We got word last night that Fred is heading to Australia for a short-term loan with the Hyundai A-League's Wellington FC Phoenix. Per the A-League's loan policy, the Brazilian midfielder will be eligible to play six games for the Phoenix, beginning as early as their game Sunday evening.

Fred, of course, previously played a season in the A-League, leading the Melbourne Victory to the 2006-07 championship, before making his way to the District of Columbia.

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News "down under" is abuzz about the prospect of a former Brazilian A-League hero and current DC United standout returning to the land of Kiwis, albeit temporarily.

According to this report...

Phoenix announce Fred coupFriday, November 14, 2008
One of the A-League's best-ever players is returning to the
competition, with confirmation that Wellington Phoenix have secured the
services of Brazilian star Fred as a guest player.

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In my last post, I claimed that Tom Soehn had an ADR this year of 3.11. What does that mean? Is that good or bad?

Well as readers of this blog know, I've been passing down player ratings of either "Top Shelf", "Call", or "Rail" to players after every match. I've also been tracking those ratings over the course of the year, and displayed all of them here. Click to continue reading...

Remember how our trusted front office brought in all these talented foreign players with the hope of giving us a better chance to advance in international competitions this year? With United finishing the Champions League with just 1 point in 6 matches, that seems like a distant memory. This was more like the team we've all grown used to after watching the Champions Cup and Superliga earlier in the year. Click to continue reading...

I have a very low tolerence for "Diva-ish" behavior, no matter how talented a player may be. And as much as I dislike both of these immensly talented players, I decided to write a post because their fates may be intertwined- although higly unlikely- and I wouldn't mind seeing both of them possibly doing OL a big favor in the future, by negatively affecting the current #2 team in L1, Marseille.

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I know I normally do a post match write up after CL matches, but I'm running short of time and won't be able to do the usual photo and video fest. Plus most of what needed to be said has already been posted in the comments of this thread. So here are some additional thoughts:

1. Lyon are taking the concept of "the best defense is a good offense" a little too far.

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Fred was very pissed yesterday when, as he was walking off the pitch during a substitution, he was booed rather voraciously by the home crowd at the Gerland. Sayz Fred:

"It's very difficult. Every time, it's the same thing - the fans are angry with me and whistle at me.

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It's international week, so things are rather quiet on the Lyon front. Here's what's been going on:

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Fabio Grosso is back in training and is expected to play against Lille on October 18th. This is good news because if he does well, he play against Steaua a few days later.

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When the Bum Hammy Hammer strikes, it strikes hard and without pity. Both of our Brazilians are now feeling the pain with Fred out for the regular season (come on, just say it . . . out for the remainder of the season--the playoffs are a pipe-dream at this point) and Emilio still on the shelf. How long until the announcement that Emilio is done as well? Click to continue reading...

Match pictures and highlights at the bottom of the post.

THE GOOD:

Definitely the man of the match...on both sides.

Hugo Lloris.

He's definitely shaken off the jitters that afflicted him in the Fiorentina match.

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Flight from LA to Honduras: 11 hours
Flight from Honduras to DC: 8 hours
Flight from DC to Dallas: 6 hours

So DC United has spent over 24 hours on airplanes in the last week. And those are three separate days in the past week that we did not have an opportunity to practice. I don't mean to make excuses, but it's hard to believe that a team playing in this situation really has a fair chance. Click to continue reading...

After 60 minutes of this match, I was all ready to come on here and say I was wrong about wanting to punt the CCL. A goalless draw would have been a wonderful result. But as is typical with this club, we let up 2 soft goals off of shotty defending. And now we're staring up from the bottom of a fully stacked group. Click to continue reading...

As frustrating as it was to watch this team on a roller coaster ride that had its share of ups and downs the past few months, I would trade the past three weeks for that roller coaster. I'm not going to argue that we deserved to win this match, because clearly we didn't, but it sure made it hard for us to have a chance when we suffered from the worst display of officiating that we've seen all year. Click to continue reading...

Ahhh, hopefully we can have a slight respite from the recent Franco-Italian war that has errupted in our comments section of the post-Lyon-Fiorentina CL match, and during the lull in hostilities, get back to enjoying some L1 action!

Saturday, Lyon travel to Le Stade Jules Deschaseaux in the the northwestern region of Haute-Normandie to take on one of this year's promoted clubs, Le Havre AC.

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DC United won their 12th club trophy last night in the 2008 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup with their 2-1 defeat of the USL-1 Charleston Battery at RFK Stadium. DC was lead by their two Brazilians Luciano Emilio and Fred in this one as Emilio got the Black-and-Red up early and after Charleston leveled things [. Click to continue reading...

In a season that's had its fair share of ups and downs, we've finally got something to show for it! Maybe a title in the US Open Cup wasn't necessarily the goal for this season, but it's certainly an accomplishment the team should be proud of, and most importantly, its great that United has fought its way back into the international picture. Click to continue reading...

One derby down, one to go. Sunday Lyon will be traveling to Le Stade Geoffroy-Guichard to take on A.S. St. Etienne in the second derby of the season. This is the 96th derby the two teams have participated in. After having handled Grenoble Foot 38 in the first derby, Lyon will have to contend with a St.

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Fred is from Brazil. Fred's language of origin is, therefore, Portuguese (I know, I was confused to learn that he doesn't speak Brazilian, too). Fred also speaks a bit of Spanish - and less English - but whenever he gets interview requests, folks ask him to speak in either of those two languages and not his native Portuguese.

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Chicago Fire 0 : 1 D.C. United
Six Word Novel Recap

Black and red likes some yellow.

Media, Traditional and OtherwiseThe Chicago Daily Herald, Orrin Schwarz: "Things changed at the start of the second half Saturday night at Toyota Park. Fans in brand-new No. 20 jerseys sat up straight. Click to continue reading...

For those of you who didn't watch the game tonight, you'll have to take my word for it - Fred was absolutely dicing Fire players on the flank tonight. He made several players look plain silly with his quick, slick, sick moves. He also scored his second goal of the year. Here it is.

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I remember writing before the season started that we would probably have to win a lot of games 1-0 this year. Well it took five months and a goalkeeper change to finally do it.

I got back from a great week at Ocean City today and opted to purchase the discounted $9.95 MLSlive package, which will probably be used only to watch tonight's match and next Saturday's. Click to continue reading...

Benzema celebrates after scoring Lyon's only goal in last year's 2-1 loss to Lorient.

This week, Lyon travel to Brittany to face FC Lorient at Le Stade Moustoir. Lorient is currently tied for 2nd place with seven other teams in L1, having defeated Le Mans 1-0 in the first week.

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Freddie is really a good football player. No, i'm not talking about Freddie Adu, yeah Adu is good too. But i'm talking of another Freddie that West Ham United has, it's Freddie Sears. He is also 18 years old. He is a product of West Ham United Academy where he was signed at age 11. What's so [...] Click to continue reading...

Far be it for me to neglect you, readers, on the day before the classic NY-DC matchup up at the stadium named after my NFL team. From what I can gather, DC is using this game as a chance to work back in some players coming off of injury. On turf, I'd have [...] Click to continue reading...

How's that for a confidence booster? With only 7 of our normal starting 11 in the lineup, and only 6 guys starting who started against KC in the season opener, United somehow came together to produce a big win and their first shutout of the year. With a first look at the starting lineups and the revelation that Ryan Pore was starting at forward, I kind of had a feeling that this could finally be THE ONE, and the team did not disappoint. Click to continue reading...

This was the first non-Open-Cup game of the season that I didn't see either in person or on tv, and that's probably a good one. Because aside from maybe the match at RSL early in the year, this was easily DC's worst performance yet. I should have taken the Fullback approach and prepped for this game with some red wine, or better yet, I should have been taking in the game with my arch nemesis Jose. Click to continue reading...

Due to a limited budget, I haven't made it to too many United games this year, but this was a game that I feel was probably much better to watch in person than on tv. Good atmosphere at RFK as always (and the lights stayed on!), but it seemed like less attendance than usual. All in all, a pretty exciting game, including a frantic final 10 minutes that had my usually quiet section standing throughout. Click to continue reading...

I have found myself bored this week. I think it had to do with the emotional high of the LA match, the inability to go to the Rochester match on Tuesday, and the lack of another game until next Tuesday (which I need a ride to). So I troll the other DC blogs [...] Click to continue reading...

These are the kind of Monday mornings I can deal with. I have been scouring the internet for media about yesterday's game, for the sole reason that I want to keep reliving it. We beat a team that has a bigger band wagon than any other team in MLS, and we did it [...] Click to continue reading...

Well, that was an uncomfortable temperature for a truly entertaining game. But, that's what you get when ABC wants the game at 12. I just hope the ratings were worth having the game played on the surface of the sun. Where to begin? Oh, I know. Greater than the win, or the [...] Click to continue reading...

After a couple of underwhelming victories the past few weeks, this win was just what United needed to not only continue their unbeaten streak, but also gain some confidence going into Superliga. Recently, United has been beating lesser opponents while giving up too many goalscoring opportunities. But in this match, against inarguably one of the most talented offensive teams in the league, DC dominated possession, dominated the scoreline, and performed admirably well on defense. Click to continue reading...

The latest news from this week...Due to the amount of material covered, I didn't post links to the original sources like I normally do, but if you want them, let me know.

OUTGOING:

FRED: Is it just me, or does Fred spend an inordinate amount of time making life difficult for the rest of us?

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I'm a bit late writing this due to numerous festivities that resulted from my sister-in-law's wedding this weekend, not the least of which included a couple of hangovers, so I'll keep my comments brief since several other smarter analysts, wittier writers, and merciless bloggers have already opined on the match. Click to continue reading...

We got great news today, as Fred became the second United player this month to have a baby. The midfielder's wife, Deborah, gave birth to the couple's first child, daughter Eduarda Rocha Carreiro this morning at 8:20 a.m. The little one weight in at six pounds-four ounces. Both mother and baby are doing well and Fred is very excited.

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This morning, Lyon finally clinched the signature of Miralem Pjanic, who is the hottest talent in France not born in 1987. Lyon have been negotiating with Metz for weeks, but to so many clubs interested, many with late bids, the deal took quite a long time in being crafted.

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