Soccer By Ives

This weekend's soccer on TV

Good afternoon folks. If you are a fan of Serie A then this is the weekend for you. Three high-caliber match-ups in Italy's first division headline a good weekend of soccer action on TV.

Juventus travels to AC Milan on Saturday before Inter Milan travels to the Viola to face Fiorentina. Sunday's action is capped with red-hot Udinese traveling to Rome to square off with Roma.

Italy doesn't have all the top action. The Barcelona derby is this weekend, with Barca traveling to face arch-rival Espanyol, a squad that has been on a good run of form lately. Germany's premier match of the weekend pits SBI Top 25 clubs Hamburg and Werder Bremen in a match that is definitely worth a TIVO hit.

The EPL slate is a bit light this weekend, though the Arsenal-Aston Villa match will be interesting to see since Arsenal is coming off its first loss of the season in any competition.

As good as these games are, the most exciting soccer TV may come on Sunday morning, when the draw for the Euro 2008 Tournament is shown on ESPN2. I know that's REAL early to be waking up but you can always just go back to sleep after seeing how the teams are drawn and see who teams like England Italy and France will be playing.

Here are the rest of the weekend's soccer games on TV:

If you were MLS commissioner for a day

Good morning folks. It is a slow news cycle in the soccer world so I started wondering about random issues pertaining to Major League Soccer. A reader asked what I considered a league issue that MLS needs to address and I thought about the reserve division and how it needs to be revamped.

That got me to wondering about what I would do if I could be MLS commissioner for a day and could actually implement some rules or changes that would be adopted by the league permanently. I really don't have an answer for that yet but I want to ask you, the SBI readers, what one change would you make to the league if you had that magical power to change things? Increase the cap? Increase the number of foreigners? Fire most of the refereres? Put a team in Philly? Put a team in St. Louis?

Fire away. I want to hear from you. Remember, you can only make one change to the league as commish for a day. What would it be?

(Some of) Your Questions Answered

Good afternoon folks. It's another dreary day on the East Coast and I will be heading offline for a bit today. I was hoping to have last week's Q&A session completed but was unable to get to all of them. Rather than make you wait, I have decided to post some of the answers to some of your questions. I will get to the rest ASAP (Monday at the latest).

Feel free to use this thread to discuss anything you'd like, be it the Q&A, Red Bull Park, Beasley's injury, The NCAA Tournament, the upcoming U-23 training camp, Harry Redknapp's arrest, the UEFA Cup or anything else in the soccer world you would like to discuss.

Before you start firing away, here are some of your questions answered:

Ironmen set to make home debut

 

If you are a New Jersey resident and have ever wondered what indoor soccer was all about, you will soon have your own team to watch.

The New Jersey Ironmen are set to make their home debut at the Prudential Center in Newark on Saturday night (7:30pm). Brazilian legend Pele will be in attendance and the team is expecting a sellout crowd for the opener.

Here is my feature in today's Herald News on the Ironmen's home opener.

I have never been to an indoor game before and have really never watched an indoor game on TV, but I will be at the Prudential Center on Saturday to experience it for the first time.

The Ironmen are off to a 3-1 start and look to be on of the top teams in the 10-team Major Indoor Soccer League.

Will you be going to the Ironmen home opener? Have you been to a indoor game before? Are you completely oblivious to the indoor game? Share your thoughts on the Ironmen's home opener and indoor soccer below.

Beasley could miss rest of European season

DaMarcus Beasley looks to be out for the year with damaged knee ligaments, according to the Glasgow Daily Record. Beasley injured his left knee after colliding with Stuttgart goalkeeper Raphael Schafer during Stuttgart's 3-2 Champions League win against Rangers on Wednesday.

If Beasley has torn knee ligaments, he could be sidelined through the summer, with a fall return likely at best. Torn ligaments would also mean that the U.S. national team winger would almost certainly miss the U.S. team's second-round World Cup qualifying match against the Barbados/Dominica winner and could lead to him missing some games in the first group stage of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying.

The injury comes just as fellow American left winger Bobby Convey has recovered from his own injury issues. The U.S. team will lean heavily on Convey come the summer (if he is healthy) and will also need to turn to veteran winger Eddie Lewis as well. Lewis has remained on the U.S. team radar in recent months despite his age (33).

As it stands, the Glasgow Daily Record is reporting this exclusively. I will post further confirmation as it surfaces.

What do you think of this potentially devastating news? Share your thoughts below.

NCAA Tournament: No. 1 seed Boston College toppled

The Men's NCAA Tournament moved to the Sweet 16 after Wednesday's second round matches and No. 1 Boston College won't be coming along for the ride.

The Eagles were knocked off by local rival UMass, 2-1, on Wednesday night, making BC one of six higher seeds to lose second-round match-ups. Bradley beat No. 4 seed Indiana in penalty kicks while Old Dominion beat No. 6 seed Brown, 2-1. South Florida (pictured above) knocked off No. 14 Akron, 1-0.

Here are Sweet 16 match-ups, along with the second-round results the teams used to get there:

Red Bull to begin construction on stadium....AGAIN

From the 'Haven't I heard this someplace before' department comes news that the Red Bulls are set to begin construction on Red Bull Park. The Star Ledger is reporting that the club is set to begin building Red Bull Park next week. Yes, Red Bull Park is the same stadium that was supposed to be finished by next summer. The club is now aiming for a target completion of summer of 2009.

So what's the difference between this and a groundbreaking? Well, if you were Red Bull would you want to announce another groundbreaking? Let's face it, another groundbreaking or two on the Harrison stadium project and the Red Bulls may open the stadium playing in the Chinese Premier League by the time it's actually finished.

So will the stadium actually be built by summer of 2009? Red Bulls managing director Marc deGrandpre was confident that it would be when asked at MLS Cup. I know the club's prime objective is to have it done by summer of 2009, now whether that vision becomes a reality remains to be seen.

If you are wondering what the stadium will look like, the renderings being circulated look very similar to Woerthersee Stadium in Austria, one of the host stadiums for the Euro 2008 Tournament:

 

Champions League: Matchday Five (Your Running Commentary)

Good afternoon folks. Apologies for the delay in getting this up. You know the drill. If you're watching Champions League action today then share your thoughts as well as letting us know what you're seeing. I will do a light commentary on Chelsea-Rosenborg.

Let's have some fun.

Altidore, Edu, Seitz chosen for Under-23 training camp

Red Bulls Jozy Altidore and Hunter Freeman are two of 22 players selected to the first U.S. Under-23 national team camp under U.S. Under-23 national team head coach Peter Nowak. The camp is being held in preparation of a two-match tour in China in December.

The team will train for a week at Home Depot Center beginning on Dec. 1 before departing for China on Dec. 8. The Americans will face the Chinese Under-23 national team on Dec. 13 and Dec. 16.

Maurice Edu, Sacha Kljestan, Robbie Findley, Christ Seitz and Eddie Gaven highlight a roster made up of 20 pros and seven players who made the U.S. senior national team debuts in 2007.

Here is the full roster:

The 50 most exciting teenagers in soccer

If you missed the November issue of World Soccer magazine you missed a cover story on the 50 Most Exciting Teenagers on the Planet. It was a great piece with quality information, especially for those of you who relish knowing about the best up and coming talents in the game.

Some of the players you would expect were on the list, including Sergio Aguero, Alexandre Pato, Micah Richards, Giovani Dos Santos, Bojan Krkic and Anderson, but there were two players who were NOT on the list that left me scratching my head a bit.

Jozy Altidore and Freddy Adu were nowhere to be found.

Now I'm not saying it's a travesty that neither is on the list. I just found it interesting that neither made it, particularly after how both performed at the Under-20 World Cup. Altidore nets two goals against Brazil and Adu was on fire, but neither made the list.

If you are wondering what players WERE on the list, here they are: