This Is American Soccer, US Soccer, MNT, WNT, and MLS - Tackling the subject of Soccer in the US, and worldwide.

GETTING CLOSER EDITION

Two Heads + One Foot = dangerous play? Or game-winning goal? You can’t take that goal away from Twellman, but both defenders retracted from the ball as Twellman’s fluorescent boot approached. Forget the referee, one of those Fire defenders needed to be ballsy enough to stick his head in there; the goal could have been easily (if but painfully) averted.

As we await the MLS Cup final to be set, the hot stove is piping. The off-season shuffle continues for MLS. Yallop with tail intact goes back to San Jose, while Arena gets shown the door with little if anything intact. Certainly he must wish he could explain away the nosedive the RBNY stars took heading into and during the playoffs. There are plenty of reasons to fire someone like Arena, but given Angel, Altidore, Reyna, and Mathis throwing nothing into an already weak playoff push, all the blame can’t sit on the coach’s shoulders.

Will we see L.A. or N.Y. try to create a MLS super power this off-season or will it be more bumbling from their front offices? Galaxy strike first - hire Ruud Gullit (really, that’s your sexy pick?). Now will NY counter? And why is there no talk of Alexi – bringing sexy back - Lalas leaving the Galaxy? How can anybody blame Yallop more than Lalas?

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A storm is indeed brewing, so I’m getting the barometer out before it hits. Don’t be surprised if sometime in the next 24 hours TIAS drops its transmission. It will return in mere hours, hopefully to some place closer to OZ than Kansas.

After a few slow weeks on the news front, it was a busy week. Straight to the must-read and other highlights after the jump…
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A Change Is Gonna Come Edition

Yeah yeah yeah. MLS playoffs start tonight. You’ve got about 2000 previews to chose from. And it is not that I’m not thrilled, but there is just too much other goodness to talk about that now.

I glazed over the Greg Ryan firing this week. It was a surprise to nobody and I’ve written my feelings pretty clearly. I’m still miffed that the women’s players have publicly sided with the Dark Side on this, but thankfully I’m not the only one. Andrea Canalas is one journalist who has kept up the heat on this story. And she comes with the best piece of the week at US Soccer Players dot com, in which she takes the team to task with the help of Eric Wynalda and questions the double standard between the men’s and women’s teams. Interesting stuff.

That was the best story. The biggest news – enough to force the Barometer a day early - is after the jump…
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PLAYOFF PUSH EDITION

Two months ago today Giants Stadium was near capacity. Will it ever be again?

MLS is heading into its last week of the season. There is excitement and worry for most every team, but Beckham still gets the front page love from espn.com as he returned last night to the field just long enough to say goodbye for the year. A tie with RBNY all but sealed their playoff-less fate. Thankyou, come again. Even the savvy deadspin throws up a headline about it. What is it exactly in the brain of the general sports media that makes them take notice. Is it actually interest in soccer if superstars are playing? A belief that the general sporting audience actually cares about Beckham and so the media must acknowledge it? Or is it just thinly veiled ridicule? The fact that the headline is about Beckham’s return and not the Galaxy’s all-but-elimination pretty much gives the answer.

It’s raining on the East Coast, ending droughts, and filling reservoirs. Just in time, because my appetite is wet from the past week, but I’m still thirsting for meaningful MLS games…
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Our best male and female soccer players made news this weekend. Landon Donovan won his fourth Player of the Year award and Abby Wambach conducted a free clinic for about 600 kids in her hometown of Rochester. So why am I so sad?
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QUESTION MARK EDITION

Even with global warming staking its claim on October here in New York, it feels cold. Maybe it’s just the women’s national team’s treatment of their (former?) goal keeper keeping chills in the air, or maybe it’s the collective air being pulled away as the media abandon the team.

With or without the media attention, USSF has been un-surprisingly mum on the crumbling persona of the WNT. Do they have a responsibility to clean this up? Or are they correct in their silence? I think there is an argument for both sides with “protecting this house” being the reasoning.

I’ll be be watching the October 13th game versus Mexico in St. Louis from my house. Will Hope Solo be saying the same thing?

More questions after the jump…
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REVOLUTIONARY WAR EDITION

MLS is winding down, or up, depending on your perspective, but all eyes here at TIAS are on the Women’s World Cup, where the quarter finals are set, and as usual the Washington Post has the strongest domestic run-down. New York Times should be embarrassed (again). The Goal Blog, including the curious if poorly written thoughts of Altidore (add: I know he is a teenager, but it’s the TImes - call it jealousy if you want), doesn’t make up for it.

But even the Post has to give a nod to the BBC which has the global tournament in its world wide grasp, a very good thing this week since the US WNT drew England. It led me for the first time to their “Editor’s Blog,” where Lance Hardy looks at Saturday evening’s match-up in Tianjin (that’s early morning for those on the U.S. East Coast).

Keep your friend’s close and your enemies closer with a few interesting reads after the jump…
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SHED A LITTLE LIGHT EDITION

World Cup soccer is to a Friendly soccer as Coke is to Pepsi. There’s just no comparison. After a late night paying witness to the return of Gil Scott-Heron to the stage – holding back tears as he opened with one of my favorites, “95 South” – I was up at the crack of dawn, thanks to an angry alarm, to watch our ladies take on Sweden in their second match of the 2007 World Cup. The stadium looked filled if a bit subdued, and the action looked like I felt after getting little sleep and standing in shoulder-to-shoulder crowds for hours the past night. Tight.
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DULDRUMS EDITION

Mateo Clarke of Boerne, Texas, sent in this beautiful image from his time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Diary Project is an on-going thing here at TIAS. Continue to send in your photos and stories for inclusion!

Welcome to football season. Thursday night’s ESPN game of the week - a good matchup between DC United and Chivas - was pre-empted by a collage football game between Middle Tennessee and Louisville that suprise!!! went 70 minutes over its scheduled time. Only 9 and half minutes of the soccer game was missed, but that did include a rocket from Emilio, which to their credit, ESPN2 did show as an in-game highlight during the football game.

That was one of several examples of why it’s been a week that has unfortunately become typical for American soccer. Poor coverage of the U17 World Cup; I guess you have to be 18 to get any attention (or have a name like Adu or Altidore on your roster) Top Drawer Soccer, at least, must share my frustration. The new incarnation of the professional women’s league will postpone its ressurrection until 2009. A US MNT friendly is set against the opening weekend of the NFL and meaningful soccer games in Europe. Another friendly, against Catalonia, cancelled. And a famous soccer mind questions American soccer:

“What you have got in the States is that a lot of kids are playing football in the States and there is nowhere to go,” he said. “The best American players go to Europe very early, like Brad Friedel (at Blackburn), (Brian) McBride and (Clint) Dempsey at Fulham. That situation doesn’t help the American game.” – Alex Ferguson

A few breaks from the monotony after the jump…
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TREADING WATER EDITION

Give me a story, not a bunch of quotes strung together. Give me some entertainment, not a bunch of clichés I’ve heard a thousand times over. It’s getting to be a bleak world for fans of the well-written word, and its getting harder and harder to find a great soccer story every week to share. Oh New York Times, why can’t we get some more features like this on your soccer page? Don’t tell me soccer doesn’t have enough good stories that are due some good telling.

What’s left after a week of pressing the gimpy ankle that is soccer writing is after the jump…
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