Dynamo News

• Deric arrested after bar fight (Houston Chronicle)
• Rookie Rolfe here to improve (Houston Chronicle)
• Competition for Dynamo rookies about to take a major step up (MLS Soccer)
• Canetti takes you around BBVA Compass Stadium (Houston Dynamo)
• Cameron is back at Camp (Houston Dynamo)
• Monday Training Notes (Glenn Davis Soccer)

In Other News

• From the mind of The Ginge: The Galaxy, Parity, and Omar (WS Reader)
• Juninho coming back to LA (MLS Soccer)

Tweet(s) Of The Day

Soccer Matters Ironman @HermannHospital and @HoustonDynamo All Access tonight on @SportsTalk790 at 8pm cst

-@GlennDavisSoc

Why is our backup goalkeeper getting arrested for assault in a bar?

With the NBA schedule in fult tilt since Christmas, the season has never seemed this action-packed. The reason is because the games are coming closer together and delivered faster to consumers.
There is more back-to-back scheduling for teams than other years, meaning they play two nights in a row and some back-to-back-to-back, meaning they play three nights in a row at times throughout the season, as well.

It is looking more and more likely that Real Madrid will walk away with the La Liga title this season. A 3-1 win over Real Zaragoza at the Santiago Bernabeu yesterday coupled with Barcelona's barren draw with relegation threatened Villarreal pushed them 7 points clear at the top of the table.

A Flock of Seagulls had better hair than a herd of Swans. "I'm not afraid any more." -- Kevin McAllister. Is there parity in the (English) Premier League in 2011-12? Should it matter? Do we care? Do we even want it? Here's some evidence for parity, using the old "Big Four" prism, with Manchester City replacing Liverpool.

The KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup) clash between Ajax Amsterdam and AZ Alkmaar, which was suspended due to an attack on AZ keeper Esteban Alvarado in the initial encounter, was completed today in the Amsterdam ArenA with the home side going down to a 3-2 defeat.

Siem de Jong gave Ajax the lead as early as the 10th minute only for the visitors to restore parity fourteen minutes later through Maarten Martins.

Arsenal were dealt yet another blow in their bid for a top four finish as a dismal 3-2 defeat away to Swansea City leaves Arsene Wenger's men with a lot of work ahead of them.

Goals from Scott Sinclair (penalty), Nathan Dyer, and Danny Graham ensured that the Swans overcome impressive goals from Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott either side of the interval.

The defender had been set to move to Chelsea for a fee rumoured to be around the £7 million mark. Complications began when personal terms were discussed. It appears that Gary Cahill's representatives believed the player was worthy of a far more lucrative contract than Chelsea were willing to offer him.

It's a common refrain from Seattle Sounders fans that the ownership of this team is profit-taking, or not adequately investing in player payroll. Whether these conversations occur here, on various message boards, over twitter or even through the most submitted question to not be answered at the End of Year Meeting it may be the most common negative thought surrounding the team.

Will Uganda repeat their 2009 CECAFA Cup heroics this year?

Record champions Uganda are through to the final of the CECAFA Cup, a competition for countries from Central and East Africa, following an extra-time victory over outgoing champions and tournament hosts Tanzania today. Uganda will face Rwanda in the final after the latter triumphed over Sudan in the other semi-final also played today.

Moroccan side MAS Fez have won the 2011 CAF Confederation Cup after a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Tunisians Club Africain.

The Moroccans, who trailed 1-0 from the first leg, restored parity on aggregate in today's return fixture thanks to Moussa Tigana's goal three minutes into first half stoppage time.

Well it's November and that means Halloween is behind us. Still, October was a fantastic month in MLS that offered us a fantastic finale to the league where matches truly mattered and we saw Wild-Card matches where the fates of teams were decided. In less than a month we will have a new champion and with that a new off season.

So the playoffs are impending, and it hasn't escaped notice that the way it worked out this year is just plain wrong. Playoffs, however, are here to stay and especially because schedules are likely to become unbalanced. So how do we set up playoffs so that playing better is always rewarded?

In my opinion, the biggest problem with the playoff system as it stands is what this year's playoffs highlight: the possibility that superior teams will face off prematurely, thereby eliminating better teams while inferior teams skate by against equally inferior opposition.

During tonight's MLS Playoff match between the New York Red Bulls and FC Dallas, the "Curse of CONCACAF Champions League" was brought up. FC Dallas has had to play more matches than NYRB this season and came into the match looking a bit fatigued. Since the CONCACAF version isn't as lucrative as the European version, it is getting the reputation as being a drain on teams.

There are good road teams, and then there are great road teams. In a league so well known for its parity a common practice for teams is to tie on the road and win at home. When the Seattle Sounders travel to Sandy, Utah to take on Real Salt Lake they will defy convention and go for the win. In a two leg series it isn't necessary to win the away leg.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

It was as poor a performance as we've seen from the Philadelphia Union this season against a New York team that, with rare exceptions, did not look at all good.

With the obvious exception of the number of goals, when looking at the match statistics, there appears to be as much parity to be found as there is advantage.

The question of how to divide international television rights and just what's fair is, at the end of the day, hugely complex. It touches on dozens of other issues that effect league parity and directly mirrors a much older debate about the sharing of gate revenue. There's greed and self-preservation behind every corner, and it's all set against the backdrop of a thoroughly broken system that nobody seems especially interested in fixing in any meaningful way.

The Premier League approaches television rights negotiations as a collective, seeking the best price for all the leauge's clubs and then sharing the resulting revenue, for the most part, equally. And late on Tuesday, it became clear that Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre intended to lead a fight to destroy that system.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure that when Don Garber gave the greenlight for the league's current playoff system, he didn't honestly envision that 17 teams would remain mathematically alive for the postseason on September 29th.

Think about that for a second. In addition to Seattle, Salt Lake, and Dallas, the five-win Revolution, six-win Toronto, and six-win San Jose, despite their horrid records and overwhelmingly disappointing form this season, are all eligible for the playoffs right now.

Who said kickers aren't real football players. On Monday Night Football, the Dallas Cowboys won thanks to their sure-footed kicker. Dan Bailey was 6-for-6 on field goals to lift the Cowboys to an 18-16 victory over the Washington Redskins.

Said Bailey: "We had good snaps, good holds, great protection.

Canadian author James Grossi writes for The Blizzard and at his blog, Partially Obstructed View.

As MLS grows towards its twentieth club in the coming years there is a risk of losing the balanced schedule. Comments by Commissioner Don Garber intimated that perhaps such a pure form would have to be set aside in order to accommodate the expanded league.

By KEITH HICKEY

Union right back Sheanon Williams will miss Friday's game against Sporting Kansas City after picking up a concussion. The injury to Williams, who had previously missed just one match this season, was reported by Philly.com and is listed on the official injury report, but the club has yet to make an official statement.

The Turkish Süper Lig has finally got under way over the last weekend following extensive investigations into match-fixing. Last season's champions Fenerbahçe scraped a 1-0 home win against Ordurspor last night whilst both of their arch-rivals Beşiktaş and Galatasaray experienced losing starts to the campaign going down to Eskişehirspor and Istanbul BB respectively.

By J Hutcherson - WASHINGTON, DC (Sep 12, 2011) US Soccer Players -- It's easy enough to blame things on Major League Soccer's peculiar version of parity. Why the need for the qualifier? Because MLS has managed to create a system that doesn't necessarily reward taking advantage of the rules that allow clubs to spend on talent.

The first Eternal Derby of the season occurred in Croatia this weekend with Hajduk Split succeeding in their quest to be the first team to ruin Dinamo Zagreb's 100% winning record. The arch-rivals played out a 1-1 draw at Split's Poljud Stadion with the home side able to pick up a point despite playing the majority of the match with ten men.

What times to be a Hibs supporter.
Bottom of the league, a manager who has become a toxic brand, sections of the support ever more alienated from the vision the board have for the club. And sections of the support who are consistently voting with their feet.
A demonstration is planned before today's game with second bottom Aberdeen.

A wonder goal from Johnny Black helped Coleraine FC win their latest match at home to Portadown FC in the Northern Ireland Premiership.

His goal helped restore parity to the game after the visitors took the lead through Kevin Braniff in the fifth minute of the game. Following Black's wonder goal in the 17th minute Tim Mouncey put Portadown back in front with just three minutes of the first half remaining only for the home side to equalize in stoppage time through Shane Jennings.

If you want to wait until the very end of your 2011 fantasy football draft to select your kicker, that's probably a good idea. There is so much parity in kickers especially this year that the quality isn't going to dip very far. In fact, you may strike gold with one of these sleeper kickers in 2011:

David Buehler, Dallas Cowboys
David Buehler may have the strongest leg in the NFL.

With lots of transfers happening across borders these days, it's hard to know exactly how the leagues compare. Numbers can help with that sort of thing, but of course, they have their limits. We know that some leagues are better than others, and we know that leagues differ in other ways like parity as well.

New Anzhi Makhachkala signing Samuel Eto'o has made an instant impact for his new club by scoring the equalizer in a 1-1 draw away at FK Rostov.

The signing of the Cameroonian international has raised many eyebrows throughout the world of football especially given the huge wages that he is reported to be earning, something akin to 20 million euros a year.

Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz

On Wednesday we posted an article looking at how the Union has scored its goals at home and on the road and how its opponents have scored on them. Today we take a look at how the Union scores its goals and is scored upon compared to the rest of the league.

Listen.

I sat down at the keyboard last night and stared at the screen. Nothing. I just couldn't get jazzed to write a reaction piece. Some of that was because I could copy and paste many of my prior talking points. Some was because the match was pretty dull.

But the main reason was because the result was so infuriatingly predictable.

There's this four-letter word many pundits has linked with the Eastern Conference of MLS ...

WEAK.

I'll let that sink in for a minute.

Weak.

But compared to what exactly, the Western Conference? For a league that is based upon parity and currently utilizes a balanced schedule, there isn't much of an advantage given to any one particular club.

The first leg of the 2011 Spanish Super Cup took place in the capital city of Madrid last night with those two arch-rivals Real Madrid and FC Barcelona doing battle once more. After five Clásico meetings last season one would imagine that these two giants of world football would be sick of the sight of each other by now.

By Neil Blackmon

Will United add another to the case this year?

Part I Part II Part III

Toe met stiching this past weekend in the Barclay's Premier League, and we've now seen an opening weekend lacking quality, or at the very least, entertaining football and devoid of a home side claiming full points.

The Super Copa 1st leg between the two behemoths made the Community Shield seem glacial in comparison.

This is it, the two best clubs in the world going mano e mano. Within all the histrionics and the grandstanding was a heads up play by Karim Benzema resulting in a Mesut Oezil goal followed by a gem of an equalizer by David Villa.

More trouble newbartonincident by arsenalist Never one to knowingly keep his head down, Joey Barton was in the thick of things in this evening's match between Newcastle and Arsenal. After Alex Song should have been dismissed for a stamp on Barton which the match officials missed, Barton decided to correct the unfair numerical parity by [.

Hot on the heels of Thierry Henry's grasp of the MLS business model comes a nice piece by Nicolino DiBenedetto on how the salary structure of MLS helps it maintain a parity band with a lot of upward mobility:

"In the rest of the world, to a very large extent, it reduces itself to who is spending the most money, and in our world that's not an indication of skill," [Todd Durbin, MLS' executive vice president for competition, labor and player relations] added.

By Chris Wright

It's Sunday morning so I'll keep this brief: Manchester United ensured they ended their pre-season tour of Yankland with a 5-for-5 record by beating Barcelona 2-1 in front of nearly 82,000 fans in Washington DC last night.

United went ahead in the 22nd minute when Nani poked a shot in off Victor Valdes' gooch only to see their lead pegged back by a peachy strike from Thiago Alcantara in the 70th minute.

By Michael Lewis – NEW YORK, NY (Jul 21, 2011) US Soccer Players -- Ties! Ties! Ties! You would think it was Father's Day, but that was last month. Or that Major League Soccer was having its ultimate parity dream - every game on the schedule ending even. Once again, we're seeing an MLS season where not winning is becoming the story.

Was there a picture after the game of President Obama screaming and throwing furniture around while his wife and children looked on horrified?
No? That was just in my house? Okay.
Looking at the US after the game really gave me an insight on how China felt twelve years ago. I thought Hope Solo was going to kill someone, and then we saw her getting consoled by fans - presumably relatives, but if not, that's not surprising.