OT: What's next for US Soccer / Soccer blogs

You might eventually get into MLS or european teams, but keep an eye on this blog in the meantime: http://www.soccerbyives.net/

He does a rundown of how americans abroad fare for their club teams.  Gives you a sense of how everyone is doing.  Don't get discouraged when a lot of really young guys don't score or play every week.  Just be happy they're playing in a good european league, not too long ago that was rare.

Also, here's another one I found during this WC: http://starsandgripes.wordpress.com/

 

If you have good cable and get fox soccer channel, make sure you're recording the EPL review show.  It's a great setup, you see all the top plays but you get to watch them develop too so you get a good feel for the games unlike wham/bam sportscenter soccer highlights.  From there you'll probably start figuring out which teams you like.  Too bad it's only EPL though.

One thing that can be confusing for newcomers is the simultaneous competitions going on throughout the European club season.  The league season basically just involves playing every other team in your league home and away (comes to 38 games in England, Italy, Spain).  You get three points for a win, a point for a draw, and at the end of the season whoever has the most points is the league champion.  There are also different levels (in England the Championship is the next step down below the Premiere League, followed by League 1, 2, etc.).  At the end of the season, the bottom few teams are relegated (sent down to play in the lower division the following season) while the top few teams get to move up to the next highest division (though the mechanics of this can differ from country to country).

Then countries will also have a domestic cup competition (FA Cup in England) which is basically a one-off knockout competition for every team at all levels (with the top teams getting byes to later rounds) eventually leading up to a final held at the national stadium at th end of the season (late May).  Some countries even have a second cup competition (with nearly the identical format but with fewer low level teams getting invited to participate) that teams tend not to take as seriously (Manchester United played mostly second string guys even after reaching the finals of this competition a few years ago).

On top of all that, the top teams from the various European Leagues play in the Champions League (formerly European Cup) or the lower level Europa League (formerly UEFA Cup).  The number of spots each country gets in these competitions is based on how well they have performed historically and this is another thing to watch during the league season (in England, for example, the top four teams in the league standings make the Champions League the following season and the next three or so make the Europa League).

Hope some of that helps.  Really the more you watch the easier this will be to figure out.  It probably seems insane right now but can soon be second nature.

I think the most confusing aspect of the sport for new fans is the transfer system and the economics of the game, since fans from the US are used to player trades. Basically, the movement of players is a gigantic market that takes up a great deal of the newspaper commontary about the sport.

Players are more or less commodities with specific monetary values attached by their teams (you may have heard them referring to Donovan as being valued at $10 million by the Galaxy). That's the fee required for another team to purchase the player's rights. The numbers are generally known but are negotiated over by the teams. The players can refuse transfers but they generally don't, given they get (I believe) 10% of the transfer fee. Players also then have contracts with the teams as well but a transfer can up their earnings considerably.

There are specific windows, set by FIFA, in which transfers can take place. We're in one now that runs to about the middle of August (unsure about this). There's another one in the winter. Rumors fly wildly just before and during those windows about whether transfers will take place. Right now the hottest speculation is over whether Cesc Fabregas will transfer from Arsenal to Barcelona.

Players can also be loaned out from clubs that hold their rights to other clubs, either to get them more experience or to defray the cost of their wages for teams that no longer want a particular player. Loans will often be extended tryouts that allow a team to determine if they want to purchase a player.

...soccernet has tables for almost all of the European leagues (EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Scottish Premier League) as well as the Champions and Europa Leagues.  You can even follow all four English lower level leagues there.

To represent a country, you need to hold its nationality and have not played on the senior team of any other country. (You are permitted to play for a youth team of one nation and then the senior team of another.) Any foreign player in the MLS has to get a green card to live/work here, so after five years, said player would be eligible for U.S. citizenship. He could then play for the USMNT if he hasn't played for any other country. This is also true in international basketball; Hakeem Olajuwon (who had represented Nigeria at the youth level) became a naturalized U.S. citizen and played for us in the '96 Olympics. The rules of citizenship vary from one country to another, and there have been cases of countries expediting the citizenship of foreign-born players to make them eligible to play internationally. FIFA has proposed new eligibility rules that would require a player to have lived in the country a certain number of years first.

He hasn't necessarily done anything horribly wrong outside of choosing a poor squad to face Ghana in the Round of 16. The larger issue at hand is just generally looking towards the future. An ESPN blogger (don't remember which one) commented at the end of the tournament that "the US needs to stop being satisfied with just qualifying for the knockout round". Bradley isn't going to take the team to the next level, and if we can find someone who can he's likely gone.

Bradley made some woeful errors both in terms of the formation he attempted to play and the players he selected.  The US does not have a very strong defensive group, but instead of playing an extra defensive-minded central midfielder to offer them support, he played two out and out strikers (something even attack oriented fantastic teams like Spain, Germany, and Holland never did in this World Cup).  This despite the fact that his options for that second striker position were extremely limited (the guy he picked, Robbie Findley, is not even a good player by MLS standards and proved virtually useless throughout the World Cup) and the fact that he had two wide midfield players in Donovan and Dempsey who are far more likely to score than any striker on the US bench and both regularly come into the center of the park to make plays.  On top of that, he chose to play Ricardo Clark (a player coming off an injury riddled season that saw him make only three league appearances for his club team) instead of Maurice Edu (who played regularly and very well down the stretch for Scottish champions Rangers). 

These errors pretty much directly led to the US conceding goals immediately against England, Slovakia, and Ghana.  Then to rub salt in the wound, Bradley's (correct) strategy for increasing the team's offensive output involved taking off the striker he never should have put out there in the first place in exchange for a wide midfield player. 

As far as who guys can play for, FIFA has a series of rules that allow players with a certain degree of ancestry from multiple countries to pick the one they will represent (though once they decide they can't switch).  Zinedine Zidane, for example, was raised in France by Algerian parents and could have decided to represent either country.  Similarly, Freddy Adu (born in Ghana but now a US citizen) chose the US over Ghana while Giuseppe Rossi (born in US to Italian immigrants but moved back to Italy as teenager to play professionally) chose Italy over the US.

standpoint, I believe Bradley's tenure is the most successful ever (notwithstanding Bruce Arena got slightly further in the World Cup in 2002).

However, people (rightly or wrongly) felt that we were underperforming a lot over the last few years, and throughout World Cup qualifying we had many very shaky performances against lesser opposition (lost to Costa Rica, tied El Salvador, had to come back against Honduras). The Confed Cup was nice, but really a fluke, we lost 2 out of 3 in the group stage, but due to tiebreaking rules we squeaked past the first round on goal difference after Brazil destroyed Italy. We played well against Spain and Brazil but we really shouldn't have even been there to begin with.

And Bradley showed an almost unbelieveable faith in certain players who clearly were not international caliber, like Sacha Kljestan, Damarcus Beasley, Bornstein/Pearce (although I suppose Bornstein got the last laugh), while not playing others, like Holden and Torres, enough.

Again, a lot of it is subjective, and it's not different than people finding fault with Rodriguez, or Tressel, or Dantonio. There are arguments on both sides as to how "good" a coach is, but ultimately, most don't stay in one place more than 4 years anyway, so he's probably gone no matter what.

I think Reyna played some in the Champions League for Rangers as well, now that I think about it. 

Edu should be the starter throughout the season.  Rangers have zero money so I don't see them adding anyone noticeably better and Steven Davis is really the only other central midfield type player I see on their roster who has played extensively (to go along with Lee McCullough), now that Thomson is off to Boro.  Especially considering they are likely to play a defensive minded game in the Champions League, I see Edu getting a lot of playing time throughout the group stage.