A whole gaggle of interesting matches to watch this weekend. We've chosen a handful each on Saturday and Sunday, including the quarterfinals of the African Cup of Nations, a couple each from the big leagues (Premier League, including Chelsea-ManUtd; Serie A, highlighted by AC Milan-Napoli; La Liga the one we're most interested in is Atletico Madrid-Valencia), plus a few wild cards (e.

There's a whole slate of FA Cup 4th Round matches this weekend, kicked off by a match today that is especially interesting for viewers on this side of the pond. Everton hosts Fulham, which means it's also a faceoff of the two best American players of this generation: Landon Donovan vs. Clint Demspey.

None of today's matches are necessarily must-see; but if you must watch some football, here's what we recommend:

Saturday, Jan 21

England, Norwich-Chelsea (7:30amET ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Norwich (and Swansea) have attracted attention as newly-promoted sides that have fought their way into the top half the table.

None of today's matches are necessarily must-see; but if you must watch some football, here's what we recommend:

Saturday, Jan 21

Chelsea's new Catalonian Makélelé?

England, Norwich-Chelsea (7:30amET ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Norwich (and Swansea) have attracted attention as newly-promoted sides that have fought their way into the top half the table.

Photo: Paul Rudderow

With the release of the Union's 2012 regular season schedule, I, along with my colleagues at the PSP, am buzzing about the prospects of the new season. Just 66 more days (stupid leap year) until the Union take the pitch in Portland to get Year Three underway. In the meantime, now that MLS has thrown out last year's balanced schedule (take that purists) we have plenty to talk about with respect to the construction of the 2012 Union schedule.

The big story of the day is of course our new coach, but I wanted to throw some notes about the schedule out first.
Teams we play at home only:
Columbus (season opener)
Chicago
KC
Montreal
Houston (season finale)
Teams we play on the road only:
Toronto
Philly
DC
NY
New England (no Jameson's night this year)
Teams we play at home twice and on the road once:
Portland
LA
Chivas
San Jose
Teams we play on the road twice and once at home:
Vancouver
Seattle
FSL
Dallas
So FSL has the edge in this year's Rocky Mountain Cup, which will be decided by August, the earliest ever.

Today MLS released the 2012 MLS schedule with the new unbalanced format. The full schedule is at the end of the post, but here are some thoughts and information on the schedule.
KC opens the season on the 10th of March against DC, it's the 7th time in KC's history that they've opened against DC.

More detail tonight, but two quick notes.
The 2012 schedule was released, see it here.
President Tim Hinchey tweeted that there's a 3pm press conference to unveil Pareja as our coach and he tweeted a picture of Pareja signing his contract.

It sounds like we won't have to wait much longer for the 2012 MLS schedule to come out. It seems that the league has the schedule finalized and will be putting it out hopefully later this week. KC is set to have their home opener on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, other than that, the schedule isn't really known.

Who knew there's a full slate of games in the Premier League, Serie A, Ligue 1, Spain (Copa del Rey)? Though to tell the truth, not a whole lot of must-see TV today. Actually the one match today that we will try to watch just kicked off, so this will have to be a very quick post:

Udinese-Juventus at Stadio Communale Friuli (12pmET, Fox Soccer Channel, RAI Internazionale, ESPN3 USA, FOX Deportes): 3rd vs 2nd Udinese with 31 points, two behind Juve, who are in turn a point behind table-toppers Milan.

D.C. United will play its first match at home on March 10, 2012 with a yet to be determined opponent.

MLS has come out today with the schedule and playoff format for the 2012 season, and already the Twitterverse has blown up about it. As expected, gone is the balanced schedule of playing each team home and away. Back is the conference heavy schedule designed to cut down on travel for most teams (save Houston who is still separated from Dallas and will now play their closest rival only once next year).

Out of wide array of matches being played and televised today (a bunch of international friendlies, a few South American World Cup qualifying matches, and the final four qualifying playoff matches for Euro 2012), the one to watch is a friendly in Hamburg:

Germany-Netherlands (2:30pmET, ESPN Classic, ESPN3.

Today MLS commissioner Don Garber held his State of the League address. Two of the main topics were were the schedule for the 2012 season and the league's 20th franchise.
In regards to the schedule, Garber said that the league will not expand the number of games played. There will be 34 games for each team next season, which means we've seen the end of the balanced schedule.

"El 'loco' que Pep lleva dentro"

We've been remiss in posting our weekend TV guides the past couple weeks. This weekend we offer a belated and truncated version, consisting of a single match that's kicking off in just a few hours: La Liga's late match on Sunday, Athletic Bilbao hosting FC Barcelona, kicking off at 8pm in "la Catedral de futbol" Estadio San Mamés (which corresponds to 2pmET; televised in the US on ESPN Deportes, and also available via ESPN3.

Gerrard & Anderson: Facing off in midfield again today?

We choose a handful of matches to tune in for, out of the hundreds being televised this weekend, highighted by the early kickoff today at Anfield:

Saturday, Oct 15

England, Liverpool vs Manchester United (7:30amET; ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.

[Editor's note: Today is the final day of the qualifying round for Euro 2012. John Lally provides us with a rundown of which of today's 22 fixtures actually matter for qualification. Click through the "Group X" headings to see the group standings on UEFA's site, click thru the hyperlinked fixtures for further TV info and match previews on livesoccertv.

Another interlull upon us no club matches, as the top players are jetting around to join their national sides. There's a full and relatively interesting slate of Euro2012 qualifiers, given the that qualifying group stage finally wraps up on Tuesday: 20 fixtures today, out of which we've picked 5 to keep an eye on, and then 22 more on Tuesday.

A report out of Toronto indicates that MLS fans had better get their overcoats ready for First Kick 2012. Duane Rollins reports that Toronto FC executives told a fan gathering that they expect the MLS season to begin Saturday, March ...
Visit http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com for the rest of the story.

Belatedly posting our guide to today's matches to watch. In fact, the first match is already in progress it's 1-1 at halftime in Eindhoven, where PSV is hosting Ajax:

Sunday, Sept 18

Netherlands, PSV-Ajax 6:30aET (ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): We said it last year, and we'll say it again: if you're only going to watch one Eredivisie match all year, might as well be this one.

Subscribing as we do the just-in-time philosophy, here's your weekend TV guide for today's matches, with the first one kicking off in 15 minutes at Ewood Park. Check back tomorrow morning for Sunday's picks.

(As usual, we've included US TV coverage, and listed kickoff times in terms of ET.

Balls Out for the UEFA Champions League

Tues 13 September 2011

Group E:

Chelsea-Leverkusen (Stadium: Stamford Bridge, London): The Blues should win at home, despite not being quite settled: seems like they're still adjusting to new manager Andre Villas-Boas, the Fernando Torres situation is still unclear, especially after AVB sat him for the entire match over the weekend; and it's same old guys at the core of the squad (Frank Lampard, John Terry, Ashley Cole).

De Silvestri of Lazio vs Pato of Milan (Stadio Olimpico in Roma, 1 Feb 2009). (Photo by New Press/Getty Images)"

We've been persusing this weekend's list of televised matches and we're coming across a lot to recommend. So as we continue whittling down the list for Saturday and Sunday, here are two matches today that you might tune in for.

Today the Missouri Comets and the MISL released their schedule for this season. The 24 game season sees Missouri host the Wichita Wings 3 times while playing in Wichita 3 times. The Comets will host conference rival Milwaukee twice at the Independence Events Center, playing in Milwaukee once. They'll play Chicago only once at the IEC.

We'll be back soon with an account of what we watched this past weekend, but first there are two matches later today that are worthy of your attention:

Monday, August 22

Gamper Trophy (friendly), Barcelona-Napoli (2:30pmET, ESPN3.com):

This is an annual pre-season friendly hosted by Barcelona each August, named after Joan (nee Hans) Gamper a Swiss player and businessman, and founding member of FC Zurich.

It was shaping up to be a packed weekend, with some interesting EPL matchups and the start of the La Liga season in Spain. But alas, Spanish football is still in shambles, with the players on strike over unpaid wages. Hopefully that will be resolved over the coming week so that we'll see those interesting fixtures next weekend.

Sporting KC announced that the start time for next Sunday's game vs DC United at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park has been changed. The game has been moved from starting at 6pm to 7:30pm. The game was originally supposed to be on Galavision, but with the game being moved it will no longer be on the Spanish channel.

This week the 2011-2012 Fixture Schedule for Serie A was released, and I have it laid out below for your reference (granted there may be some changes due to weather etc.)
The season starts in less then a month on the weekend of August 28, 2011 and will end on the weekend of May 13, 2012.

spanish football Full SPANISH FOOTBALL LEAGUE Schedule/Calendar ( image ) for season 2011 - 2012. Click the image to get a larger size that should satisfy most requests coming in via e-mail of punters wishing to get all the matches at a glance. Its in Spanish, but its all very intuitive to figure out & to follow.

Spanish Sports The SPANISH FOOTBALL LEAGUE celebrated the teams match-up schedule/draw today for LA LIGA ( all games from Round 1 until Round 38) season 2011 - 2012. Here is a summary of the important dates & the dates down for the "Clasico" - Real Madrid vs FC Barcelona matches. Real Madrid - FC Barcelona Spanish Super Cup Real Madrid - FC Barcelona 1º leg - 14 August 2011 - 23.

Sporting KC has officially announced the rescheduled date of their game against the LA Galaxy. The game was supposed to take place on August 13th and be broadcasted on FSC. But with the announcement of Farm Aid coming to LiveSTRONG Sporting Park, KC had to move their game against David Beckham, Landon Donovan, and the rest of the Galaxy to September 5th.

We've been slaking our thirst for footy action with mostly meaningless international matches the 4-0 hiding the USMNT suffered against Spain last Saturday afternoon in Foxborough, followed up by a lackluster 2-0 victory against Canada in their opening Gold Cup match Tuesday night; the Netherland's scoreless draw against Brasil Saturday down in Goiânia, and then their 1-0 loss yesterday against Uruguay in Montevideo (apparently the Dutch gamely undertook this two-match South American tour to give the two South American powers both a chance to warm up for the upcoming Campeonato Sudamericano Copa América (July 1-24 in Argentina) as well as a chance to avenge their eliminations from WC2010

A rare full house at Citi Field

One that slipped under our radar was a friendly played a mere handful of miles from the CultFootball headquarters Greece and Ecuador played to a 1-1 draw in front of a packed house of nearly 40,000 fans at Citi Field, the 2-year old home of the Mets.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup started on Sunday, with four games already in the books . The USA kicks off its campaign tonight in Detroit, taking on Canada at Ford Field. US Soccer has produced an infographic with just about everything you need to know about "the region's most important international tournament" (click to view a larger version):

Gold Cup 101

We took a few weeks off from our guide to the upcoming weekend's televised matches. It's perhaps an odd time to resurrect it, just after the climax of the European club season but actually perhaps it's more necessary now that we're asking ourselves what exactly are we supposed to watch, now that they're done playing in Europe?

We lamented a bit last week over the close of the (European) club season, with most of the big leagues decided (and after the weekend, France (Lille) and the Netherlands (Ajax) also crowning champions). So what else is a CultFootball fan to look to, aside from the upcoming Champions League final (10 days away!

Some news from today that affects Sporting KC and their schedule a little bit. First, today was the first concert announcement for Livestrong Sporting Park. That concert is Farm Aid, which will bring the likes of Niel Young, Willie Nelson, and the Dave Matthews Band to LiSP this summer. The date of the concert is August 13th.

Jeremain Lens will need to be on point against Feyenoord come Sunday

We're approaching the end of club football in Europe, and while no fixture can be taken for granted at this point, there's not a whole hell of a lot that's particularly interesting this weekend. The games are important at the top and bottom of the table for sure, but will that make them something we want to watch?

MLS announced the qualification format and hosts for this year's U.S. Open Cup. As in the past 4 years some MLS teams, including the Rapids, will have to qualify for the U.S. OPEN Cup. The top 6 teams in last years standings qualify automatically. Colorado, by virtue of the meltdown to FSL in the last 5 minutes of the final regular season game, finished 7th (but probably got an easier road to their MLS Cup victory).

Along with the announcement of Kevin Ellis signing with the Wizards today, there was plenty of other news in the Sporting Kansas City world today.
The first is a bit of bad news, originally the speculation was that Teal Bunbury might not miss any of the regular season. Now that doesn't look likely at all.

MLS announced a new deal with FOX Soccer Channel today. The good news is that Colorado will have 7 games on FSC this year, tied with LA for the most in the league. The (possible) bad news is that this has forced MLS to move 3 of the Rapids game dates.
Friday April 8th, Colorado is at Dallas. This game was moved from Saturday April 9th.