Read it and weep. Remember how we were discussing, not long ago, the concept of “who is the next great U.S. scorer? From where is he coming?” Well, we have an answer. The next great American scorer was born in (and grew up in) New Jersey … but plays for Villarreal and Italy.  Ugh. Here […]

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Funny. I’ve been exposed to so much soccer in the past three years, I might actually go to Galaxy games as a fan, now. Though I would rather get paid to cover them, of course. Anyway, the club recently has been making news pretty much all over the spectrum involving some names well-known in the […]

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Landon Donovan is the 2010 U.S. National Team Player of the Year. At least according to the Futbol de Primera organization, which annually canvasses 200-plus journalists, including me, who vote for their top three players on the national team during the previous year. So of course Landon won it. He deserved it. Those two goals […]

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Guy McCarthy, a friend and former co-worker, sent me a Christmas greeting in which he veered off to a topic that fascinates both of us: The U.S. national soccer team. Well, and he also poked fun at the English for getting all excited about their “easy” World Cup 2010 draw in a group with the […]

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I’ve written it a hundred times. I’ve known Landon Donovan since he was 16. I’ve been writing about him since then. I’ve been in his family home in Redlands and in his first home in Manhattan Beach … and, well, he was the rare major athlete I had anything resembling a quasi-friendly relationship with. I’ve […]

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Received an e-mail from the Los Angeles Galaxy today about roster moves the club has made. “LA Galaxy Acquire the Rights to Juan Pablo Angel and Frankie Hejduk” I know Juan Pablo Angel, a goalscoring machine, is supposed to be the big news here. Which is why he was listed first. But what I am […]

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David Beckham has had rather a rough go of it in Los Angeles. He has been hurt, he has gone off to play chunks of years in Europe, he has been rather knocked around in the book “The Beckham Experiment” (the Landon Donovan comments). And then he suffered a ruptured Achilles’ tendon that took him […]

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I was thinking about the Beijing Olympics, and realized that the U.S. men’s basketball team had zero Clippers on it. But then, neither did the Vancouver Olympics. Have any Clippers on the U.S. team. Though clipper ships presumably sailed to Vancouver, but not Beijing, it being too far from the ocean. Hong Kong? Sure. But […]

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I don’t know this. But I believe it. Rumor floating around … that Manchester City, the new big spender of the English Premier League, is trying to add Landon Donovan to its roster. Considering that he scored three goals in the World Cup and had that nice 10 weeks with Everton last winter … Sure. […]

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So, Project 2010 didn’t quite work out, after all. The plan, back in 1998, that would make the United States a serious contender for the 2010 World Cup championship … well, it’s 2010 and we’re not there yet, as demonstrated by this: Ghana 2, U.S. 1. But we could argue that this U.S. team, flawed […]

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