With the Hawthorne-based American Youth Soccer Organization cranking up its season, the nonprofit group has released a video expousing its positive, "everybody plays" philosophy aimed at parents whose kids have just started playing.

With AYSO increasingly becoming as much a part of America's fall culture as college pointy-ball football, this should be mandatory viewing for parents.

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Former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho has fired a shot at his old striker Andriy Shevchenko by saying that he failed at Chelsea because he was too used to being treated like a prince at AC Milan. Mourinho, now manager at Inter, wasted no time in making his comments about his City rival's new signing. Click to continue reading...

The lone American goal scorer from World Cup 2006 now has consistently played so poorly for the national team if the opponent is not Barbados, that his presence seems to actually help stagnate the side. Dempsey's last good performance for the National Team against a decent opponent was last October in Switzerland.

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Lampard signs new five year deal

Chelsea Football Club is delighted to announce today (Wednesday, August 13) that Frank Lampard has signed a new five year contract.

The new deal will keep Lampard at the club until the end of the 2013-14 season.

Lampard said: 'I want to finish my career at Chelsea. Click to continue reading...

Morning.

A 3-2 win over Ajax last night. That's good, eh? Oh wait. It's not good. Or something. I must confess I've only seen highlights but from what I've read it seems Adebayor missed 76 chances in the first half, we still can't defend, our midfield is light and we're all going to die.

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Galaxy central defender Abel Xavier did not mince words on the club that waived him today:

``There's a shift-the-wind philosophy (here). Many players feel the same way but because they are not secure in their contract, they are afraid to say what they think.''

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Ramos was quoted in the press yesterday basically saying every player has their price, especially those approaching 30.

"At Tottenham, we have had a clear philosophy regarding buying and selling for years. The idea is signing young players, promising and talented ones, and if important offers for older players are made, studying it to see what is the best for the club. Click to continue reading...

Miguel Angel Russo has given his first press conference as manager of San Lorenzo, setting out the philosophy he'll be approaching the next season with, which for the most part, sensibly enough, involves keeping the current squad together. He revealed his only transfer target was Olympiakos midfielder Cristian Ledesma, and declared that he would be aiming [. Click to continue reading...

After my last post, I was pretty bummed out to see that the comments degraded from intelligent dialogue to another excuse to slam Hicks and Gillette. I know that there are supporters groups that want them out. I know that there are supporters that are planning to boycott matches and buying official club merchandise in a bid to hurt the club financially to the point that the current owners have to sell.

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At the Euros 2004 in Portugal, the Greek national team finished second in their group and won the last three matches of the tournament with 1-0 victories to clinch the trophy. And so began Europe's love affair with an arguably catenaccio-type philosophy. Jose Mourinho did it best, and his out-sized persona did well to mask an often unexciting preference in tactics. Click to continue reading...

Perhaps getting knocked around by by a 10-foot-tall Brazilian at the Pan-Pacifics (just how big a guy is Bare anyway?) has me just a little bit whack right about now, but it got me to thinking that this, along with Soccer Made in Germany, was my very first exposure to the game (which probably explains a lot). Click to continue reading...

Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs) are a post-modernist artifice in which a traditional betting environment has had its modern objects liberated from their original function. This new infrastructure exists within the societal scam that is British bookmaking but the purpose of the modernity of the environment is to optimise the returns to the bookmakers by utilising a range of post-modernist and/or psychological devices. Click to continue reading...

The festive tyrannies of fun precede the oncoming recession and celebrations will accordingly have a more manic and histrionic feel to them this year as there is a general perception that things can only get worser.
Via two posts, we will attempt to really depress you about the state of the planet and the global economic system prior to demonstrating that the gambling sector is one of the few to benefit from periods of recessionary pressures and, consequently, is a prime area of focus for creative trading strategies during such windows in the business cycle. Click to continue reading...

Old Soccer Guy posted an interesting article back in July as he was just ramping up his U13 Girls team. I had hoped to write about it before now, but never got a chance with my own team getting started. He was torn between the need to develop all your players, possibly at the expense of [...] Click to continue reading...