"Check that's not Jackie Chan, will you?" after one particularly high challenge in the African Cup of Nations (ACN) semi-finals. Ah yes. Gary O'Reilly was back on Eurosport. And welcome back too. However, the most telling comment of any international football tournament is "no goals against." And that's a quote from Cote D'Ivoire.

By THOMAS FLOYD

With Thursday's acquisition of Albanian striker Hamdi Salihi as their second Designated Player, D.C. United is making one thing abundantly clear: After spending the past few seasons breaking down and rebuilding an aging roster, this team is once again ready to win now.

Tottenham 1 Coulthirst 71′
Liverpool 0

The NextGen Series was always more important for the experience it would provide to Liverpool's talented youngsters than for the chance to win a trophy, and so in the end one can only consider a run to the quarter-finals after a testing group stage to have been a success.

Arsenal can confirm that Jack Wilshere has suffered a small stress fracture to the right foot which is in a different location to his original injury. He will be reassessed in two weeks by Arsenal's medical team. If all goes well (keeping fingers crossed), Wilshere might be back in time for Arsenal's Ides of March schedule.

photo by ISIphotos.com

By FRANCO PANIZO

In a week that saw several young and inexperienced players make their cases for more playing time on the U.S. men's national team, it was the veterans of the United States who shined brightly.

Landon Donovan was one of those players, as he inspired Everton to victory by setting up both of its goals in a 2-1 win over Fulham in the fourth round of the FA Cup on Friday.

It was a big night for the Missouri Comets as they set multiple records at the Independence Events Center in their 33-12 rout over the Syracuse Silver Knights. They set a team record for the largest margin of victory since the teams rebirth, with 21. They tied a league record with 3 players recording a hattrick (Byron Alvarez, Geison, and Vahid Assadpour).

Cold air, but sunny skies down at Starfire for the last split session training on the schedule. Session One, the younger players, saw 10v10 action. They needed a warm body to fill out the full 20, instead assistant coach Ezra Hendrickson (now on twitter) played as a left back in their three back set.

Double Doob boob Former Chelsea defender Michael Duberry could see the funny side of his eventful afternoon after Oxford emerged from their match against Hereford with a point from a 2-2 draw. Duberry claimed to have bagged the "imperfect hat-trick" after scoring with his left foot (og), header (og) and right foot.

Manchester United's 2-1 win over Arsenal at the Emirates yesterday is proving to be one really costly win. The Red Devils will be without 4 of their first team players as they won the first of 4 huge away games.

Rooney, Nani, Carrick and Jones are in danger of missing out on United's FA Cup away fixture to Liverpool on Saturday after the quartet suffered injuries during the game.

It was, in short, a poor afternoon. Let's just say our trip to Spain couldn't have come at a better time. More, after the jump:

Begging for Mercy

I'm a hazy mess. Well, not a mess per se. But, disappointed by what was without a doubt a toothless display of our ineffective style that sums up our season.

By Chris Wright

Oxford United's veteran centre-back Michael Duberry was in rare old form against Hereford yesterday afternoon, scoring the perfect hat-trick (one left, one right, one head) in his side's 2-2 draw at the Kassam.

You may have noticed that the maths doesn't quite add up there and with good reason.

Photo by Tracy Allen/ISIphotos.com

By DAVID GUBALA

The Chicago Fire will swap the crispy, cold ways of Chicago for the sunny rays of Ave Maria as they travel to Florida to officially kick off the preseason camp for their 15th season in Major League Soccer.

The U.S. team hit the turf inside The Home Depot Center stadium again today as it continues its prep for the CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament taking place entirely on artificial turf from Jan. 19-29 at BC Place in Vancouver.
All the U.S. matches will be televised live on the Universal Sports Network.

Liverpool will take a 1-0 advantage back to Anfield after defeating Manchester City in their Carling Cup semi-final on Wednesday.
A first-half penalty from Steven Gerrard was all that separated the sides at the Etihad Stadium after City defender Stefan Savic clumsily felled a charging Daniel Agger in the box.

John Nyen on Bolton's season and plight

Bolton's in the EPL "ER" right now...

There are 18 games left to save the season for Bolton Wanderers.

Saving they may need indeed, after momentarily sinking to just near the bottom of the table in the Barclay's Premier League.

Its been a while since I have posted anything remotely interesting so here is brief summary with all things that are annoying me in football these days
Roberto Mancini




I have a lot of respect for Roberto for the following reasons;
1) He was a brilliant striker
2) He brought madcap Mario Balotelli to England
3) No matter what the weather or situation he looks so suave in that scarf and coat you just cant help but admire his style (in a non homosexual way : but if you look at him that way thats no problem)
However, his recent whinge that he would struggle to fill his subs bench for the Man Utd game was simply laughable.

By Chris Wright

Well. That was all rather exciting wasn't it? Manchester United rushed into a three-nil lead against 10-man City at the Etihad in the third round of the FA Cup at the Etihad yesterday afternoon, only to have the frighteners put on them when City rallied and pulled two goals back during an intense second half.

Henry: "I just could not say no to Arsenal"The ongoing saga of finalizing Thierry Henry's two month loan to Arsenal reached its conclusion today when the Gunners announced that they had an agreement in place with the New York Red Bulls and MLS. The deal is intended to allow Arsenal to bridge the four to six week gap when Gervinho and Marouane Chamakh will be away on Africa Cup of Nations duty.

FC Barcelona firmly placed their right foot in the next round of Copa del Rey with a 4-0 victroy against Osasuna at the Camp Nou. Now unless a seriously bad loss happens in the return leg, we will be firm favorite to face either Malaga or Real madrid in next round. A frist half brace from cesc Fabregas put Barca on course for a easy victory.

Newcastle have moved on but Liverpool's Andy Carroll pines for home | Louise Taylor

Arguably Andy Carroll's biggest problem at Liverpool is that it is not Newcastle It is easy to imagine Andy Carroll driving alone in his car with I'm Coming Home Newcastle booming out of the sound system.

Five things we learned from the Boxing Day football | Jonathan Wilson

Dimitar Berbatov has still got it but Ashley Cole appears to be losing it and Andy Carroll is just unlucky Berbatov's still got it One of the sadnesses of modern football and the prevalence of large squads is the talent that does not get to play.

Robin van Persie is the son of a sculptor and a painter and his inherited creative genius shines through on the football pitch. Beginning his career at Excelsior Rotterdam, he moved on to Feyenoord and earned caps for the Dutch u19 and u21 teams.

Robin always dreamed of playing for his hometown club and then moving on to Arsenal or a small club in Catalonia to further his career.

Luis Suarez ensured Liverpool's season did not follow a familiar storyline, but it was another edgy afternoon at Anfield in a 1-0 victory over QPR.
The Uruguayan scored the only goal of the game when taking advantage of some slack marking to head the winner just two minutes after half-time.
However, it was far from a perfect afternoon for Kenny Dalglish's team, as the match looked set to follow a similar pattern to the frustrating stalemates against QPR's fellow newly-promoted sides, Norwich and Swansea.

Liverpool 1-0 Queens Park Rangers | Premier League match report

No controversy, no DVDs required and no work for the Football Association courtesy of Luis Suárez this weekend; just a decisive goal from him that brought three rare home points for Liverpool and spared them another interrogation into their forgotten art of finishing.

Last season was a mixed campaign for many Spurs players and Aaron Lennon was one of those who ended the year with his Spurs career seemingly at a crossroads.

The season was punctuated with brief highlights including his winner over Liverpool while the low points seemed to start with his late withdrawal from the side to face Real Madrid at the Bernabeu.

Liverpool loved Fernando Torres... now they rightly mock him

Torres had every attribute a Liverpool No 9 should possess. Strength, speed, ruthlessness and a right foot that could blast like a cannon. He was a force of nature, lively and worked tirelessly.

View the full story here: The Mail

A news article on 2011-11-30 22:44:26 from: The Mail

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

Welcome to "The Gents" with Stan Bentley - The Yorkies' regular advice column for our valued readers. Bring your modern day problems and have them answered by the most valued voice - a 1950's journeyman footballer. "Back of the net!"
Hi Stan,
My wife has a bad habit of making big decisions around our home without consulting me first.

Legendary Liverpool manager Bob Paisley once said of Ian Rush: "He couldn't score a goal to save his life and what little self confidence he had started to seep away". It seems hard to imagine now, but Rushie had trouble settling in at Anfield, and it took him 8 games to score his first goal for he club.

Nothing seems to be going so right for Sunderland at the moment, The Mackems created several chances before going down to a 1-2 loss in stoppage time from a miscommunication from the defender and the keeper. Featured player Nicklas Bendtner is still finding his feet in his new club, on his 10th appearance, He had a relatively quiet game yesterday, but played a part in Sunderland's first goal cutting back onto his right foot, before smashing a low effort that bounced up towards Al-Habsi, who fumbled it and it fell to Swedish midfielder Sebastian Larsson who smashed it in from close range.

Nothing seems to be going so right for Sunderland at the moment, The Mackems created several chances before going down to a 1-2 loss in stoppage time from a miscommunication from the defender and the keeper. Featured player Nicklas Bendtner is still finding his feet in his new club, on his 10th appearance, He had a relatively quiet game yesterday, but played a part in Sunderland's first goal cutting back onto his right foot, before smashing a low effort that bounced up towards Al-Habsi, who fumbled it and it fell to Swedish midfielder Sebastian Larsson who smashed it in from close range.

Thomas Vermaelen was the villain turned hero last night when he scored at both ends of the pitch to ensure Arsenal earned a point form their fixture against Fulham. The draw means that the Gunners remain in position 6 in the EPL table.

However, Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger had other reasons as to why his side performed the way they did.

This one's at the right end

The winning run came to an end. It was two points dropped on a day where Manchester United drew with Newcastle, where a win would allowed us to close the gap to these two team at the least. Sluggish is perhaps the best term to describe our performance last night.

Roberto Soldado grabbed three first-half goals to help Valencia thrash Genk 7-0 in a crucial result that kept alive the Spaniards' hopes of qualification for the last 16 of the Champions League.

Jonas Goncalves got an early opener before Soldado's solo show gave Valencia a 4-0 lead before the interval.

The second try turned out to be the charm for Bruce Arena and his Los Angeles Galaxy. Landon Donovan's outside right-foot finish past Tally Hall in the 72nd minute put the Galaxy on top for good. Keane picked up the ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com for the rest of the story.

Let's be honest here, it wasn't our best performance, but at Blackburn it was never going to be. There were boos at the end from the Ewood Park fans, but you have to hold your hands up and say on another day, they could have had at least a point.
AVB chose to bring Alex back into the starting line up next to JT with Ivanovic moving to right back in place of Bosingwa and for the most part it worked.

A high scoring game was not something that I had expected from a Chelsea-Arsenal derby match. Then again I had forgotten that Arsenal does not know how to defend this season nor did I remember that Chelsea has yet to keep a clean sheet this season. And so, we were treated to an eight-goal slugfest in which the Blues and the Gunners went after each other blow-for-blow until that defining John Terry slip.

In 1996 Olympic Games, Italy played its second game against Ghana. Both lost their first game 0-1: Ghana lost to South Korea and Italy to Mexico. It will be a definite disaster for the team that will lose this game. Italy had some great names like Gianluca Pagliuca, Alessandro Nesta, Fabio Cannavaro.

If you watch the following video and you don't know anything about Messi, you would never thought that this player is a left-footed footballer. This video is a collection for all Messi goals so far for Barcelona with his right foot:
In many occasions, the left footed players find it more difficult to use their weak foot compared to the right footed players.

Photo: Nicolae Stoian

Philadelphia Union v Houston

All time record: 2–0–2

At PPL Park: (2 meetings): Union 0–0–2, 2 goals. Dynamo 0–0–2, 2 goals

At Robertson Stadium (2 meetings): Union 2–0–0, 4 goals. Dynamo 0–2–0, 2 goals

In 2010

On May 29, 2010, the Union earned their first-ever win on the road as an expansion team against Houston.

Liverpool lost ground on the top four as their leaky defence and a failure to capitalize on numerous opportunities cost them victory at Anfield.
Kenny Dalglish's side hit the woodwork three times among several other chances but had only Craig Bellamy's late first-half goal against his former club to show for their efforts.