Daily news roundups / Featured

Hack on Casey, Eastern PA USOC final qualifier set, National Women’s Soccer League, more news

Photo: Daniel Gajdamowicz

Philadelphia Union

In case you missed it, the Union selected Conor Casey in the second stage on the Re-Entry Draft on Friday.

The Union have until Friday to make an offer to Casey, one that is certain to be less than the $400,000 he made with Colorado last season. Should Casey turn down the offer, the Union retain right of first refusal.

John Hackworth says, “Conor is that big body we need here on attack and I believe he still has a lot to prove.”

Regarding concerns about Casey’s health, Hackworth says, “Look, we’ve done our homework inside and out. We talked to all of the trainers, all of the doctors. And he’s fit, he’s healthy and he gets a little bit of a fresh start with a team that needs the quality that he brings.”

Hackworth also said that expects Casey to challenge for a starting spot. “We wouldn’t have chosen him if we just thought he was going to be a role player…I would say now, much like we have at the center back position, we have legitimately tough decisions to make and we can play different ways with different personnel. All of those things are very important when you’re tactically trying to select players against an opponent and weigh the pros and cons of how a team plays and try to take advantage of that.”

More on the selection of Casey from PSP, CSN Philly, and the Brotherly Game plus reaction from The Goalkeeper and Delco Times.

Kyle McCarthy looks at the return of players such as Sebastien Le Toux to their former clubs.

The Union will be hosting a live chat on the club’s website on Tuesday evening at 7:30pm. No word on who will be hosting the chat.

The social media community of Union fans is filled with questions after an update of the team roster on the Union website shows Freddy Adu and Cristhian Hernandez with no jersey number. Sebastien Le Toux now has No. 11, the number previously worn by Adu.

The Union will be hosting a futsal tournament at United Sports on Dec. 27 (boys), Dec. 29 (girls), and Jan. 21 (boys & girls). Click here for more information.

Local

United German Hungarians defeated Predators 1–0 in Sunday’s re-scheduled Eastern Pennsylvania US Open Cup qualification semifinal. West Chester United will host UGH on Saturday, Dec. 22 in the final at 2pm.

The Goalkeeper notes the debut of beIN Sport’s English-language channel at the expense of GolTV on Comcast and talks about what the loss of GolTV means for many area soccer fans: no German, Argentinian or Brazilian soccer and no US Open Cup final.

MLS

In case you missed it, Danny Califf was selected by Toronto in Friday’s draft and has already signed with the club. Explaining that Califf’s comments earlier this season when Peter Nowak was dealing him away from the Union that the last place he wanted to go was Toronto were “overblown a little bit,” Toronto director of team and player operations Earl Cochrane says Califf is “really excited about this. He’s looking at it as the next chapter in his career.”

On Saturday, citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg reported that Manchester City is in talks to buy the franchise the league wants to place in Queens. Manchester City’s owners denied the report.

LA Galaxy traded Edson Buddle to Colorado in exchange for allocation money and the Rapids’ first-round 2013 MLS Supplemental Draft pick less than an hour after selecting midfielder Colin Clarke and goalkeeper Will Hesmer in the Re-Entry Draft. Bruce Arena explained, “Unfortunately, as is the case basically every year, you’ve got to make moves to maintain the integrity of the salary cap.”

Mixx Diskerud’s father has confirmed that Portland has been in contact about signing the out of contract player but the league has yet to make an offer.

ProSoccerTalk says New York, Kansas City, and LA are the three teams doing the most to improve their rosters through their offseason moves.

If you’re into mock drafts, SBI has one.

NWSLWomen’s Soccer

The name and logo of the new women’s professional league were unveiled on Saturday during halftime of the USWNT v China match. The eight-team National Women’s Soccer League will begin play in April.

The NWSL does not yet have a website but you can like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Interestingly, some big name USWNT players such as Alex Morgan and Hope Solo refrained from committing to the league when talking to reporters before Saturday’s game.

Megan Rapinoe said of the league, “There’s a lot we don’t know so far, so it’s hard to say what we expect out of it. I think having a league and having an opportunity to play consistently, if it’s sustainable and it’s something that’s good for not only this team but the next 100 players, would be good. We need to know a lot more.

At SB Nation, Ryan Rosenblatt says that for a league that has yet to play asingle game, “everything in the way of marketing and PR so far is as discouraging as possible.”

On the positive side, Canadian international Christine Sinclair has announced she will play in the new league. She. Is. Awesome.

The Seattle team is expected to announce their name soon but indications are that they will be called Seattle Reign. Ha ha, get it?

Logo Design Love has a look at previous women’s pro soccer league logos.

US

The USWNT concluded their post-Olympic Fan Tribute Tour on Saturday with a 4–1 win over China. Post-game quote sheet here.

It doesn’t look like the US women will be facing quality opposition anytime soon after US Soccer announced on Saturday that the team will host Scotland (ranked 23rd in the world) in a friendly at Jacksonville’s EverBank Field on Saturday, Feb. 9. The game will mark the debut of the team’s new Scottish-born coach, Tom Sermanni. You will recall that the Union will play an MLS team that is to be announced at EverBank on Friday, Feb. 15.

Here’s a roundup of how USMNT members fared abroad over the weekend, including two goals for Jozy Altidore.

You can vote for your USMNT 2012 Best XI at American Soccer Now.

Elsewhere

Chelsea lost 1–0 to Corinthians in the Club World Cup Final.

Lionel Messi added two more goals to his 2012 tally in Sunday’s 4–1 win over Atletico Madrid.

A FIFA report says there is “compelling evidence” that match fixing took place in one or more exhibition games featuring the South Africa team ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

Football and Music takes a look at—and listen to—soccer Christmas songs. Who knew there were so many?

 

25 Comments

  1. Very possible hernandez is going out on loan which may be a great thing for him. Somewhere that he can get more actual gametime. also very possible Freddy is either going out (by force likely) or he is being knocked down a few pegs to allow him to start hustling to earn what has been given/gifted to him for a long time. my hope is for chrsitmas santa brings him a stocking full of perspective/appreciation for a new season with the U.

    • I dunno. Number 10 is unassigned so that would be logical to give him that number if he came back. But I suspect the Union goes to Turkey and neva eva eva eva evaevaeva comes back.

  2. James "4-3-3" Forever says:

    I’ve warmed to Casey. It’s nice to be brining in proven veteran MLS players who we know what they provide. As much as I want to be the Porto of MLS, we can’t simply have the same sense of expectations if we keep on bringing unproven/unknown foreigners.
    I still don’t want to see Jack get less minutes, but at the very least Hackworth is right, having Casey in the mix is going to give us the ability to play someone who has a skillset no one else on this team has.

  3. How does Portland get to go out and sign a Youth/USMNT player without him going through the Lottery for players coming back to MLS? Sal Zizzo, Gab Ferrari, Kamani Hill and a number of Youth/USMNT, (Marcus Tracey, anyone?) have had to go through the Lottery when returning to the league. Why would it be any different in this case? If he has to go through the lottery, the Union should definitely jump in and screw up Portland’s chances. Or leverage it as trade bait and get something in return. This fucking leagues rules are difficult at best to follow, but you would think they are consistent in its application…

    • James "4-3-3" Forever says:

      I think in that case Portland already has positioned themselves at the top of the allocation order.
      But still, agree 100%. So many of those rules need to go. If a team is lucky enough to interest some random former US national to play for them, they shouldn’t be prevented from making a deal because of some stupid rule created in 1996.

      • They can’t arbitrarliy position themselves at the top. They order goes by how teams finished the year:
        1. Toronto
        2. Chivas
        3. Portland
        4. New England
        5. Union
        6. Rapids
        ect…

        I don’t know a trade existing between Toronto or Chivas to move up the list. The other trickier question is will this be an allocation or a lottery? Take the case of Lee Nguyen. He played for the USMNT, didn’t sign with the league and wasn’t offered a contract, then came back and went into the lottery. Wouldn’t Mix go through the same process?

    • Portland made two trades — one with Chivas, and another with Toronto — just before the re-entry draft. One of them included the swapping of allocation order spots to get the second slot from Chivas. Toronto had the first slot. In all likelihood, there was also an unpublicized aspect to the Toronto deal that includes Toronto passing on Diskerud. That sort of thing has happened before.

      See http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/12/12/timbers-deal-again-time-tfcs-johnson-kocic for more details.

  4. I kind of agree on how badly the new womens league has been marketed. Like the last league all the team names and logos look like the generic teams from a sports team that couldn’t get a license to real sports teams.

    It looks like all of the initial marketing has been done on the cheap with an eye on keeping the logos as unoffensive as possible.

    The one exception is Portland’s team name and logo. The Thorns at least the name is something and the logo makes me want to see the kit when it comes out in a I bet you it will look kind of badass kind of way.

  5. Pink Cows signed Juninho. Do they have the same salary cap as the Union?

    • in theory yes. in reality no. they had two 5 million plus players on their squad the past two years. I imagine junino will replace rafa as far as dp goes and believe it or not they clear like 4 million off the books. henry makes as much as union and DC squads combined. Its no different than the premier league in that there are haves and have nots (new york and LA and then the rest of us). obviously you can’t just buy a title everytime as new york has found out but LA has managed to do it the last two years.

      • The only difference is that the MLS has all these extrea crazy rules like allocation drafts and discoery signings that only inhihibt the smaller teams from doing business

      • I’m not sure that all the byzantine extra rules inhibit smaller teams. They are designed to help smaller teams and I think a lot of the time they actually do

      • Yea for the most part they do. But I think the time has come to try and enforce more parity in the league. If this last mls cup has proven for.all of its stars most fans of major league soccer don’t care about watching the LA Galaxy even with all of their stars. Add to that non MLS soccer fans wernt watching either.

        MLS needs to have competition closer to the NHL and not be like the NBA where on 2-3 teams have a realistic chance of winning the championship.

      • OK sorry for the grammar in that one. that’s what I get when I post quick from my phone on the train.

        I would be he who benefits most from an edit post button

      • I am for anything that creates more parity in the league

      • me too. problem is that deep pockets create good soccer at least in the current climate. we will never have a first rate league with a 2.6 million dollar cap and we also can’t have financial viability with a greater cap so we are stuck with the haves and have nots for now. at least it raises the league image a little to have henry and beckham etc in the league. also agree that the rules need some updating. for me the best thing is a luxury tax that gives lower income teams extra allocation dough to use from the big spenders. say 20 percent above 4 million in salary.

      • I am all for a cap on how many designated players a team can have and make it so DP’s can’t be traded.

      • Even the great Alex f. Said a cap is not a bad idea, he said in an interview that mls is doing some smart and good things, that saying we still have a lot of work to do

  6. I am absolutely disgusted at the Zenit supporters. Living in America, we are spoiled and don’t realize how much racism there is out there. And to say that they aren’t racist? We’ll see if FIFAs zero tolerance rule does anything, but probably not.

  7. If Russia can’t get its supporters in line, they should lose the World Cup. We deserve it.

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