continue reading...

In our world, death is inevitable. Except when you decide it's not. It took me 14 years to apply this perspective to my soccer fanaticism. Like many things that apply to soccer, it applies to real life as well. This may sound a bit dramatic, but what's soccer without a little drama? The story of my support for the Spanish national team begins and ends, as many stories do, with short gentlemen from Southern Europe sporting bad haircuts. Click to continue reading...

Freddy Adu did not develop well in MLS

We're constantly hammered with one side of the coin including Sunday at the conclusion of the US-Netherlands match on NBC by Marcelo Balboa: we hear constantly that Major League Soccer is responsible for the US being more competitive in major international tournaments.

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After a little more thought, I've just come up with two more books that I want to write.

1) A History of Cheating. There are so many ways to cheat in football. Players can break the rules, players can simulate.

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You hear that Guzan? In the near future you will not only be called on to stop shots, but prevent the furthering of Anti-American sentiment in Latin America and elsewhere. Hope you picked up some Spanish at Chivas USA cabrón. Click to continue reading...

If you've been following this blog or Latin American soccer you should be very familiar with the name Thiago Neves. The Fluminense midfielder notched a hat trick in the finale of the Copa Libertadores--ultimately in a losing cause, as his club lost to Ecuador's LDU Quito.

"Thiago is a 23 year old Brazilian attacking midfielder who was capped a few times by Brazil's Under 23 national team but somehow was never signed by a European club.

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Several U.S. media outlets this morning identified the Argentine defender rumored to be heading to the Galaxy for the last week or so as 29-year-old Huracan player Eduardo Dominguez, based, in turn, on several reports out of Latin America.

Galaxy officials declined comment when I inquired about Dominguez today, which is sometimes the same as a confirmation, so read into that what you will.

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...Ecuador's LDU Quito won the Copa Libertadores by virtue of a penalty kick shoot-out in Wednesday night's second leg of the finale. The Copa Libertadores, for the uninitiated, is almost certainly the second biggest club competition on the planet. Unfortunately, it doesn't get much coverage outside of South/Latin America. Click to continue reading...

The only thing more incredible than the fact that brother and sister Alexis and Amber Hernandez both play for youth national teams is the fact that both represent Mexico. The Hernandez siblings have lived their entire lives in California, but in the past year both have worn Mexico's famous tricolor. Children of a Mexican-born mother [. Click to continue reading...

The case of Chivas' Jesus Padilla is not the only example of a soccer team in Mexico struggling to define who is, in fact, Mexican. The national team has been embroiled in controversy for much the same reason. The previous national team boss, Argentine Ricardo Lavolpe, angered some in Mexico by using naturalized players for [. Click to continue reading...

What LA-based journalists Luis Bueno and Andrea Canales uncovered about Jesus Padilla was not that big a deal. Their reporting showed that Padilla, a young forward for Chivas of Mexico, was born in San Jose, Calffornia, not San Miguel de Alto in the Mexican state of Jalisco, as stated on the club's website. Click to continue reading...

Following up on my interview with Andrea Canales a few weeks ago, my interview with her fellow LA reporter Luis Bueno is up now on This is American Soccer (TIAS). Luis writes for Sports Illustrated, MLSNet.com, the Press-Enterprise, in addition to running his Sideline Views blog along with Andrea. Most of my conversation with Luis [. Click to continue reading...

When Kosovo declares independence on Sunday, the number of countries to have risen from the ashes of the former Yugoslavia will reach seven (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia being the other six). Kosovo's independence – supported by the US and many EU countries, but strongly opposed by Serbia, along with its [. Click to continue reading...