The MLSS editors asked Travis Clark and myself to take a stab at selecting a U.S. Olympic squad as if we were the coach, and this presentation went up yesterday. Space was limited for comment there, so I'll take advantage here to expand a bit on my selections.First off, let's just talk about the players I refrained from choosing with the mindset that the reality would be they're somehow

Welcome to the Friday Crackovia Club your weekly special on the best comedy sketch show from Spain! This week, watch as Mourinho instructs Pepe on how to make a correct 'Live TV' apology. It's a little stab at last week's Leo Messi hand-stepping saga which was followed by an emotionless apology from the defender.

This is a fantastic read.

Now, while I have covered two Commonwealth Games for Ugandan newspapers, this was my first EPL match. Within the EPL bureaucracy there is an implant called Dataco. In order to sit in the Press Box, I had to purchase a "Single Match License" from Dataco.

So Tweed did this article and wanted me to do a follow up. "You're full of hatred and black heartedness why don't you take a stab at who should be cut." He says to me over the Gchats. I pause wondering if to take his comments as a compliment or just a statement of truth. "Hmmm that has to be a compliment" I think to myself.

Marc Albrighton and Stiliyan Petrov produced the vital goals to deliver Villa's first away win of the season, but Ivan Klasnic was able to prevent Brad Guzan earning a clean sheet on his first Premiership start.

It was a much improved performance during the first half, and fans crying out for a 4-4-2 system will be quick to point out that was the case today with Marc Albrighton on the right and Charles N'Zogbia on the left.

No boss, I don't want to go to a press conference.

For all the talk of boring group stage, at least this season's one has been slightly different. It wasn't the walk in the park it was the previous few seasons. Praise is given where praise is merit. Olympiacos, Marseille and Borussia Dortmund provided stiff resistance but we've managed to come out on top.

Fulham striker Clint Dempsey struck a late winner as Liverpool's outstanding form on the road ended during a controversial evening at Craven Cottage.
Dempsey stabbed home a long-range 85th-minute shot by Danny Murphy that had bounced off the arms of Jose Reina, to secure only Fulham's third Barclays Premier League win of the season.

Other than the games played in preseason, this certainly shapes up to be the least important outing of the season. We're heading to Greece to take on Olympiakos in the final match of the group stages of the Champions League. But fortunately for us, we already have first place wrapped up, so there's no need to wear out our main players in this one.

We bought Bryan Ruiz from FC Twente for 10 million, or whatever it was. There's an element of food-chaining here, isn't there? We bought their best player; they didn't buy ours. Which ought to imply that we're a better team, particularly as Ruiz promising though he may be is not yet in Fulham's best XI.

Harry Redknapp enjoyed a successful return to the Tottenham Hotspur dugout tonight as he saw his side stroll past Aston Villa 2-0 at White Hart Lane. With the win, Spurs are up to third place in the Premier League table, four points behind Manchester United with a game in hand.

The spotlight this season has been on the two Manchester sides, and problems and both Arsenal and Chelsea and nobody has paid any real attention to a Spurs side that is much better than the one that finished fifth last season.

The insanity of Arsenal going to Stamford Bridge and beating Chelsea 5-2 may have taken up a solid plurality of Match of the Day yesterday, leaving the runtime a little light when it came to Liverpool versus West Brom and so robbing us of the chance to watch highlights of Charlie Adam trying out his special edition Adidas FlubberZero boots, but for the time being it's the best we've got.

Ali Krieger is the only U.S. Women's National Team player ever to win a UEFA Champions League title (2008) and she's going for another one.
Krieger, who recently returned to Germany for her fifth season at FFC Frankfurt, one of Europe's top women's clubs, should play a big part of Frankfurt's European run this season, but the first leg of Frankfurt's Round of 32 series with Norway's Stabæk didn't go exactly as planned.

By Chris Wright

A shiny hapenny and a bag of liquorice is on offer to those who can successfully guess the identity of the recently-retired mole-eyed, ginger ankle-hacker who wants the record to state that, despite being the worst tackler in the history of organised sport, he could actually tackle all along and that he was actually just 'getting people back' by tearing off chunks of their thigh flesh with his studs on a semi-regular basis:

"Of course I can tackle.

Game on This entertaining (but NSFW) video features a happy juxtaposition of two footballing greats soon to be confined to the scrap heap: FIFA 11 and Fernando Torres. One gamer we'll take a stab at one unemployed gamer has painstakingly recreated Fernando Torres' horrendous miss against Manchester United last weekend on FIFA 11.

Katie Bethke (Eau Claire Memorial) scored her first professional goal Saturday, helping Arna-Bjørnar to a 4-2 victory over host Klepp in the Toppserien, the top division for women's soccer in Norway.

Bethke finished off the scoring in the 75th minute as Arna-Bjørnar (11-3-1) won its seventh consecutive match and remained in third place in the 12-team league, two points behind co-leaders Røa (12-3-0) and Stabæk (11-1-3) with seven matches remaining.

By Chris Wright

What we have here is grizzly footage from before Sivasspor's recent friendly with FK Rad Belgrade, in which the Turks kick off preceedings by getting a tarpaulin down on the touch line and slitting a live lambs throat (to a ripple of warm applause) before smearing the claret all over their boots.

By Chris Wright

Feel free to have a stab at captioning this photo of Carlos Tevez leaving after training with his beloved Man City teammates at Carrington this morning...

Pies says: "Wayne Bridge...Wayne...****ing...Bridge"

You say?

I tried to stop myself from expecting too much from tonight's game against Dallas. I suspected that whatever the individual qualities of the players, old and new alike, that developing a coherent smooth squad was a matter of time. Toronto played five new players and three of those were playing their first games in MLS.

By Chris Wright

Uruguay beat Mexico 1-0 in Group C of the Copa America last night, condemning El Tri to their first ever group-stage exit and setting themselves up with a plum quarter-final tie against hosts Argentina all despite Diego Forlan's best efforts to bugger everything up in front of goal.

Die Schalker haben eine respektable Mannschaft mit guten Einzelspielern und einen überaus ambitionierten Trainer. Platz 14 aus der Vorsaison ist kein Maßstab. Deshalb traue ich ihnen in der neuen Saison eine sehr gute Rolle zu. Von Platz 1 bis 5 ist alles drin!

Hans-Joachim Watzke, Geschäftsführer von Meister Borussia Dortmund, traut dem großen Rivalen Schalke 04 sogar die Meisterschaft zu.

Well, the first meaningful transfer news of the season and to be frank, it's not exactly a positive piece of news. Our very own Gael Clichy, the last of the Invincibles, has left Arsenal today to join Manchester City on a 4 year contract.

Bye.

Although Clichy had a pretty mediocre last couple of seasons at Arsenal, he was nevertheless a pretty good left back for us who mitigated the pain of seeing Cashley stab us in the back and join Chelsea, performing quite well after Cole left and helping us avoid the need of buying another left-back.

I'm greatly appreciative of those who found yesterday's post worthwhile despite the lack of anything happening that anyone actually cares about as I mentioned, trying to find news and/or inspiration on a daily basis during the summer months is absolutely maddening, especially when you're trying to find news that isn't a rumor that makes you want to stab someone.

By Chris Wright

Unsurprisingly, Inter striker Samuel Eto'o's open admission that, after two years at the Giuseppe Meazza, he now fancies a stab at life in the Premier League has set many-a gossip hound's tongue a-wagging.

Have a gander at what Eto'o has been telling Il Corriere dello Sport:

"I am currently considering my options.

By Chris Wright

If you happen to be a Tottenham supporter/amateur kit designer with a few minutes to spare today then you may want to check out Puma's new Facebook app, 'Guess The Kit'.

Ahead of the official 2011/12 home kit release, Puma are allowing fans to draft up their own fantastical designs, with the aim of the game being to second-guess the sportswear giants and match their new design with a prize presumably on offer if you somehow manage to get it spot on, though nothing is actually mentioned, so who knows?

By Chris Wright

Doubtless that the myriad sycophantic Barca-fluffers of this world will be lighting a content cigarette in bed this morning after waking up swaddled head-to-toe in a halo of fuzzy, post-coital afterglow Clive Tydlesley, we're looking at you.

Tonight marks the first exhibition game for the Portland Timbers. If you happened to have bought season tickets this game will be marked as "Game A" which is to be used for this match.

I've already explained briefly who Ajax is and why they're important. If you haven't yet checked out that article, I recommend taking a look if you don't really know who the club is.

Prompting me out of months and months of blogging hibernation is the issue in football that bothers me, disappoints me far more than any loss ever can. I'm no brilliant writer and someone else who is would be much better at conveying the ideas that I so strongly feel but struggle to put into words, yet I have to take a stab at this anyway because things have gone too far and I just have to put this out there.

Molly Brewer, Glendale Falcons (2012)

The Missouri Soccer Coaches have released their second poll of the season with Glendale moving into number 1 after knocking off former number 1 Nixa last night, 1-0 on a goal by Emily Cline from Molly Brewer.

1. Glendale (8-1) 28
2. Nixa (11-2) 23
3.

It has been quite some time since SBI stopped running the popular 'You Write the Caption" series, but I'm here to announce that we are bringing it back.

For those of you new to the site, YWTC is a regular series where we take a photo with comedic potential and let SBI readers give us their take on what the best caption would be for the photo.

Dear Jose,

You own our hearts. You continue to tease our minds. You have your way with the press, seemingly on a whim. You will forever be considered a legend at The Bridge. You are, in many respects, the GOAT. But damn you for what you're about to do.

Get Money.

It's no secret that you want to come home.

If reports out of Russia are to be believed --and honestly I'm not sure I believe anything written in an alphabet with such a shocking resemblance to Wing Dings-- Dema Kovalenko is hanging up his blood-stained boots and retiring. If you are a fan of any of the club's he's played for I think you know the sadness I'm feeling right now.

How sweet that must have felt for Damien Duff. For an hour his every touch was jeered by his old audience; then his winning goal shut them up. As we so often find ourselves saying, football, eh?

The highlight of the first half was my peanut butter sandwich. So substantial was it that it took 25 minutes to work through, by which time nothing at all had happened on the pitch.

Roy Keane has repeatedly stood up for the rights of footballers, claiming that clubs treat them like meat, selling them on whenever they want to, so why shouldn't the players do what is best for them?

To a certain degree, I agree with what Keano has to say, but what I can't abide by is these players who claim to be loyal, who repeatedly speak to the press about their desire to stay at the club, then stab their fans in the back by handing in a transfer request.

Image: @LaraAlvarezG's Yfrog.

Surely Sergio Ramos' newest WAG isn't the only one who's wanted to stab her work/uninspiring tabloid paper with a sharp, pointy thing?

Work rate to go with the acrobatics?

FA Cup returns to the menu as Arsenal kick off their campaign against Leeds United. The opposition may only be a Championship team but their history means that we have to treat this match seriously. Since their glory days of getting in the Champions League semifinal, Leeds have plummet down the ranks of English football.

The last ounce of truth to this can easily be eradicated. All Mourinho has to do is watch Glen Johnson against Blackburn...defensively he was woeful.

Going forward the England International is threat, his delivery is decent and he has a good eye for goal he has scored an impressive 3 goals per season, for the past two seasons.