One of the worst teams in Major League Soccer has signed German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger. Five years ago, this would have been an enormous coup for the Chicago Fire, which has not won a playoffs match since 2009. But the Schweinsteiger the MLS club signed is 32, with skills fading in real time, who appeared […]

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Well, yes, it appears Landon Donovan’s soccer playing career has ended without a formal declaration, which we suggested last month when a deal to play for Real Salt Lake fell through. Donovan now seems interested in the business side of the game, which would mark an obvious, prominent and perhaps lucrative move for him as […]

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Is Landon Donovan’s playing career over? It may be, and not necessarily because he prefers it that way. First, the LA Galaxy in December said Donovan had retired — after the club could not come to terms with him. Donovan remained quiet, however, and then came a reported offer from Real Salt Lake. That alleged […]

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Landon Donovan apparently is considering continuing on in Major League Soccer. This, after a couple of months of interesting-but-not-scintillating play with the LA Galaxy at the end of the 2016 season. That he could keep up at all is impressive, in his nine games back, during the autumn. He is 34, will be 35 in […]

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Well, that was ugly. And perhaps unfortunately timed. Bob Bradley, the first American to coach a team in one of Europe’s biggest five leagues, was fired by Swansea City today — only his 85th day on the job of the English Premier League club. He was a dead man walking since Swansea’s 4-1 home loss […]

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Jurgen Klinsmann was fired today and it looks as if the U.S. Soccer Federation is taking our advice on another matter, too: Bruce Arena as the new/old U.S. national team coach. That would be Bruce Arena, he of five MLS Cup championships, three with the LA Galaxy, and a quarterfinals run at the 2002 World […]

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Qualifying for the soccer World Cup, any of them, should be easy for the U.S. national team. Jurgen Klinsmann, however, is about to make it difficult. The Yanks lost 2-1 tonight to Mexico in Columbus, Ohio, the first match in the Concacaf “Hexagonal” and the first defeat to Mexico on U.S. soil in five World […]

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Not a good weekend for American soccer people or the league most of them play for. Landon Donovan’s comeback from retirement suddenly ended as he went off at halftime with a hamstring injury and his LA Galaxy went out of the Major League Soccer playoffs in a shootout. Bob Bradley, the first American to coach […]

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The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team. The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders […]

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The LA Galaxy has concluded a silly but interesting promotion — the LA Galaxy Ridiculous Soccer Challenge. It involved four “games” pitting two Galaxy players against dozens of children on a training field at the club’s Carson home, the StubHub Center. The last matchup to be posted: Steven Gerrard and Robbie Keane against 30 eight-year-old […]

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