Not long after Landon Donovan was pushed into giving up international soccer, by U.S. national soccer’s blundering coach Jurgen Klinsmann, I took a look at Landon’s record 57 goals for the U.S. national soccer team and broke them down by categories. That parsing of his production appeared on this blog on August 9, 2014 (along […]

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This is big. Take a deep breath, American soccer fans. A Yank has taken charge of an English Premier League team … a team in the world’s most popular sports league. Bob Bradley is the new coach of Swansea City, the Wales-based club that already is at risk of relegation, seven matches into the season. […]

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Bob Bradley is my favorite former U.S. Soccer national team coach. He is a square-jawed, straight-shooter kind of guy who radiates quiet passion for his work but is a model of steely decorum — and gets results. Whether it is leading the American team to the final 16 of the World Cup (South Africa 2010) […]

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When “Ecuador 2, Honduras 1” finished tonight — tomorrow morning, in Eurasia/Africa — 26 of the 48 group stage games had been played. That still leaves plenty of time for (some) teams who didn’t start fast to do some damage in the 2014 World Cup. But … What we have seen so far is perhaps […]

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Michel Platini, president of the European football federation, has called for the World Cup to be expanded from 32 to 40 teams. First reaction? More of a good thing can’t be bad. Second reaction? Too much of a good thing can, in fact, be bad. Why 40 teams? Why now? Why would it be a […]

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OK, yes: Spain 4, Italy 0. I’m still sick of Spain, and just because they had a nice game in the final doesn’t excuse (or make us forget) the long patches of Almost Unwatchable they gave us during the rest of their Euro 2012 campaign. My default setting for this tournament was, “Won’t They Please […]

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I called this, not that it took particularly keen powers of observation or lots of inside sources. When Sunil Gulati of the US Soccer Federation suddenly dumped Bob Bradley yesterday, it was fair to assume he had someone in mind as a replacement, and today the USSF announced that Juergen Klinsmann is the new national […]

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Let’s be honest: Not many soccer games happen in North America that anyone is all that crazy to see, in person. The occasional Mexican League game. The rare Major League Soccer game. Some of the World Cup qualifiers. And we’re about done. It’s not like the Old World, where every country has a national league […]

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What’s next for Landon Donovan? Way back in March, after coming back to SoCal after his loan to Bayern Munich, Landon told me he wanted to play in Europe after the 2009 Major League Soccer season. Given that he just won the MVP award and was, of course, voted into the MLS top XI … […]

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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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