Xabi Alonso strokes his beard whilst mulling over his team's chances of winning this weekend's El Clasico.

It's going to be a big, contentious weekend of footy, we can feel it.

Short on time or interest to catch all the action as it happens? Yeah, we can feel that too.

There is a solve, though, that we've never explored before.

Self-confidence, it would seem, is something Alex Ferguson has never lacked. Full of ambition, the Scot declared in his first programme notes as Manchester United manager: "I am not really interested in what has happened here in the past. I don't mean any disrespect to the great achievements of Manchester United over the years.

Self-confidence, it would seem, is something Alex Ferguson has never lacked. Full of ambition, the Scot declared in his first programme notes as Manchester United manager: "I am not really interested in what has happened here in the past. I don't mean any disrespect to the great achievements of Manchester United over the years.

I know the Portland v. LA match happened at least a month ago but this video just now popped up on Vimeo --home of the most elegant and art-damaged footy clips around--so I'm going to bring up old sh*t for a minute. Please pardon me for the rewind but this video from Cody Liesinger is worth the 1.

And really, you could replace "football pundritry" with "soccer blogging," replace all the pundits listed with your favorite writers, and the piece still works:

The best way to comprehend football is to sit in a stand with the whole pitch laid before you and immerse yourself for 90 minutes.

• The situation at the bottom of the table ahead of the final matchday. (Bundesliga Talk)
• Best bit of skill seen at Hamburg's ground for quite a while. (Dirty Tackle)
• St. Pauli spent 90 minutes on stranger tides and now return to known waters. (Guardian)
• The quiet comeback of Kaiserslautern.

• Manu vs ManU. (101GreatGoals)
• Slightly outdated but still very much worth reading: Sid Lowe interviews Raul. (Guardian)
• Bundesliga Rewind looks back at one of Eintracht Frankfurt's finest 90 minutes. (Bundesliga Fanatic)
• Looking for the method behind the Bundesliga's managerial madness.

With a Champions' League semi-final with Schalke 04 impending, we look back at a modern classic at the same stage of this competition; a game where Manchester United displayed their brand of blistering counter-attacking football for all of Europe to see Arsenal being the victims that day, perishing to a 3-1 defeat.

• St. Pauli has some soul searching to do. (Twohundredpercent)
• Bundesliga Rewind looks back at one of the most famous 1970's clashes between Borussia Mönchengladbach and Bayern Munich. (Bundesliga Fanatic)
• Nobody cares about Rot-Weiss Oberhausen, except for Patrick. (ESPN Soccernet)
• The former #1 of Lower Saxony finally returns to the 2.

So the first day of preseason is in the books, and unfortunately I was unable to make it. This blog doesn't pay the bills so I was at work while preseason was going on. But the rest of the KC soccer blogosphere was there today and there is plenty of information that you can look at. I doubt I'll be able to make it out to a practice before the team heads down to Arizona, but there is certainly plenty to look over.