Union President Tom Veit wants to be the Chelsea or Inter Milan of U.S. soccer. Does this mean we can expect a $200 million summer spending spree?

The Turkish National team could be riding quite a high coming into Philadelphia this Saturday. UEFA will vote this week on a home for Euro 2016, and Turkey’s government-financed bid looks to be one of the top contenders. Turkey isn’t currently a part of the European Union, and recent match-fixing scandals in the country have resulted in numerous arrests.

A round-up of highlights from last night’s World Cup friendlies. Canadians might want to skip this one.

For the obsessed, a photo of PPL Park’s ongoing construction.

MLSSoccer has a stunning revelation: The striker pool at USMNT camp is something of a grab bag. At least we can relax knowing that “Ching is safe for the 23-man roster headed to South Africa, either in a starting role up top with Jozy Altidore or in a reserve role off the bench.” Sweet. Perfect. Awesome.

Philadelphia Independence coach Paul Riley was rooting for the Long Island Fury to beat the Women’s Premier Soccer League’s Independence team. WPSL is a huge amateur women’s soccer league, and the Philly team features many Villanova and UPenn alums. The Fury won 2-1.

Fresh off their Champions League win, Inter Milan will play a two city tour in the U.S. this summer. Games in Dallas and Los Angeles are sure to be boring because it’s Italian soccer and Inter won’t have a coach.

Speaking of boring Italian teams, AC Milan’s Clarence Seedorf admitted the team was “not motivated” to play DC United today. Milan doesn’t have a coach and is dealing with an identity crisis as their two Brazilian stars were left off the World Cup squad.

The MLS has announced a new soccer academy – for ticket sellers. “As part of the program, students will develop ticket sales strategy and conduct outbound sales campaigns on behalf of MLS Clubs…” If any students from Philadelphia attend, perhaps a pamphlet highlighting the beauty of our city would be nice. There is an address in France…

Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks’ baseball franchise, the Texas Rangers, went bankrupt yesterday after Hicks defaulted on a $525 million debt. The other three Liverpool/baseball fanatics and myself will spend the summer debating who was the worse buy: A-Rod for Texas or Aquilani for Liverpool. Answer: Tom Hicks sucks.

The Miami Herald lists the players that need to shine in the last two U.S. friendlies before South Africa.

The Major League Soccer Talk podcast features SI soccer writer Grant Wahl, whose recent feature on Didier Drogba was great, as opposed to his recent feature on Clint Dempsey.

A pair of soccer film festivals are coming to NYC in June. There’s a good collection of films about everyone from Zidane to… Ladybugs!!??

The Champions League final drew a 1.1 overnight rating on Fox. It’s disappointing considering last year’s final was on a Wednesday and garnered a 1.0. The third round of the Byron Nelson classic, a non-major tournament in a sport where you get to use personally-tailored weapons to hit a ball, also drew a 1.1 rating. Nothing against golf but… yeah, everything against golf. I don’t have any major gripe with the sport itself, but any sport in which it’s a big deal to make the players walk around instead of drive a tiny dune buggy should not be televised. I love to play golf (especially miniature), but it’s boring just watching the rest of my foursome hit.

Goal.com is reporting that Real Madrid have signed Argentinian star Angel di Maria for $34 million. Presumably, this is Madrid’s answer to Barca’s inking of David Villa. di Maria is 22 and can do things like this:

Los Angeles-area youth team Azul won the Budweiser Cup, an MLS/Bud sponsored youth tournament. Azul will travel to Pretoria for U.S. group stage games on the tab of every youth’s favorite American lager.