Back by popular demand (and the never ending search for negative karma points by my detractors!)
Here is Friday's (sometimes) Daily news -
England Soccer - It turns out that Kolo Toure, one time captain of Manchester City and World Cup Defender, may have taken one of his wife's diet pills which gave him the positive on his drug test. The minimum time he is expected to be out is the rest of the season, and maybe for up to two years. Man City did not have any title hopes left, but they were desperately fighting for a Champions League spot for next year. There is always the fear that their high priced stars will go elsewhere just to be able to play in the top competition in global soccer.
Speaking of the Champions League, Germany has snatched away one of Italy's CL spots, so Germany now has four.
Speaking of Italy, there are more reports that the Italian coach of Chelsea, Ancelotti, is negotiating with Roma to go there next year. The Russian billionaire who owns Chelsea has a habit of firing coaches. And Ancelotti has stated that his only hope of keeping his job is to win the Champions League. Apparently he is a realist, and recognizes that Chelsea have no hope of winning the Premiership. Despite claims by star midfielder Lampard...
Speaking fo the Champions League, attention is starting to turn to next Tuesday's (or Wednesday, but I think it is Tuesday) match up between Arsenal and Barcelona. Arsenal has injuries and an unimportant suspension, as I recall. Barcelona will be missing Pique through suspension and their goalie, Valdes through injury. Pique has been out injured but may be back to play some of the game, but he will be rusty. Dani Alves is coming back from injury, he played 90 minutes in the mid-week game. But the lack of a third central defender has meant that sometimes Abidal (who is playing really well) and sometimes Bisuick, I mean Bisquet, is played back there. And the coach of Barca was hospitalized yesterday with back pain. It turns out to be a herniated disc.
Bisquick is one of the softest defensive midfielders I have ever seen. You breath on him hard, and he collapses and starts crying. Say what you want to about that thug Marquez, but when the Thug from Mexico was playing, only the opponents were rolling on the ground crying. (And usually bloody, too).
Speaking of Barcelona, one of their younger forwards, VV, who only occassionally gets to play with the Big Boys, is being courted by a Central European club. And Bojan Kirkic, once thought of as the next wonderkid from La Maisa, is being looked at Juventus, among others. When Barca brought in Afaley from Holland, Kirkic dropped to number five in the forward depth chart. He is only 20, so it is way too early to call him a has-been!
Speaking of forward, our nemisis to the North, the Vancouver Klansmen, I mean Whitecaps (Get it - white hood = white caps?) have their first ever designated player. Eric Hassil, who comes Zurich FC. Vancouver already have a defender on their roster who played at Zurich FC. Seattle's Blaise NFUKO (Or however you spell his name) should have experience with these guys, having played against them in Switzerland. I would not be surprised to see more soccer players leave Switzerland for North America. Anyone who has ever been in Zurich can tell you what a neat, orderly, organized and THOUROUGHLY DEPRESSING CITY it is. Heck, in Switzerland they have an army of old women who sweep the floors of the forests. In SwissGerman, the word for the ground in the forest is "floor". It may be a capital crime for a kid to play in the mud over there.......
Speaking of Mud, the big game in England this weekend is Manchester United at Liverpool. This is a storied rivalry, but that harkens back to the days when Liverpool were a decent side. Alas, this year they are not.
Speaking of Liverpool, the former Liverpool man Torres who was bought by Chelsea for $80 million is still trying to score his first goal there. Hey Chelsea, I will not score goals for you for 1/10th the cost! A real bargain!
Speaking of not scoring goals, Cristiano "Pretty Boy" Ronaldo is out for 10-15 days with a hamstring injury. He may or may not be back for the second leg of the Champions League fixture with Lyon.
Back to the MLS, the New England Revolution have signed an 18 year old Nigerian midfielder of no particular note.
In Washignton State Youth Soccer news, Spokane is at it again. Perhaps inspired by the shenanigans of the directors of the NWCL, perhaps just because it is Spokane, Abbas Faridnia is apparently behing the effort to set up a new soccer club in the Spokane South Hill area, the Spokane Lions, who will play in the USCS. The Faridinia Family have been the long time powers in the SVJSA FAlcons/SSC Elite soccer club, and were the 6th club to register with USCS, nationwide. Yes, the Spokane soccer scene has more characters and more twists than a Tolstoy novel.
You basically have two associations, the Valley and the City. Except that the City goes out to Cheney and up to Mead. I have no idea if Nine Miles Falls is part of them or even exists in soccer terms anymore. But a couple of years ago, the Shadow and the owners of the association, which were a multisport quasi non profit youth outfit, had a falling out. So the Spokane Youth Sports Authority took the rump of the Spokane Youth Soccer Association into US Club, and the Shadow merged with various clubs of good repute in the city (and environes and ended up forming a new association. Long timers will remember that Washington State Legislators became involved in THAT mess.
Anyway, not everyone in the old SYSA area decided to accept the new situation, and the Scotties soccer club broke off. (I always had a lot of respect for the Scotties coaches, the ones I saw were class.) Then an outfit up in the North End of town formed an outfit called the Foxes, which have been mainly girls. It operated an Academy, and tournament teams for U-6 on up. This year they expanded and fielded a U-10 girls team in USCS, I am told. The Foxes were somehow affiliated with the River City club of the Valley. All three of the valley clubs are dual affiliated. Now this coming year, the Foxes are going to expand their line up of teams, and are creating a new operation, the Pumas. The Pumas will field boys teams in the USCS leagues. The Pumas will fall under the USCS operating Spokane Youth Soccer Authority/Association. No word on if the Foxes will stick with River City or go back to their roots in SYSA.
In the meantime, sober people in the Shadow organization are discounting old promises by the state and giving up on any merger with the valley. And the Valley, of course, is still exploring additional ways of cooperating with Northern idaho.
And of course, there is still the non-sanctioned, renegade youth league in the valley of about 1,000 kids playing organized soccer.
If this picture resembles a pack of huskies, running a circle biting the tail of the dog ahead of them and yelping when being bit in the tail themselves, then you have a fairly clear picture of the situation. But at least the Spokanites can claim with pride that none of their club presidents have been caught doi... Ok, they cannot claim that anymore. But still, Spokane is a nice place to visit.
Anyone who criticizes the author for leaving out details, please be aware that no wants to read the entire 1,200 page book of Spokane Soccer - from 2009 to today.
Womens Soccer - The USA beat Norway 2-0 to secure advancing to the finals of the Algrave Cup for the 11th consecuative time, while still having Finland to play in the final match of group play.
In global news - In Bahrain, there was more Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence.
In the Ivory Coast, protesters were shot by the military which supports a president who does recognize the recent elections in which he lost.
In Suadi Arabia, the King has dispatched army forces to help the Ruling Family of Bahrain maintain power.
Protests, shootings and killings in Oman, Yemen, Algeria and elsewhere.
The government in Egypt turned water cannon on protesters there.
Protests in Iran were suppressed again.
Fighting in Libya continues between the anti- and pro- Khaddafy forces. Apparently netiher the Regular Army, nor the mercenary African Legion know much more about using the massive stockpiles of weaponry in Libya than the anti-government protesters do. The Libyan military have long been derided by quality (i.e. US) military professionals as a " Sack of S***". All the money that Khaddafy has spent on his military purchases reminds me of what my father said about spending lots of money to send my little brother to Georgetown : "It is like piling up money on the lawn and setting fire to it.".
In the USA, another 24 states are looking to enact their own versions of Arizona's Illegal Immigration Control laws. That is what happens when the national government has no policy of its own......
Unemployment statistics are out and the government is reporting that unemployment is down to less than 9%. Some Republicans were quick to point that these statistics do not include the millions upon millions who have given up looking for work. No word if the Wisconsin Senate Democrats who are not doing their work in that state were counted.
In LA, the nations largest utility district reported that it has actually only spent less than 40% of its stimilus money from 2009. If memory serves, this is one of the outfits that claimed to have "shovel ready" projects that were just awaiting funding........
At NASA, the recent launch of a global warming satellite failed. One Astro-wag attribituted it to "Global Wamring". Also on the space front, the Air Force small robotic shuttle, the X-37B, is getting ready for its second flight. Actually, this is the second X-37B. The first one's maiden flight was successful, but since then it has disappearred into an Air Force hanger......
And speaking of Spacey, there are a million Charlie Sheen jokes that I could make, but I will leave that to BigB.
Oil went up to above $105 a barrel today. Gasoline is above $9 a gallon in the UK and more than $4 a gallon in California. Aren't we all glad for yet another reason to be thankful that we are not living in California?
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Topic: EW64's daily news (Read 18849 times)