A brand-new feature from the worldwide leader.
Some new power rankings to rival the FIFA world rankings.
Go take a look.
I'm really not too impressed, but here's to more soccer coverage, right? Click to continue reading...

Please chime in on this, as I'm sure there will be much debate. Ken Gude of the Huffington Post says that 2009 is the year that soccer arrived in America. Not because of Pele or Beckham, but because of mainstream media (read ESPN) upping the ante on soccer coverage. He also cites the continued success of the sport at the youth level and, consequently, improved play on the field by our Men's National Team. Click to continue reading...

ESPN has taken more than their fair share of stick for their football/soccer coverage, and for good reason. They're American (despite dubbing themselves The Global Leader) and, by and large, they do American sports well. Others: not so much.

But they've gone off-script with their latest venture, the Soccer Power Index, designed to render World Cup 2010 moot.

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Stop the God-awful crawl ticker thingy during ESPN's soccer coverage. I'm tired of tying two scarves together and wrapping them around my television to block the crawl. Cheers to Jackie for passing this along. -Sanford
Stop the Crawl
Case in point... Click to continue reading...

Martin Tyler has joined ESPN's 2010 World Cup team as the main commentator, according to Sports Illustrated.

EPL Talk speculated back in July that ESPN were interested in acquiring Tyler. And now, according to SI, they expect ESPN to make a formal announcement this week.

Without a doubt, Tyler is by far the number one football commentator in the world and it's an incredible achievement for ESPN to acquire his talent.

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Forget for a minute how played "Cars" is, that Gary Numan is 51 years old & wearing black nail polish and that Trent Reznor's sweaty ass is probably only one drip into his keyboard away from electrocuting himself on stage. What I'm feeling from this is the roving on-stage camera; it almost makes you feel like you are part of the band except for the fact that you won't get check or a groupie for watching this. Click to continue reading...

The couple links I bring tonight are all solid. In fact they each could have easily gotten their own posts had I not been working on other things today, including the ground work of a possible new design for this site (yeah that's a long ways off though). Still each are very interesting and deserve a full read if you haven't done so already.

Click to continue reading...

I'm looking forward to being able to see some college teams from outside our area this year now that I've finally broken down and signed with Mediacom for cable TV. Fox Soccer Channel continues their Friday Night College Soccer season, already underway, with some quality games. Check out tomorrow nights game!

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The collapse of the newspaper industry comes at a terrible time for a growing league like MLS. Numerous MLS teams don't even have beat reporters dedicated to them in the first place. Or if they do, they're the first to go.

Take the case of the struggling Chicago Tribune, who decided a few months ago to drop their beat coverage of the Chicago Fire by moving reporter Luis Arroyave from covering the Fire to covering showbusiness (a fitting move for the former FHM writer).

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Growing up playing soccer in the United States is both a blessing and a curse. Most of us became fans of the most popular sport in the entire world, yet in the United States the sport has a third tier status that receives only a fraction of coverage and attention of the major sports in the US. I am old enough to remember the rise and fall of the North American Soccer League.

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Nick Thomas of WeWantRapidman and yours truly were guests on a podcast by Robert Jonas of Center Line Soccer as the Bay Area Web site previewed the two upcoming games between the San Jose Earthquakes and the Colorado Rapids.

Nick focused very precisely about the Rapids' current manpower situation, we both talked a bit about Coach Gary Smith's influence on the team since taking over a year ago.

Click to continue reading...

Alright, over here in the States we don't get as much Soccer coverage as we should. � I admit that.

I get ESPN The Magazine and there was an interesting piece in there about the "Everton Way" and how it is used all over the place to train young players because... Everton has to be better at training.

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I started this whole blogging idea because I was ticked off that the newspapers, radio, and television media largely can't be bothered to give soccer the time of day, never mind decent coverage. In fact, in the not so distant past, I ranted about the St Petersburg Times giving the US National Team the shaft. Click to continue reading...

Around 3:30 Friday I got a call from Karik Krishnaiyer.
He sounded somewhat distraught and his tone of voice was not as energetic as it usually is when it comes to stories that he scoops. This one he had not desire of sharing or even talking about.
World Soccer Daily was no more. Click to continue reading...

ESPN has acquired the TV rights to two of the weekly Premier League slots on US television for the 2009-2010 season. Beginning on August 15, 2009, each week ESPN will feature the 7:45am ET Saturday game and the 3pm ET Monday game.

Those two weekly timeslots were previously held by Setanta Sports who in the past had sub-licensed those games from Fox Soccer Channel.

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Fox Sports Net (FSN), the regional Fox TV sports affiliates around the United States, will play more of a pivotal role during the 2009-2010 season in broadcasting not only the recently acquired Champions League coverage but also Premier League football, according to a unnamed source.

In fact, you'll be able to enjoy five hours of continuous soccer coverage on Tuesdays when Champions League matches are scheduled.

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The more it stays the same, the less it changes.
- Spinal Tap
Stephen Colbert did a segment on American soccer. And it didn't end up like my old nightmare, where the Craig Kilborn-era "Daily Show" sends a comedian/reporter into a supporters section in order to mock us mercilessly. Click to continue reading...

Kudos to EPL Talk for posting this just a bit ago. I found it to be something worth mentioning here.

The "World-Wide Leader" ESPN has announced more details regarding its coverage of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa next June.

Highlights of the announcement:

• ESPN will present all of its 2010 World Cup coverage from on-site in South Africa, totaling more than 65 hours of original content.

Click to continue reading...

Some of you may have seen a few items related to the English Premier League broadcast rights. Sentanta has gone into receivership and their UK broadcast rights have been pulled. ESPN has won the rights to broadcast 46 live Premier League matches in the United Kingdom for the 2009-10 season, and has also been awarded a contract for the 2010-13 seasons.

Click to continue reading...

Some of you may have seen a few items related to the English Premier League broadcast rights. Sentanta has gone into receivership and their UK broadcast rights have been pulled. ESPN has won the rights to broadcast 46 live Premier League matches in the United Kingdom for the 2009-10 season, and has also been awarded a contract for the 2010-13 seasons.

Click to continue reading...

From Setanta:

As widely reported, Setanta Sports has had its agreement to broadcast 46 Barclays Premier League matches in the UK terminated.

This development does not affect our channels and other services in the US.

Setanta Sports in the US is a separate operation that has separate agreement to show the Barclay's Premier League.

Click to continue reading...

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Plenty to discuss in the soccer world, some big news, some not so big, so let's get to some of the nuggets that have emerged today:

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On the same day it struck a deal to secure La Liga rights, ESPN also lands the UK rights to broadcast EPL matches.

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TEAM AMERICA WORLD CUP QUALIFYING
Here is a preview for tonight's big game for the USA down in San Jose Costa Rica where they have never won before. This game is a serious test.
Important TV Channel Change - game moved from ESPN to ESPN2!
dN
Match & Score:
-Wed Jun 3 - Matchday 4
Costa Rica v USA - from Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in San Jose CR - 9pm Central on ESPN2 & Galavision
Venue: Estadio Ricardo Saprissa - San Jose Costa Rica
dN
ESPN TV commentators did not travel to the game site - they are calling the game from the studio. Click to continue reading...

As pressbox friend, Jeff King writes at MLSnet (click here for all the details), Chivas USA has signed outside midfielder Cesar Zamora from the Chivas USA academy team. You may recall if you read my live soccer coverage of the California-based MLS teams that I mentioned that three academy members were training with the first team (though I was given the name Victor Zamora):
"Omar Becera DF, Jesse Paredes MF, Cesar Zamora MF are three academy players practicing with the first team. Click to continue reading...

Last month, I was one of a few US-based soccer bloggers approached by the International Marketing Council of South Africa offering a free, all-expenses trip to South Africa in June to cover the Confederations Cup. The Council is currently running a drive to promote South Africa and the Confederations Cup this year and the World Cup in 2010, as their website explains.

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Goff unleashes the claws here in a Tuesday blog post.
Quote: A lesson in media ethics, boys and girls: South Africa's marketing council is offering expense-paid trips ("junkets") worth thousands of dollars to U.S.-based bloggers/reporters to cover the Confederations Cup and, in effect, help promote tourism. Click to continue reading...

We provide the following schedule as part of our ongoing partnership with ESPN360.com to keep you informed on all the soccer you can watch every week via their broadband service.
As we launch our new redesigned site we hope to have the schedule per day in its own section. For now we will post an ESPN360. Click to continue reading...

A few weeks ago Fox made what is considered in soccer circles as the biggest splash of the past decade. According to many they changed the landscape of soccer coverage in the United States when they were able to obtain the rights to the UEFA Champions League. This was huge news as Europe's most important club competition became synonymous with the Worldwide Leader In Sports for well over a decade.

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Fox recently beat out ESPN for the rights to broadcast next year's Champions League fixtures. Footsmoke has been getting a lot of mail about the implications of this potentially lucrative swoop. I answer some of the responses below.

USAWC2030 writes: What was ESPN thinking?

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Serie A On TV has been updated for this week so check out the Match Day Three TV schedule. Also, you'll discover a new link to livesoccertv-channels which is an excellent website for American, Canadian and UK viewers for weekly scheduling of all football/soccer coverage as well as nationwide pub information and local competition information. Click to continue reading...

If the weather cooperates (although I need to be inside finalizing the Magazine...) there are LOTS of opportunities to see some fine soccer this weekend.

I'm going to have to put a poll up one of these days because I think my High School soccer coverage is the most important item for the vast majority of you.

Click to continue reading...

If the weather cooperates (although I need to be inside finalizing the Magazine...) there are LOTS of opportunities to see some fine soccer this weekend.

I'm going to have to put a poll up one of these days because I think my High School soccer coverage is the most important item for the vast majority of you.

Click to continue reading...

Serie A On TV has been updated for this week so check out the Match Day Two TV schedule. Also, you'll discover a new link to livesoccertv-channels which is an excellent website for American, Canadian and UK viewers for weekly scheduling of all football/soccer coverage as well as nationwide pub information and local competition information. Click to continue reading...

As the majority of domestic seasons have just kicked off, here are some of the discussions and articles you can expect in the coming weeks.

• Our profiles of the South American nations continue with Ecuador and Chile.
• Analysis of the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup as the action from the group stages unfold.

Click to continue reading...

You'd think it's a horribly slow day in soccer coverage, right?
First kisses, really? Click to continue reading...