Union

Shea Salinas’ goal finished third in the Goal of the Year vote.

No Union players are on the just released list of Generation Adidas graduates.

Local

Penn hosts Bucknell tonight in the first round of the NCAA championship. Princeton hosts University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Temple women’s soccer coach David Jones has announced his resignation. Temple went 6–12–1 this season, 1–6–1 in Atlantic 10 Conference play.

The Eastern Pennsylvania Youth Soccer Association has hired Kelly Connor from the Philadelphia Independence as Coaching Department Administrator. Connor was the Director of Outreach and Communications for the Independence.

MLS

Those of you who might favor Dallas in the MLS Cup can say you are supporting Salisbury High School and Penn State product Jason Yeisley.

From the Department of I’ve Been Saying This For Years, a thought provoking article on Slate says that MLS fails in emphasizing “brand vision” over celebrating the long and rich history of soccer in the United States, arguing that the two need not be incompatible. “When you willfully exclude everything before 1996 from your sense of American soccer history, you don’t have enough history to go around…If this were baseball, say, or NCAA basketball, we wouldn’t be able to watch a game without being folded up in all this velvety history…Sure, the nostalgia trips wouldn’t be a direct path to revenue. But these nods to history wouldn’t have to replace MLS’s current stars-on-magazines approach. Every sports league markets its best players. Most leagues are also savvy enough to make their games feel important even when the stars aren’t playing.” Abso-f’ing-lutely!

It’s official: Kansas City Wizards are now Sporting Kansas City. According to the team’s owners, implicit in the name change is the desire to bring other sports such as rugby and lacrosse under the club’s umbrella. With a new stadium set to open next season, the promotion of new sports will only enhance stadium usage.

It is expected that Vancouver Whitecaps will announce Jay DeMerit as their first MLS signing later today.

The New York Times looks at how Don Garber is committed to MLS being the ultimate meritocracy.

US

Watching the US against South Africa in Wednesday’s 1–0 win was a bit like watching the Union second teamers in one of the summer’s friendlies—hungry play offering a tantalizing and exciting glimpse of the future, as evidenced by the lovely exchange between debutants Mikkel Diskerud and 17-year-old Juan Agudelo that ended with Agudelo’s nifty goal. Player ratings are available at here and here and for debate and discussion around the water cooler. Let’s keep those expectations for Agudelo realistic, people!

More on Diskerud’s story from ESPN.

Gale Agbossoumonde is another one of the youngsters who saw some playing time and ESPN has a profile on him, too.

The same day FIFA releases a report saying the US 2022 World Cup bid is a “medium legal risk” because of a lack of governmental support, the House of Representatives passes a bill in support of the bid.

Charlie Davies is frustrated by his failure to yet return to top flight soccer.

Elsewhere

The FIFA investigation into allegations of bribery and collusion released its findings this morning. FIFA executive committee member Amos Adamu has been banned from all soccer-related activity for three years while fellow committee member Reynald Temarii has been banned for one year. Additionally, four former members of the executive committee from Botswana, Mali, Tonga and Tunisia were also banned from four to two years. The guilty parties were also fined 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,126.78); Temari was fined 5,000 Swiss francs ($5,064.20). Adamu says he will appeal.

The investigation into the Spain/Portugal 2018 and Qatar 2022 bids found insufficient evidence for sanction.

No. 1 Spain humiliated in 4–0 loss to Portugal, the team’s worst in 47 years.

Mario Balotelli again had to suffer racist abuse in Italy’s 1–1 draw against Romania. Most of the abuse came from Italy “supporters.”

The mathematically-minded among us my be interested in this article from Soccer By the Numbers, which looks at the most common scores in the Premiership, Bundesliga, Seria A and La Liga.

Sir Alex Ferguson says that modern players, who “need to be seen with their tattoos and earrings” are “more fragile human beings” than the players of old.

The FA is asking Blackpool to explain why they replaced ten professional Premiership players from their November 6 match against Everton with ten professional Premiership players in their 3–2 loss against Aston Villa, and then replaced that starting XI of professional Premiership players with eleven professional Premiership players for the scoreless draw against West Ham. According to the Guardian, the league feels Blackpool “are in danger of setting a bad example if they are not penalized,” although a bad example of what is not explained. Manager Ian Holloway has said he will resign if the club are punished.