$2 million for a Summer of Soccer in 1960: several decades before Soccer United Marketing and others figured out the value of bringing Europe's best teams to play in North America during their summer breaks, New Yorker Bill Cox had already given it quite a shot with the International Soccer League.

New Yorker Devann Yao made his Belgian debut last night as his Division 2 team fell on the road to Ostende.

By Cesar Diaz - QUEENS, NY (Aug 3, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Ask a New Yorker to name a professional New York-area soccer club, the response you're more than likely to hear is the New York Red Bulls or the New York Cosmos. While the Red Bulls play in Major League Soccer, the New York Cosmos doesn't play in a league while looking to eventually join MLS as an expansion club.

New Yorker Devann Yao has landed on his feet in southern Belgium, signing this summer for Royal Boussu Dour Borinage of the country's second division.

Blackball the KemsmosIn what must be the most shameless piece of sport-fashion marketing, the Kemsley-Anomaly-Umbro partnership brings us their latest in the Cosmos collection, a celebration of the ... of the ... yes, it's true, of the '77 blackout. The Son of Sam sweatshirt will surely soon be available at your local soccer ship.

It seems to me there are three distinct types of football writing.
First, we have the straight-up, journalistic, newspaper style match-report. There are some intriguing variations on this approach, like Michael Cox's Zonal Marking with its intense tactical hermeneutics, or the florid style you might sometimes find in a strange place like the Mirror, incorporating all sorts of colourful, often mixed metaphors that end up featured in the opening pages of When Saturday Comes.

Fred Wilpon, the owner of the New York Mets, has been in the news a lot in the last year. Mostly, it's been due to Wilpon's connection with the Ponzi scheme ran by Bernard Madoff that has him being sued for $1 billion. However, Wilpon found a new way to get in the news by going on record to bash the team that he owns.

In the middle of this long New Yorker article about the impact of concussions on NFL players, there's a tiny paragraph about soccer with an interesting assertion:

Troy Polamalu suggested soccer as an alternative for squeamish fans. But soccer players collide sometimes, too (Taylor Twellman, a forward with the New England Revolution, recently retired because of ongoing symptoms from a neck injury sustained in 2008), and the ball is harder than you think.