New Pan-Pacific Cup Planned for Galaxy, Beckham

MLS issued a press release yesterday revealing the league will partner with the Japanese J.League and Australian A-League in a Pan-Pacific cup in February, 2008. Four teams from the leagues will participate. J.League winner Gamba Osaka and an as-yet unknown A-League team will face MLS teams Houston Dynamo, current MLS champion, and LA Galaxy, a SuperLiga finalist.

The announcement comes on the heels of the A-League and MLS friendly between Sydney FC and LA Galaxy this week - a match which was, at times, decidedly unfriendly. A number of rough challenges and several verbal rows underscored that even with an ocean between them, the two leagues can ignite fierce competition. A-League fans have lashed out with particular venom at Galaxy player Kevin Harmse, who was sent off for two yellow card offenses, one of which was standing on the arm of an opposing player in supposed retaliation for a prior tackle on David Beckham.

Beckham emerged from the game as a fan favorite after scoring one of his famous free kicks and playing a lively 90 minutes before a crowd of over 80,000. The Galaxy continue their Australasian A-League tour with an exhibition match against Wellington Phoenix FC in New Zealand tonight.

The Pan-Pacific Championship will unite some of the biggest stars in American and Asian soccer. LA Galaxy feature a high-profile roster including Beckham and MLS all-star Landon Donovan. Gamba Osaka, this year’s Yamazaki Nabisco Cup winner, have Japanese soccer superstars Michihiro Yasuda and Yasuhito Endo.

The first of the two-day competition will begin on February 20th with two matches: Galaxy vs. Gamba Osaka and Dynamo vs. the Australian team. The day’s winners will compete for the cup on February 23rd; the losers will compete for third place on the same day.

The tournament will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii. Dong Quinn, president of the event’s organizer Soccer United Marketing, said, “Honolulu was selected as the host not only for its geographical location in the center of the Pan-Pacific, but also for its community, its terrific infrastructure and its history of hosting top international sporting events.”

When questioned about the cup Beckham expressed his excitement and revealed he’s never visited Hawaii before. “It’s good for the team to start off our preseason playing against quality opposition,” he added. With the MLS break substantially longer than rests he’s experienced on European sides Beckham faces a long spell with no matches, something he openly rues. The Pan-Pacific cup is one step closer to populating the Galaxy’s off-season schedule. For a team whose horrible injury spell prevented them from playing together as a unit for most of their 2007 MLS season, every match is valuable practice for the year to come.

Bar goes to court over satellite

Its amazing that for most in the UK, they have to subscribe or pay per match to see a premier league game, and yet a bar in Hampshire have found a way where they can show live premier league games without no extra cost other than that of the cost for the equipment.

The Red, White and Blue Pub’s manager Karen Murphy has signed up with the Greek satellite broadcaster Nova, they have charged her just £800 and she can show these games in the bar, if she went through Sky, the cost would have been over £6,000, so the attraction is obvious.

But now the FA has decided to take her court, as if this became a popular choice with bars, the FA would be losing millions of pounds a year, however the court have decided to delay the case as obviously there is more to this than just one bar, the satellite provider and the FA involved.

The case will eventually be decided, if it goes in the favour of the pub, then the FA will lose out on the rights to sell the matches to broadcasters, such as Sky and Setanta, they have both paid £1.7 billion for the right to show live matches.

This will be interesting case and could change the way that the premier league is shown on TV.

Source [BBC News]

Attendances - The Rise or Fall of the Premier League

If you believe the claims, attendances at England’s top flight matches are on an upward rise. There is little doubt that they are but the argument is based on quicksand, the foundations shift at the end of every season once the promotion and relegation battles are decided. Consider the changes at the end of last season; out of the division went Sheffield United, Charlton and Watford replaced by Birmingham City, Derby County and Sunderland. The capacities at the grounds no longer in the Premier League (EPL) total nearly eighty thousand; their replacements in excess of one hundred and twelve thousand. Indeed, the combined totals of The Valley and Vicarage Road are nearly three thousand less than The Stadium of Light. In one fell swoop, the EPL has space for thirty three thousand potential supporters in every home game for these clubs. Over a thirty eight game season, that is an increase of forty one percent just in three clubs. Little wonder then that attendances are improving. Were the matter that simple. On a weekly basis, television broadcasts pictures that show the ticket sales may not be as impressive as they appear at first glance.

In no more small measure, the figures are helped by the fact that the ‘Sold Out’ signs go up at Anfield, The Emirates and Old Trafford for every home game. Which begs the question as to whether the EPL is more popular or simply that the top sides are. It is reported that Old Trafford is planned to have a capacity of 96,000 in the future; no doubt it will sell out as long as Manchester United are successful, keeping up the appearance of a successful and growing business.

But is English football on the up or is the EPL guilty of a marketeers’ spin on events? Is it in danger of killing off the spectacle through saturated television coverage? The EPL has some of the most lucrative broadcast contracts of the Professional game. In any bar in Spain or Vietnam, you can watch the matches on a Saturday afternoon. Yet in England itself, you cannot. The EPL and clubs are being vigorous in pursuing those errant landlords who are buying foreign satellite systems to contravene the rules which were designed to protect the clubs when the first television deal was signed. It seems a lifetime ago that we were served by Match of the Day on a Saturday night and The Big Match on a Sunday. Now you can barely go one day of the week without a live game.

The wealth being created by these contacts is not filtering downwards to the fans though. Too much, too often, the revenues from this source are retained rather than being a force that should be driving ticket prices downwards. Dangerously, the clubs are reaching a point whereby they are pricing a generation out of the game. If a parent wishes to take two children to a match, they are not going to get much change out of £100. Compare that with other forms of entertainment and it is not difficult to see why football is struggling to maintain the numbers of supporters actually going to games, relying instead on Corporate Deals to make stadia profitable. Problematically for the game as a whole, the supporters are not drifting down the leagues in huge numbers so the habit of actually attending a match is not becoming ingrained in youngsters.

The figures may be up now but complacency must not be allowed to set in. Where is the enticement for broadcasters to continually pay vast sums of money if the stadia are not full?

England Reap What The FA Have Sown

The hunt for a new England Head Coach has polarised the debate about the number of foreign players in the Premier League. The argument deflects attention away from the real issue; the paucity of outstanding English managers. Only seven of the top flight has Englishmen at the helm. None of them are genuine contenders for the England job, even before they rule themselves out. None have a trophy cabinet in which the shelves buckle under the silverware they have won.

The FA has promised to conduct a ‘Root and Branch’ review of the coaching methodologies from schoolchildren upwards. Yet they fail to admit their part in the current state of English football. What is being reaped now was sown two decades ago. The Golden Generation is the biggest misnomer there has been in the game within these shores. The crop was raised by coaches devouring the FA’s Coaching Manuals that espoused the most efficient way to score a goal was with four passes. Long ball merchants may well have been almost eradicated from the top flight but the apostles were still active through to 1998 when Hughes retired, his philosophy subjected to derision and scorn.

It permeates the game still. The emphasis on moving the ball quickly left little time for personal skills to be developed hence their scarcity amongst the English. A generation lost thanks to misguided thoughts. The generation now in their prime at the Academies are the first to be trained to ‘love’ the ball, treat it as their best friend rather than their enemy. Arsenal lead the way with the passing and movement of the first team drilled into the youngsters at the lowest professional rung at the club. It will be four years before they are ready to move into regular starting positions wherever they make the grade. At least they will be imbued with good habits.

Complacency is not just the preserve of the administrators; the players are as naïve and insular. Michael Owen’s ludicrous judgement that none of the Croatia team were good enough to play for England beggared belief, especially as they had taken six points from the two matches. David James followed that up in his column in The Observer this past weekend, opining that neither Sir Alex Ferguson nor Arsene Wenger should be asked for their views on the England managers’ position as they were part of the problem, either withdrawing players from squads with dubious injuries or not picking Englishmen for their teams. With that sort of thinking in the game being prevalent, the doldrums in which English football finds itself may be deeper than first thought.

Corruption arrests rocks the football world

One of the worst things that sometimes rears its head in the football world is corruption, there have been some high profile cases in the past but recently this has not really been heard off, until now that is.

In total seven people have been arrested regarding corruption that reaches into the premier league, it is suspected that at least one but possibly two teams from the top league are involved; unfortunately this is as bad as it can be.

Of the seven arrests only one is known so far, and that is Pascal Chimbonda, who played for Wigan as a defender, but has since moved to North London club Tottenham. The City of London police who made the arrests will not confirm any of the other people arrested or their locations, although it is known that the five arrested today are aged 30, 48, 55, 60 and 69 they were taken into custody as the police raided eight addresses across the UK.

It is known that the grounds of Newcastle Utd, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers have been searched, at the moment everything is a bit sketchy but as always with cases like this, there is nothing else coming out, so we can only sit and wait to see what else is going to be announced.

Source [Sky]

Premier League round up

The hardest thing when you are winning is when the fight back comes, this happened to Fulham who once again saw a two goal lead reduced to draw against Blackburn. The Hammers managed a draw in the London derby against Spurs.

At the top of the league Man U found themselves on the wrong end of a 1-0 score line at Bolton, Arsenal left it late to take all three points from Wigan with two late goals. While Chelsea confirmed their plans for another league challenge by beating strugglers Derby 2-0.

At the other end of the table with have already how Derby and Wigan got on, but the surprise score line of the weekend was at Everton where they beat third from bottom Sunderland 7-1 and Middlesbrough must have fancied their chances against Aston Villa but were torn apart losing 3-0.

All in all the league has not changed much apart from the very top where Arsenal has broke away from Man U with a three point lead plus a game in hand. Meanwhile there is still some pressure on Rafa Benitez at Liverpool despite a convincing win over Newcastle, it seems that he is disappointed at the lack of transfer movement at the club, believing that strengthening the club is their only hope of any significant trophy wins this season.

Source [Yahoo Eurosport]

Liverpool targeted by lower teams

Out of all the top teams in the Premier League it is Liverpool that would appear to be the team that the teams lower down the league have a good chance of getting some points off. There is always one team that starts off fine and then suddenly for no apparent reason stall and once this happens it is very hard to get going again, which is why other teams can nick a point or maybe all three.

For Liverpool this is a very dangerous time to be in. We have a situation where over the next eight weeks there is a long run of games, and in fact this period can make or break of season for a team. In Liverpool’s case too many loses could result of them heading towards the bottom and coming out the New Year in that position would be very difficult.

The next game for Liverpool is away at Newcastle, this is never an easy match for any team, but the Magpies could fancy themselves for all three points on Saturday which would wound Liverpool making it harder for them to fight back in the next game and so on, the rot can quickly get a hold.

However there is one saving grace from Liverpool, that is Newcastle are coming back from a 4-1 beating by Portsmouth so they will have that on their minds.

The game will be close, but I have to give this one to Newcastle.

Source [Setanta]

Three lions rolled over

Well as I said yesterday the warning signs were there, Croatia were not going to be the total push over as everyone expected, and in fact for them to score three goals at Wembley in front of a mainly English crowd should not be forgotten. They played well and even when England scored an equaliser, they still had the spirit and determination to come back and score and really wonderful winning goal.

Obviously this result has cost the manager Steve McClaren his job, a post that has barely lasted a year. So what now for England and English football? Clearly there is a need for a completely new set-up throughout the Football Association starting right at the top, they are not completely without blame, it is they who appointed the manager and coaching staff, so it should be they that also take the responsibility for this shambles.

It’s not just the losing of this game; it is the expense that the fans have put in following the team around Europe and for what? They were in one of the weaker groups and should have sailed through, anyway it’s over now and thanks goodness, we can get back to some real football this weekend, the premier league is back on!

Source [ITV Football]

180 Degrees Place Mourinho in the Running

Following England’s disqualification from the Euro 2008 tournament last week and manager Steve McClaren’s immediate dismissal, it was widely reported that former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho preemptively stated he had no interest in the job. This prompted many fans adrift without a manager or a clear future for the national team to ask: “Why?”

Mourinho’s record both in England and abroad has instilled confidence; he consistently emerges as a favorite for the position in fan forums across the Internet. He’s enjoyed two league titles at FC Porto and two at Chelsea FC. He led Porto to victory in the UEFA League and Cup. For two years he held the International Federation of Football History and Statistics honor of best manager.

Despite his sudden and controversial departure from Chelsea in September, Mourinho remains a figure many England fans trust. The start to Chelsea’s 2007 season was rocky, but supporters remember his successes with one of the EPL’s top teams. Under his watchful eye Chelsea won six trophies in half as many years and elevated the English record for unbeaten home streak.

Mourinho knows English players and he knows the international game. He’s also conveniently unemployed. But he was quick to disavow any desire to lead the England squad, though no clear reason was circulated. Now, nearly a week since England’s crushing defeat, Mourinho has expressed a change of heart.

‘Tell the FA to come and get me.’

Fans are left as puzzled by his interest as they were by his disinterest. Mourinho’s motives are unclear, but his timing could place him in an advantageous position for negotiations. Supporters have been carrying the Mourinho flag with disappointment and hope he’d reconsider. Now those fans will wave his flag madly in an attempt to get the FA’s attention.

With this 180 degree turn Mourinho may now emerge as a prime candidate for England manager. His experience suggests he has the know-how, and he has the fans’ faith. Whether or not he’s approached by the FA to take the national helm remains to be seen. But they’ll find him receptive to consideration for the monumental task of breathing life back into the men’s senior squad.

‘We will have to wait and see, but I rule nothing out.’

Source [ESPN]

The time has come for England to perform

England stands just hours away from either glory or dishonor, the captain Steven Gerrard has said that it’s “Time to deliver” and he could have point. Especially after the dismal performance against Russia. But despite all of the euphoria about the game tonight this is not going to be a cut and dry affair. For anyone that can remember England were in virtually the same situation at the Euro 2004 qualifiers when they needed at least a draw to get through, the game ended goalless and England went through.

Croatia may not have covered themselves in glory recently but they do have some very experienced players including some from the premiership, so they are going to be used to how the English players perform, so they can win this game but they need someone who can put it in the net. Unfortunately the strike force is limited and therefore they could become over stretched and it is then when a team like Croatia can hit them with a counter strike, and it will only take one good attack to see England knocked out, something that could cost manager Steve McClaren his job.

Source [ITV Football]

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