Maurice Edu returned from injury to score the final goal as Rangers hammered Hamilton Academic yesterday. Edu had been down since November, but he has featured regularly for the Scottish side this season and should be the American every team scrambles to pick up.

The MLS Supplemental Draft will help teams fill out their reserve team rosters. WVHooligan and Houston11soccer have quickie draft previews.

Colorado’s Omar Cummings had his loan deal with Aston Villa fall through after Jamaica’s fall in the newest FIFA rankings made it difficult to obtain a work permit for the striker. The FA requires a player’s home country to be at or above 70 in the FIFA rankings when averaging the past two years. Jamaica dropped from 58th to 59th in January, bringing its 2 year average to 72.

Kenny Cooper officially “lumbers” onto the Portland Timbers. See what I did there?

The NSCAA convention in Baltimore featured a State of the Youth System speech by Claudio Reyna. Does anyone have a transcript of this? Is it just a drawing of a downward facing thumb? But seriously, does anyone have a transcript?

USMNT midfielder Jermaine Jones has left Schalke of the Bundesliga on a six-month loan for Blackburn of the EPL.

The New York Times talks to Corey Hertzog, the Penn State striker who had high hopes of joining the Union. But since the Energy Drinks drafted him, we better start the taunting now. Sigh. Hertzog says he isn’t into international soccer and wouldn’t get up early to watch the EPL. That’s funny, because I wouldn’t get up off the couch to turn on the TV if the Red Bulls game was starting.

SkySports uses Martin Luther King Day to highlight Jimmy Hill’s work as the leader of the player’s union when the maximum wage was abolished from English football. Not quite the same as MLK…

CBCSports was impressed by Reyna’s speech at the NSCAA conference, saying his credibility will help jump start the US youth system. I like Reyna… as a figurehead. He does have credibility as a youth system success story, but that doesn’t mean he should be the brains behind a development program. Hello Ajax? We have some big American checks we’d like to send one of your top coaches. Send him over with a copy of how-the-hell-you-do-what-you-do.

The Scottish Premier League will likely shrink to 10 teams next season and develop a 12 team second division.

The United States’ representative on the FIFA Executive Committee claims that a winter World Cup would adversely affect the club soccer world. Why do FIFA members keep telling the media about these things? Shouldn’t they be discussing it among themselves?