About a dozen important games coming up Saturday. The last big day of qualifying ahead of the 2010 South Africa World Cup. Read all about it in my World Cup blog, countdowntoSA2010.com. Go over and read it, if you care about soccer in the least. Some very interesting matches coming up Saturday. And I spent […]

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Normally, more would be expected from the United States national soccer team, playing at home against Costa Rica. A tie? Not enough. The U.S. has not lost a World Cup qualifier, at home, to Costa Rica since 1985. (I remember that match because I was there … a game at El Camino College in Torrance, […]

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I did a blog item a day ago noting that the United States-Honduras World Cup qualifying match was not on TV … anywhere. It was inexcusable. A disaster. And the U.S. Soccer Federation — anyone and everyone who is not a player or a coach — should be embarrassed … no humiliated … that they […]

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Wow. I would have loved to see this match live. As it turned out, we didn’t chase around Southern California searching out one of the handful of sites showing the game on closed-circuit TV. Eating dinner with family seemed like a much better idea. So there we were in the ridiculous position of peeking over […]

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I feel as if I have entered a time machine and been transported back to, like, 1975. Back when the rights to broadcast big sports events routinely fell into the hands of small-minded dopes with bad business models … Who would decide the best way to make money on the deal was to sell it […]

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Bob Bradley, coach of the U.S. national soccer team, just finished a teleconference with journalists. I won’t vouch for 100 percent veracity of the following transcript, but it’s pretty close to being complete and I’m comfortable I never got “gist” wrong. The Americans have two matches left in qualifying for the 2010 World Cup — […]

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Clint Dempsey will not play for the United States in the World Cup qualifier at Honduras on Saturday, and this has triggered a lot of hand-wringing and consternation in the American soccer community. If only DaMarcus Beasley were alive! Oh, yeah. He is. He just can’t play worth a darn anymore. What the U.S. could […]

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It was time to check in with Landon Donovan, to get some quality one-on-one time with the Los Angeles Galaxy and U.S. national team standout. He agreed to an interview in the middle of last week, after practice and after his now-regular hour-plus deep-tissue massage session with Galaxy trainers. He met me at the outdoor […]

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Winning ugly. (Already used that? Oh, yeah.) Better lucky than good. (Been there, done that, I fear.) Stop me if you’ve heard this one. (You’ve heard that one?) Not really an inventive way to put this. The United States national soccer team was, again, thoroughly unimpressive against a lesser CONCACAF opponent … yet after another […]

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Landon Donovan has been the point man for U.S. soccer, in the eyes of fans, certainly, for most of a decade now. Arguably since the 2002 World Cup. Unlike the country’s several prominent goalkeepers (Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel, Tim Howard, for starters) … Donovan has excelled as a field player. And distinguished himself over a […]

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