US Men's National Team: Can't Touch Dis!

Thinking diverges broadly on the status of the USMNT. Tie to Argentina on 26 March? Awesome! Lose 1-0 to Paraguay the 29th? Miserable! Paul Kennedy, writing for Soccer America, makes it sound like this was the US-Argentina match was the worst game he had ever seen in his life (clearly he's never watch Stoke City play). To read Kennedy’s various articles in Soccer America, there is very little that USSF can do right-or has ever done right. In contrast, MLS Soccer's Talk's Daniel Feuerstein raves about the team's style of play after that game and after the 1-0 loss to Paraguay as well. For Feuerstein, the game did not matter much because it was an exhibition, but 19-year-old Juan Agudelo's goal on Saturday was the greatest thing on Earth since Fidel Castro invented the cigar.

Not losing - and not being intimidated by Argentina - a team led by the greatest player currently in the game was impressive. In a game where our veterans (Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, Carlos Bocanegra, etc. did not play well), Tim Howard's 13,000 saves kept us in the game, and Agudelo was able to notch his second goal in three appearances with the USMNT.

In the Paraguay game, the line-up was a bunch of guys that Coach Bob Bradley would ever start in a relevant match (World Cup, Gold Cup or even an exhibition against Argentina). This is the starting line-up that wouldn’t! Even in this game however, the team played fairly, despite the Paraguayan players hacking down US players every time they were beaten by individual efforts.

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On a happy note, a groundswell of support has triggered a multitude of comments from unlikely sources:

- Col Muammar Gaddafi- that Juan Agudelo kid is brilliant, I wish he played for Juventus!

- Dr. Doom: Chandler's crosses are so beautiful, my iron mask almost rusted from the tears.

- Donald Rumsfeld: As I recall, that Bob Bradley assured me there was WMD in Iraq.

- Ghost of X-Mas Present: The Gold Cup is going to be awesome this year!

- Alexis Lalas: Dude, where’s my car?

- Diego Maradona: Tuesday I wished I’d been playing for Paraguay, because I would have loved to kick Clint Dempsey in the knee-cap!

Michael Jackson Statue at Craven Cottage? Really??

In what has to be one of the strangest tributes of all time, Fulham FC owner Mohamed Al-Fayed, has announced that he has commissioned a statue of Michael Jackson. Sources announced on 16 March that a gold-face statue of the late dancer sitting with Bubbles the Chimp, will be unveiled at Craven Cottage on 3 April before Fulham's game against Blackpool.

Jackson and Al-Fayed became friends over several years, and Jackson is known to have attended a Fulham game in 1999 during his umbrellaed widow phase.

DC United Themes for 2011

With DC United players reporting for camp last Friday, the promise of the new season is upon us. Nowhere is a new season more welcome than in Washington DC, where our once-mighty club had the worst professional season (2010) of any club in MLS. United finished last in the league, scored the fewest goals in the league, had no hope for a stadium deal and a head coach who was never given a fighting chance to do well.

The lead-up to the 2011 season started with a bang, as Ben Olsen was officially handed the reins, and led the club through an extremely busy off-season. The off-season included the unexpected arrival of midfielder Dax McCarty from Dallas FC and despite bidding farewell to many players; DC United is unlikely to miss any of them except perhaps Rodney Wallace. I believe this team will do very well this season, specifically because coach Ben will fashion this team in his own never-give-up image.

There are on-the-field questions, but perhaps most intriguing among them is whether the team will stay healthy this year. Accidents happen and players get injured, but is DC addressing the preventative aspects of training? Who is the strength and conditioning coach? It is clear that the team struggled to overcome fatigue last season and that most of the goals DC gave up were toward the end of the game. Then the team’s injuries started to increase, possibly as players’ training schedules were adjusted to compensate for insufficient conditioning in preseason. 

Finally, this season will also bring an added off-field dimension, as attention to a stadium deal is renewed. A stadium deal at Poplar Point in ward 8 collapsed in 2009 under the weight of the financial crisis and never recovered. Now the issue has resurfaced after the City of Baltimore released a feasibility study, which concluded that a new mixed-use stadium would generate $3-4 million per year in revenue and create several hundred jobs. Within a few weeks, the issue has already revived and info has come to light that there are at least two sites that are up for discussion. Add to this the arrival less than a month ago of a new mayor in Vincent Gray, with some experience stemming from the Nationals Stadium, and you now have all the necessary ingredients for off-field stadium drama.