Daily news roundups

Champions League draw, not much more morning news

Philadelphia Union

Amobi Okugo is on a list of five US players who could use a move abroad at Union Dues. Why he would play in England’s League One is beyond me.

Local

US Youth Soccer has announced its regional Coach of the Year Awards. From Region I, Wilmington’s William Rimmer, who coaches at Delaware Saengerbund, has been named Boys Competitive Coach of the Year while Lawrenceville, NJ’s Chris Thomas has been named Girls Recreation Coach of the Year.

MLS

At Goal.com, Kyle McCarthy considers the signing of Juninho by New York.

The schedule for the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals has been released. For the first leg, Houston will host Santos Lagunas (Mexico) on March 5, Seattle travels to Tigres (Mexico) on March 6, and LA travels to Herediano on March 6 (Cosat Rica).

More on Orlando City’s MLS aspirations. Click on the link in the article to see renderings of what a hoped for 18,000 seat soccer specific stadium might look like.

Women’s Soccer

It’s official: the new NWSL team in Seattle will be called Seattle Reign.

Portland Thorns have named former US international Cindy Parlow Cone as their new coach. Parlow Cone most recently won an NCAA championship as an assistant coach at University of North Carolina.

US

More on Seattle’s chances of hosting one of the Hexagonal games in the upcoming World Cup qualifiers.

Scandinavia: Is it the stepping stone for bigger things for US players? Soccer America considers.

American Soccer Now says the USWNT team are weary after a long and dramatic year.

Elsewhere

The Champions League draw for the knockout stage of 16 teams took place today and here are the results:

Real Madrid vs Manchester United
Arsenal vs Bayern Munich
Celtic vs Juventus
Milan vs Barcelona
Shakhtar Donetsk vs Borussia Dortmund
Valencia vs Paris St-Germain
Galatasaray vs Schalke
Porto vs Málaga

The first leg will be played Feb. 12/13/19/20, the second legs March 5/6/12/13. Apparently, the second leg of the Real Madrid vs Manchester United match will take place three days after El Clasico.

The racist homophobes at Zenit St. Petersburg supporters group Landscrona have issued a statement saying that the racist and homophobic statement they released earlier this week saying the club should not sign black or gay players has been taken out of context by the media. Saying they have no “mental association” with Africa, or South America, Australia, or Oceania, the new statement states Landscrona merely wants Zenit to “primarily made of players who share our spirit and mentality.”

Lionel Messi was voted the third best athlete in Argentina by journalists in that country. Third best.

Zizou? He’s still got it.

Finally, on Sunday, supporters of FC Union Berlin will gather at their home stadium. No game is scheduled, they’re getting together to sing Christmas carols for 90 minutes. When the tradition began in 2003, 89 people showed up. Last year, 17,000 attended. Very cool.

 

4 Comments

  1. Hopefully Liverpool will kick Zenit St. Petersburg back to Siberia in the Europa league.

  2. Nice photo!

Leave a Reply to McMohansky Cancel

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*