Their Words "Elite football is about results and winning. There is no one better at it than him." FIFA president Sepp Blatter, while presenting Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson with the FIFA Presidential Award. Other Sources An American Loaner in Everton - from The Wall Street Journal's Gabriele Marcotti: It worked.

I cannot remember too many times when there's been an article on Newcastle United in the Wall Street Journal. But there's one in there today, and it describes how Newcastle have been a startling success so far in England's Premier League this season and are currently 3rd top of the league above Chelsea.

A curious article appeared on the online version of the Wall Street Journal earlier today on the subject of the economic woes that European football is facing. It was, largely, a thoroughly reasonable article, talking of the gap between rich and poor in terms of the tensions that this may come to create within the infrastructure of the pan-European game (even withstanding the at best mixed week that the biggest European clubs endured, which can easily be justified as unfortunate timing), the debt levels that clubs have racked and are racking up in the pursuit of success and the unsustainable amount of money being squandered on players' wages.

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- This Week's "Spot The Ball"
- Throughout the day, the QPR Report Messageboard has news updates, comments and perspectives - even links to other board comments of interest re QPR matters (on and off the field) along with football (and ONLY football) topics in general.

STARTERS
Jonathan Spector has signed with Birmingham of the English Championship (2nd division) today.
KLINSMANN
Jurgen Klinsmann was officially introduced this morning as the new head coach of the USA, but he didn't answer any question on what his plan is to revive the team, and US Soccer president Sunil Gulati gave no answers to questions on whey Bob Bradley was replaced.

Have fun with this interactive graph from the Wall Street Journal that allows you to click and drag the victims of the NOTW phone hacking in line with the chain of villains who actually carried out these black ops. All unintentional of course but worthy of a snicker or two.

You can do this with Ryan Giggs, Paul Gascoigne, Jude Law, and liberal firebrand George Galloway, all of them hacking victims amongst many.

Their Words Well, you got a guy coming in on Wednesday who's certainly been doing it for a long time at Man United. Sigi Schmid, on his contract extension. Other Sources For U.S. soccer, it's a woman's world - from The LA Times' David Wharton: It wasn't just bold talk. So What If Soccer Isn't a Big Deal Here?

USWNT

Abby Wambach says the US is ready to face Japan.

The USA v France Women's World Cup semifinal was the fourth most watched USWNT match ever. An average of 3.35 million people watched the match on ESPN, another 450,000 on ESPN3. Philly was not one of the top-five markets for that or any of the games.

This will be the sixth Women's World Cup that FIFA has staged since the inaugural tournament back in 1991.

ESPN will be broadcasting games almost daily it looks like, beginning Sunday:
NIGERIA-FRANCE (live) 7:45 am on ESPN2
GERMANY-CANADA (live) 10:30 am on ESPN

MONDAY, June 27
JAPAN-NEW ZEALAND (live) 7:45 am on ESPN
MEXICO-ENGLAND (live) 10:45 am on ESPN

As the Wall Street Journal notes, it's likely the German's to lose.

Why can't the U.S. build a soccer star? This was the title of a recent Wall Street Journal article. It's a compelling question and one that deserves our attention. In the past month or two we've had a Chinese woman win the French Open, a German win the NBA Championship and a Northern Irishman (are..

The Upside Their Words We are a country of overcoaches. The talents and abilities of our players now exceed the knowledge of the coaching, so the result is stagnation. US National Team alum Eric Wynalda, speaking to The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Futterman. Other Sources Fifa's Joao Havelange faces IOC inquiry into £610,000 bung allegation - from The Guardian's Matt Scott: "The IOC takes all allegations of corruption very seriously.

Brent Latham blogs of the role that US Soccer president Sunil Gulati plays in our player development philosophy.
"There are many complexities to our situation," Gulati said in a recent phone interview. "That might or might not be a disadvantage, but you've also got many advantages. Obviously you've got hundreds of millions people in the U.

Donovan to AS Roma?

I am not one to post rumors, especially with just about every European player being linked to MLS however rumors of outgoing MLS players are not as common, so here you go. According to Alex Labidou over at Goal.com AS Roma is interested in Landon Donovan.

Fans in the Fractured States of Cascadia will read the headline and say "Duh." Kids under the age of 16 will ask "What's the United States Women's National Team?" Everyone else will go "yep." But consider your perception of the importance of a regular season MLS game relative to a men's World Cup warm up game.

In stark contrast to the hopefully now infamous Wall Street Journal article (that I won't bother linking again), a video was released last night by locally based energy drink company Golazo. It's less than 5 minutes long, so it's not exactly what you'd call a documentary, but it is a cool look at football fandom.

As you may have heard by now, the Wall Street Journal took a ... how do we put this? ... interesting story about our little soccer rivalry we have brewing here in the Pacific Northwest. I really want to believe that it's a genius piece of satire. But something tells me I'm giving the author too much credit.

STARTERS
I'm gonna be shooting the breeze on The Straight Red Card this Sunday with Derek and Brett. I'll let ya know as soon as its posted.
MLS EXPANSION
IMSoccer News on why MLS needs to be in the Twin Cities.
mls4mn
SEATTLE SOUNDERS FC V PORTLAND TIMBERS
The two bitter rivals face off on Saturday night for the first time in MLS.

Economists study European soccer stars to understand how the wealthy respond to tax increases and what states should do as a result.
By Lindsey McCormack
How high can you tax the rich before they decide to pack up and move somewhere cheaper? For states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, this is no theoretical question.

Here we go again with Serie A Weekly giving you a list of five stories to read this lunchtime that we have seen from around the web and enjoyed ourselves. Many of these will be about Italian football of course but there is always room for something different and those will be here too. Take a look at our recommendations, pass them on and be sure to leave a comment on these great articles.

Michael Moritz wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) earlier this week drawing a parallel between open immigration in the English Premier League and how it could be beneficial to the American tech start-up scene. What Moritz failed to point out (but other readers noticed) is that the EPL isn't completely open.

United States basketball star LeBron James has become a minority stakeholder in Liverpool after signing a representation deal with club owners Fenway Sports Group.
The Wall Street Journal claims that FSG has struck a deal to partner the Miami Heat player's sports-marketing firm, LRMR Branding & Marketing, to become his exclusive worldwide representative.

Here we go again with Serie A Weekly giving you a list of five stories to read this lunchtime that we have seen from around the web and enjoyed ourselves. Many of these will be about Italian football of course but there is always room for something different and those will be here too. Take a look at our recommendations, pass them on and be sure to leave a comment on these great articles.

Katie Brewer, Glendale Falcons (2010)

As the Spring season gets off to a slow start, I'd like to point to an increasingly important issue within sports. Two of the finest players produced in the State of Missouri have both seen their careers cut short due to concussions. Lori Chalupny first dealt with issues in 2006 and now, at the age of 26, is likely no longer able to play for the US Women's team.

STORY OF THE DAY
"They didn't give them food. They couldn't sleep and they were guarded by armed guards."
The Miami Herald tells us about the horrible treatment of the Haiti U17 team that got sick while at the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament in Jamaica last week, and what happened to them after they withdrew from the tournament.

Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting story about the beneficial nature of second-half subsitutes when a team is down. Citing the "Decision Rule" of Bret Myers, a professor of management and operations at the Villanova School of Business, Diamond wrote:

[Myers] concluded that if their team is behind, managers should make the first substitution prior to the 58th minute, the second substitution prior to the 73rd minute and the third prior to the 79th minute.

It was an admittedly slow week in American soccer as the American sports scene shifted to Dallas and the American football Super Bowl. Within the soccer world some amazing results and goals from the English Premier League overshadowed almost all the other soccer news. But nevertheless there were some noteworthy happenings in MLS this past weekend; as usual, share your thoughts and anything I missed in the comments section.

Qatar's winning bid to hold the 2022 World Cup was marked by a spending spree that included investments in the home countries of several executives who were responsible for choosing the host nation, according to internal documents from the emirate's bidding committee.

The spending sheds light on how FIFA regulations—outlined in the two-page rules of conduct for World Cup host-nation bidding—left the door open for hopefuls to open wallets to exert indirect influence on international soccer's small circle of decision-makers.

From the Wall Street Journal -

Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.

- Enjoy