Only a couple mainstream feminist blogs picked up on the Lambert story in the last few days. To be fair, they're dealing with other things at the moment. Sadly, they didn't offer a whole lot more to the discussion beyond what was already said here. Courtney at Feministing:

I didn't play soccer, but even I can see that this kind of play is straight up wrong and shouldn't be tolerated by refs, coaches, or teammates.

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Quote: His season with the Result (highlight to reveal): Galaxy has been similar to Alex Rodriguez's with the Yankees — short on drama and long on performance. Here's a fun game for you. Who is Jere Longman referring to in this sentence? I'd provide a link to Longman's New York Times article, but the answer is given in the link. Click to continue reading...

She did it!

Manchester United's Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen are the new parents of a healthy little baby boy named Kai Wayne Rooney at 13.45 this afternoon. We've not checked the exact dates, but we're quite sure Coleen was pregnant for several years.

Not possible? Really?

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She did it!

Manchester United's Wayne Rooney and his wife Coleen are the new parents of a healthy little baby boy named Kai Wayne Rooney at 13.45 this afternoon. We've not checked the exact dates, but we're quite sure Coleen was pregnant for several years.

Not possible? Really?

Click to continue reading...

I left the Bulldog early once the third goal went in and came home and ranted about everything that was wrong about the Rapids. The lack of decent media coverage, the fact that true fans often get shunted aside by the powers that be, you now, that kind of thing. But, because of some freaky results elsewhere, it seems to me, bizarrely, that the team is still in possible playoff contention. Click to continue reading...

You'd have thought that even the publicity junkie that is Sulaiman Al-Fahim would keep as low a profile as possible, after his dismal, embarrassing failures at Portsmouth, but no. Having done a round of self-justificatory chats with the UK press, who didn't balk at pointing out the flaws in every argument he put forward, he returned to the happier, compliant hunting ground of the Arabic press for his latest lecture to the masses.

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It started with a bang, got mired in controversy and then just kind of fizzled out amid a flurry of cards and whistles as the referee imposed himself more and more.
In many respects this game was more than just a title decider. It was a barometer of just how far the Thai Premier League has progressed over this season. Click to continue reading...

I didn't expect the Richard Whittall post to get the play it did, engendering considerable traffic, a long response from Whittall, and a wildly entertaining BA Duane & Bill Archer blood feud in the comments. It was like unlocking a secret area in a video game.
Naturally, I was interested in the response to my handiwork. Click to continue reading...

The couple links I bring tonight are all solid. In fact they each could have easily gotten their own posts had I not been working on other things today, including the ground work of a possible new design for this site (yeah that's a long ways off though). Still each are very interesting and deserve a full read if you haven't done so already.

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Major League Soccer

We've read for many years that a "traditional" calendar will never work in Major League Soccer. Stadium issues, weather and competition from other sports forces MLS to play over the summer.

After many years of defending that policy, I have to the realization that for once (and only once) Sepp Blatter may be on to something.

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IN FP's experience there are two types of surprises. One is the one we all want, the pleasant surprise, the surprise birthday present or it's equivalent.
Then there's the other type, the one you never want to hear about.
Unfortunately, Perth Glory fans got a dose of the other one yesterday. Click to continue reading...

The CONCACAF Champions League returns this week and next with Round 4 and 5 of the group stages. If you're like me, you realize that you have to search high and low for much media coverage on these games (there...

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Not Guilty!

You may have missed it, as the newspapers were keeping unsurprisingly quiet about that whole thing, but as it turns out those pesky Tottenham fans at Fratton Park who were vilified by the press for abusing Sol Campbell, well they had their cases thrown out of court. See below.

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The 2009 Highway Africa Conference, held recently at Port Elizabeth's new World Cup stadium (photo above), helped African media be better prepared to cover the 2010 World Cup, according to Guy Berger, head of Rhodes University's School of Journalism and Media Studies. African media should work to ensure that "coverage is not only focused on the glitz and glamour aspect of the World Cup," Berger said, "but must be extended to critical evaluation of socioeconomic consequences.

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Morning all, as you might expect, being in the depths of the Interlull, things are a bit quiet.

The club has officially responded to Eduardo's two match ban, saying:

We strongly believe that the decision taken is deeply flawed and not based on any forensic review of the video evidence available.

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It might strike some people as surprising that, whilst on a football pitch career-threatening tackles still happen, players needle one another constantly and bully referees, there remain some things that are considered extremely bad form. For example, to showboat when you are winning comfortably is considered arrogant and to humiliate an opponent in this way wrong.

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After getting to watch the first three matches of the season live and in person, it was difficult to adjust to the reality that I would have to miss tonight's match anainst Havant & Waterloooville FC. I knew absolutely I would not be able to go, but I still sneaked a look at the train times from Bath to Havant, and checked on Google Maps to see how far the ground was from the train station (1. Click to continue reading...

Kevin Payne and Tom Soehn face increasing questions about their handling of United's different competitions.
Here in Washington, August is a month of certainties:

• The weather will turn its most hot and humid
• The Redskins will open training camp to overkill media coverage (WHAT ARE THEY EATING?

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CONCACAF Champions League may be hanging by a thread but there's no reason not to check out the TFC Media League! The Yorkies' league, which tracks the quality of local media coverage of TFC, is heating up! The Toronto Sun takes a slim lead this round, pipping its arch rival the Star by 1 point. The mid table is tight and "The Teds" aka Rogers Sportsnet along with The Fan 590 had strong showings. Click to continue reading...

A report by the Commission on the Future of Women's Sport which the BBC's Gordon Farquhar blogged about earlier this month points out that just 2% of media coverage on elite sport focuses on women. Now I first got into writing about football by following one of my best friend's journeys through the matches, tournaments and politics of women's football in Oxford.

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From www.usopencup.com:

Since 2003, USOpenCup.com has been the only place fans have gone to get in-depth information about one of the best kept secrets in not just in American Soccer, but in American Sports: the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. While the site is not affiliated with theUnited States Soccer Federation (USSF) in any way, it has always been approached professionally, in an effort to fill the void in media coverage for this great tournament.

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On 26 October the IRA bombed a fast food restaurant in London's Oxford Street. This came just two weeks after another London bombing in the Victoria area. And yet on the 31 October Arsenal played Coventry as a full round of fixtures were played throughout the country.
Having lived through the years when the IRA tried to bomb the living crap out of my country, and this is just a list of the London tragedies, I have always been slightly amused when I am asked whether of not I am scared living in Jakarta. Click to continue reading...

You wouldn't know it from the absolute lack of media coverage in the UK, but the CONCACAF Gold Cup - North & Central America's equivalent of the European Championships - is currently being played out in the USA, and one of the minor surprises of the competition so far has been the progress of the Canadian national team, who have comfortably qualified for the quarter-finals with two wins from their three group matches against Jamaica and El Salvador.

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How bad, then, is the situation at Liverpool? KPMG's report on their current financial position makes for worrying reading for the club's supporters, though there is a case for saying that there are elements of the media coverage of the report which are focusing on the most sensationalist aspects of the report, but none of this means that the comments that "significant doubt on the group's and parent company's ability to continue as a going concern" weren't made, or that there weren't sound reasons for them being made.

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Well you'd have to think the interest in the game will continue to rise and unlike last time where we went in with some significant debt, you'd imagine with sponsor contracts already locked in and a long lead time, plus a couple of home humdinger friendlies the FFA could make a tidy sum.
And of course we must make the 2011 Asia Cup for the benefit of our 2014 players and there is a bit of work still to be done on that front. Click to continue reading...

The U.S. Men's National Team will be taking on Costa Rica in a World Cup Qualifier Wednesday June 3rd at 8pm mountain time. The game will be played in Costa Rica but it will be live on ESPN. So definitely put that in your schedule and watch it!

Below are a few of the videos US Soccer has been putting out leading up to the game.

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Join or Die: Philly Union Prez Has Big Plans
In a candid and very interesting interview over on Goal.com ,John Mantia recently spoke with Tom Veit, President of the Philadelphia Union. In it, Veit admits they are looking to become not just a continental power but a hemispheric one.
Here is an excerpt:

With 11 months to go before opening day, there remans an ever-critical challenge for Veit and his staff: "We need to continue to show the Philadelphia market who we are.

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So forgive me, if for once, I choose to not talk about Hull and rather focus the gist of my piece on Barcelona instead.

I received an email from Craig Murray (if you haven't heard of Craig Murray, here's his Wikipedia page), who sent me a link to a disturbing image and article centered around Barcelona a club, he purports, supports a fascist dictatorship.

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My goodness, you take three weeks off in order to deal with death and loss and an alteration to new realities, and the fake world of football continues to astonish.
And, en masse...
Welcome to our Mega-Neo-Hyper-Twitter.
The cumulative impact of this post shows what a charade the footballing world has become - by including all this nonsense in just one post, it demonstrates the massive wave of rubbish that you are all being continually fed by what is laughingly called the mainstream media. Click to continue reading...

Fellow USL-1 blogger Brian Quarstad of Inside Minnesota Soccer continues his work to fill the void in USL media coverage.
In addition to writing the weekly USL review that I've mentioned previously, Brian also came up with the idea to put together a league-wide, team-by-team season preview. Click to continue reading...

A quick, but not so dirty post for you this weekend. I've included the a couple of stories below that caught my attention during the past two days. Jim Donaldson (Providence Journal) Pats treat injuries like state secrets Kieran Darcy (espn.com): Chase Hilgenbrinck From the pitch to the priesthood Have a great weekend. Click to continue reading...

Anthony Hatton is organising the Canberra A-League fans trip to Sydney v Perth on December the 21st.
T-Shirts, match tickets, travel to and from, Anthony's organised the lot for $85.
Within 30 minutes he's filled a 50 seater bus and got two potential sponsors!!!
How many other clubs could boast such support two years out for a team that doesn't exist. Click to continue reading...

Well season four of the A-league has finally kicked off. I can't say the build up to the first match was exactly electrifying. The media coverage has been bordering on nonexistent and with the FFA seemingly focussed on the expansion of the league next year it has left the start of the season feeling very flat. Click to continue reading...

After the Championship play-off final all media coverage fell upon one man: Dean Windass. Heaps of praise for the player who had scored such a fantastic winning goal for his home club was tempered by equal amounts of press coverage scorn on the idea of a 40 year old striker in the Premier League.
The fact that Dean is only going to get a bit part role makes no matter to these journalists, the thought of the big man in the league is little more than a joke. Click to continue reading...

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Another thing to get used to: All the media coverage of QPR! Again references to the involvement of Briatore and the pressures on Dowie
The Guardian/Mark Tallentine - Dowie waving not drowning at new-look QPR
The ambition of Flavio Briatore is not in question and a close-season refit of the ageing stadium which has provided a big screen, padded seats, swish hospitality units and a bumper-sized directors' box with overspill area for the entourages of the fabulously wealthy owners only add to the view that QPR can buy their way to promotion. Click to continue reading...