I had a great conversation with Jonathan Starling of the Third Half podcast last week. We discussed the upcoming UEFA Cup group stage, UEFA's stance on debt-laden clubs, the situation at Ajax and many other topics. I've posted the Champions League Talk segment of the show here as a separate podcast file but if you'd [. Click to continue reading...

This may be a bit long-winded and rambling but I hope you stick with me as there are a number of important points to discuss.  UEFA recently released a publication entitled "Safeguarding The Heritage And Future Of Team Sport In Europe", which outlines UEFA's stance on principles of good governance, player agents and home-grown players. Click to continue reading...

Would that I could use all of my journalistic know-how to explain offsides half as well as this.
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Although I am sure that I have admitted many, here is a quick list of rule changes, schemes and slight changes to officiating that have been introduced in top level football world wide. Bear in mind that all of these took place in the last couple of years; FIFA, the top flight leagues and Football Associations are clearly rule happy. Click to continue reading...

Three Lions haters, line up for this one. FIFA announced today that England's win over Trinidad and Tobago will stand and continue to be considered an "A" class international, despite England making an illegal seventh substitute in the match. Apparently, allowing the seventh sub was nothing more than a clerical error on the [. Click to continue reading...

This isn't the first time we've talked about equitable playing time here, but we recently had a ras hof parent complaints in our Rec league, so we took some action and that spawned an interesting debate among our coaches. Our league mandates that all Recreational players should play a minimum of 50% of the match, except [. Click to continue reading...

If you are an MLS fan you have sure heard about the discovery process at some point. The discovery process is used to determine which teams get new players coming in to MLS. If a team has a claim on a player and the league signs the player, then the team gets the player. Simple enough? Definitely.

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Something tells me I may not be the only one out there that feels this way but with the way the MLS is growing and the new international player rules, I think it is time for the MLS to take serious looks at players in Africa. I thought of this a few weeks back before the [...] Click to continue reading...

Of course, the initial reaction was always going to be, "Wow, MLS has rules? Neat!" Cynicism aside, there are some pretty interesting changes afoot, as detailed in Goff's massive post on the subject. Some morsels to chew over: Grandfather Clause or Dangerous Precedent? The Grown-Ass Man, Captain Kissypants, and the Flopping Fish are all considered grandfathered under the DP rules for 2008 and Click to continue reading...

The MLS released the complete list of players available for today's 3:00 p.m. ET waiver Draft, to be conducted via conference call. Below is the order of the draft and the available players. The MLS Waiver Draft Selection Order: 1. San Jose 2. Toronto 3. Salt Lake 4. Los Angeles 5. Colorado 6. Columbus 7. Click to continue reading...

Offside confuses soccer parents - there is no denying it. I chuckle because I see some soccer parents who played AND have coached, yelling at referees for offside when it clearly wasn't. So how would you explain offside to soccer parents? Josh at Throughball found a soccer parent asking that very question though he's not [...] Click to continue reading...

I honestly didn't see very much MLS action this weekend since I was on the road until the early evening on Sunday. I did however catch the LA-Toronto game and I heard a very interesting tid-bit from the ever so annoying Rob Stone. Stone called his usual game with the usual crew (including Allen Hopkins [...] Click to continue reading...