The Philadelphia Union's Veljko Paunovic has decided to announce his retirement from professional soccer for the second time, according to the team. His beginning in Philadelphia wasn't a celebrated one, but by the end of his time in the city, he was appreciated.

"It is with great sadness that I announce my retirement from soccer due to family reasons but I will never forget the Union fans and the atmosphere at PPL Park every game," Paunvoci said to PhiladelphiaUnion.

Avram Grant takes over at Serbian champions Partizan

Avram Grant has taken many pundits by surprise by joining Serbian champions Partizan Belgrade as coach from today.

With fifteen games played so far this season in the Jelen SuperLiga, Partizan have a ten point lead over arch rivals Crvena Zvezda and already look set to continue their recent dominance by winning a fifth consecutive title.

12.01.2012 - Saber retirarse a tiempo implica una gran sabiduría. Juan dijo: "conviene que yo decrezca para que él crezca". Jesús dijo: "conviene que yo me vaya". Así, la Ascensión de Jesús significa – según la Iglesia - tomar conciencia de que su tiempo ha terminado en pos del comienzo del tiempo de la Iglesia.

10.01.2012 - Neymar (Santos) se llevó el premio Puskas 2011 (mejor gol) por sobre Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney y otros siete nominados (Benjamin De Ceulaer (Bélgica), Giovani Dos Santos (México), Julio Gómez (México), Zlatan Ibrahimović (Suecia), Lisandro López (Argentina) y Dejan Stanković (Serbia).

Partizan Belgrade's Lazar Markovic wants Chelsea move

Partizan Belgrade's highly-rated young striker Lazar Markovic has revealed there is only one club who could tempt him away from his native Serbia: Chelsea.

View the full story here: The Mail

A news article on 2011-12-05 07:43:51 from: The Mail

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

The Belgrade derby has some, shall we say, "behavioral issues" which require constant considerations. How best to combat a problem of lighting the stands on fire whilst also throwing Molotov seat cocktails?

Remove the damn seats.
Good in theory, questionable in its successful application.

22.11.2011 - Benjamin De Ceulaer (Bélgica), Giovani Dos Santos (México), Julio Gómez (México), Zlatan Ibrahimović (Suecia), Lisandro López (Argentina), Lionel Messi (Argentina), Neymar (Brasil), Wayne Rooney (Inglaterra) y Dejan Stanković (Serbia) compiten por el Premio Puskas (FIFA) 2011.

Roger Espinoza has started the offseason fairly busy. Espinoza played yesterday for the Honduran national team as they took on Serbia in a friendly in Honduras. Espinoza started and went the full 90 minutes in Honduras' 2-0 win over their fellow World Cup 2010 qualifier. Honduras scored their first goal in the 4th minute through Georgie Welcome.

Slovenia is another round of teams better than the United States that Jurgen Klinsmann will test his system and talent evaluation against on a Tuesday morning at 9 AM Pacific on ESPN2. Similar to the USA the Slovenes faded since the World Cup. They weren't as high in the rankings, nor have they fallen as far.

Honduras vs Serbia Score 2-0 Highlights Video Goals Bengtson Friendly 2011 is a post from Soccer Blogger. Follow Soccer Blogger on Twitter

Honduras vs Serbia Score 2-0 Highlights Video Goals Bengtson Friendly 2011 is a post from Soccer Blogger. Follow Soccer Blogger on Twitter Honduras vs Serbia 2011 ( Honduras vs Srbija Video below 2011) Final score and result:- Honduras vs Serbia 2-0 ( Jerry Bengtson*2) Estadio Olímpico Metropolitano- Sula, Honduras- 14 November, 2011 Jerry Bengtson's brace [.

Salcido scores in the 2nd minute (Mexico always likes to get on the board early) and Chicharito scores yet again, this time via pk, to down Serbia 2-0.Video: Footytube
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Salcido scores in the 2nd minute (Mexico always likes to get on the board early) and Chicharito scores yet again, this time via pk, to down Serbia 2-0.Video: Footytube
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit TSI for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Mexico vs Serbia Score Highlights 2-0 Goals Salcido Chicharito Video Friendly 2011 is a post from Soccer Blogger. Follow Soccer Blogger on Twitter

Mexico vs Serbia Score Highlights 2-0 Goals Salcido Chicharito Video Friendly 2011 is a post from Soccer Blogger. Follow Soccer Blogger on Twitter Mexico vs Serbia 2011 ( Mexico vs Serbia soccer friendly video below) Final score and result:- Mexico vs Serbia 2-0 ( Carlos Salcido, Javier Chicharito Hernandez) Estadio La Corregidora- 11 November, 2011- [.

CHICHARITO MANIA

It's the weekend of some key international matches! Por supesto, how could we forget our friends in Mexico?! They're playing Serbia in a friendly today, and as usual, the current 'IT' boy of Mexican football Chicharito received all the media attention.

It appears that two Sporting KC players will be playing this weekend. Roger Espinoza was apparently called up by Honduras for their friendly on Monday against Serbia. The call up was made before KC's season ended and I've been unable to find any updates since the initial roster was released on the 2nd of November stating whether Espinoza was still participating or not.

France - USA is at 3pm on ESPN2 and Univision. EURO 2012 qualifying on ESPN Deportes: Bosnia and Herzegovina - Portugal at 2pm and Turkey - Croatia at 4pm. ESPN Deportes also has the Ukraine - Germany friendly at 6pm. Univision has Mexico - Serbia at 9pm. FA Cup on Fox Soccer: Cambridge - Wrexham at 2:30pm.

Following reports in this morning's Daily Mail linking Nemanja Vidic with a move to Real Madrid, our captain's agent, Paolo Fabbri, has come out quickly to deny any possible move.

There were strong rumours that Vidic was going to leave in the summer of 2010, which his agent repeatedly denied, before the player went on to sign a new four year deal.

Este fin de semana no habrá actividad oficial en la Liga de Ascenso debido a la fecha FIFA, la Selección Mexicana tendrá un partido amistoso contra Serbia este viernes y en el ámbito mundial una buena cantidad de selecciones tendrán acción en las Eliminatorias Mundialistas Brasil 2014 que ya están en progreso en las diferentes regiones geográficas, Sudamérica, Asía, África y Norte, Centroamérica y el Caribe.

Ver a la Selección Mexicana no tiene precio... para algunos. Los costos de los boletos para ver al Tri enfrentar a Serbia en el Estadio La Corregidora irán de los 390 pesos hasta los 950 pesos.
México enfrentará a Serbia por primera vez en su historia en la Fecha FIFA del próximo 11 de noviembre a las 20:00 horas y para ver este partido en casa de los Gallos de Querétaro se han designado los siguientes precios:
Las Butacas VIP cuestan 750 pesos, Especial Oriente 470 pesos, Cabecera Especial norte 420, Cabecera Especial Sur 420, Preferente 390 pesos, Palco Individual norte 950 pesos, Palco individual sur 950 pesos.

Please remember that when switching on a hot robot, stand well back and be prepared to run like hell if he wakes up grumpy. He looks fluffy enough here, but he could backfire at any moment. Image: REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel.

Serbia national team captain, Nemanja Vidić, has announced his retirement from international football, effective immediately.

After hinting strongly that he would be retiring from International football after Serbia's failure to qualify for Euro 2012, Nemanja Vidic has today confirmed he will not play for his country again.

"After a great deal of thought and with a heavy heart, I have decided the time is right for me to retire from international football," Vidic told the official site.

By Alan Duffy

Sir Alex Ferguson reacts to the news that Vidic has retired from international football

In one of the shocks of the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign, plucky little Estonia made it out of Group C, a group which contained Italy, Serbia and Slovenia, all sides well above them in the FIFA rankings, along with Northern Ireland and the mighty Faroe Islands.

Dare Vrsic scores an unbelievable free-kick against Serbia just on the stroke of half-time to give Slovenia a famous 1-0 win over their neighbours who seen Nemanja Vidic miss a penalty.

We now know twelve of the sixteen finalists for next summer's European Championship in Poland & Ukraine, with play-offs for the four remaining places taking place in mid-November.
The hosts will be joined by Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Sweden.

Il grande Trap, che con la sua Irlanda si giocher gli spareggi per riuscire ad ottenere un posto per Euro 2012, invitava come sappiamo a non dire gatto se non l'hai nel sacco. Ora l'Italia dice a voce alta gatto perchè nel sacco c'è una partecipazione sicura all'europeo, frutto di un girone di qualificazione monstre: [.

A host of Chelsea players are in action today for their respective countries as qualifying for next year's European Championships comes to a close. Some, including Branislav Ivanovic, are in for a nervy couple of hours.

Rant it up on an international level right here.

Bane.

We've already had a look at how things stand going into the final round of qualifying for the 2012 European Championships now lets have a look at the top five important stats so far in the qualifying stages so far.

Top Fives:

Goals Scored:
Holland... 35
Germany...

Three of the Chelsea boys managed to make it on the scoresheet for their international teams on Friday as we continue the agonizing wait for the Premier League to resume.

Juan Mata managed to beat the offside trap against Petr Cech's fellow defenders, latching on to a nice pass and slipping the ball past his club's number one as Spain ran out 2-0 winners over the Czechs.

England is a point away from cementing a place at the 2012 European championships, but the Three Lions will have to earn that point on the road at Montenegro.

That match is one of the few highlights among the day's European qualifiers, in addition to the anticipated matchup between Germany and Turkey.

Proprio ora che Ranieri lo aveva recuperato dal forzato esilio della panchina impostogli da mister Gasperini, ora che era pronto a dire all'Italia ed al mondo che, a comprarci con anticipo il biglietto per portarci a giugno in Polonia ed Ucraina per l'europeo con quel gol contro la Slovenia, era stato lui, il Pazzo si [.

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On this week's predictions we feature important qualifiers for the European Championships taking place in Poland-Ukraine next summer as well as some World Cup 2014 qualifiers from South America and Asia.

On Friday, Italy will travel to Belgrade to play Serbia in their penultimate Euro 2012 qualification match. The game comes just under a year since the events in Genoa on 12 October 2010 which saw Serbian hooligans forcing the game to be called off, and leading to harsh punishments being meted out against the Serbian National team.

The curiosities of the FIFA world ranking system reared its head again this week after the latest edition saw England drop four places from fourth to eighth, despite winning their last two games.
Not that fourth is anywhere near an accurate assessment of where England sit among the world's footballing elite, but is seems the way teams are ordered is done in an apparently random way, regardless of their recent football scores.

Bob was a finalist with three other coaches, Francisco Maturana of Colombia, Zoran Belosevic of Yugoslavia and Milovan Rajevac of Serbia although only former Ghanaian NT coach, Rajevac was considered a real contender. Reportedly, Bradley was the 1st choice and the lone holdup being the salary demands of Bradley.

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With less than a year to go until the European Championships kick off in Poland and the Ukraine the qualifying rounds in Europe are starting to hot up.

Veljko Paunovic's Macedonian ancestry isn't enough to make him switch national teams, according to the versatile attacking midfielder. The 34-year-old's form has brought attention from both MLS fans and media internationally, with three goals since joining the Union in mid-June.

Paunovic responded to the Brotherly Game's question of what he thought about Macedonian media tracking him as a potential international (first reported by the Brotherly Game).

Macedonian media has begun to pay attention to Veljko Paunovic's run of form for the Philadelphia Union, naming the midfielder as one of the country's potential internationals to watch.

Despite playing twice for Serbia - when it was still Serbia-Montenegro - in the early part of this millennium, Paunovic is able to make a one-time switch to Macedonia because of FIFA's eligibility rule change in 2009.

Tottenham striker Roman Pavlyuchenko revealed that he was "shocked" at the way Russian teammate Yuri Zhirkov was treated in front of yesterday's home crowd in Moscow. The home crowd booed the former Chelsea player all match, disappointing Pavlyuchenko.

"I was frankly shocked. I do not know why these people come to football.

Chelsea's Andre Villas-Boas struggling for defenders after Branislav Ivanovic injury | Mail Online Branislav Ivanovic will miss Chelsea's first game of the season with a thigh injury, leaving Andre Villas-Boas with a defensive headache ahead of Sunday's trip to Stoke. Ivanovic has not trained fully since pulling a muscle in pre-season and missed Serbia's friendly in Russia.

Some good. Mostly bad. Sums up international friendlies rather well I'd say.

Milestone

Our England trio were spared the opportunity to pick up various knocks when the Three Lions' exhibition against the Netherlands at Wembley was called off due to rioting throughout the country.