General Soccer Discussion

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Mar 17, 2021

CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying begins tomorrow in Guadalajara, Mexico. Tournament is a U-23 tournament with the two teams that make the final qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics. All but 2 of the matches (including the U.S. Group stage matches) will air on FS1. Here's when the U.S. matches will air:

-March 18th, 4:30 PM CT: vs. Costa Rica
-March 21st, 6:00 PM CT: vs. Dominican Republic
-March 24th, 8:30 PM CT: vs. Mexico

The group the U.S. is in is Group A. Group B includes Honduras, Canada, El Salvador, and Haiti.

IlliniSaluki · Mar 31, 2021

St. Louis CITY SC announced their first corporate Partner and Jersey Sponsor. Purjina

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1377277926765432832

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 13, 2021

CONCACAF announced today that the Gold Cup final on August 1 will take place at Allegiant Stadium in Vegas.

Most of the top players in the region won't be taking part in this tournament. Berhalter previously said he was going to have that the European based players (Pulisic, McKinnie, Dest, etc.), who will already be in preseason training with their European clubs at that point, time off between the CONCACAF Nations League final in June and World Cup qualifying in September. Most of the top young players for Mexico and Honduras will be taking part in the Olympics.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 17, 2021

2021 MLS season started this weekend. Fire hosted New England tonight at Soldier Field with the match ending in a 2:2 draw.

I'm okay with the Fire getting a point against New England, especially with the Revolution coming off a trip to the Eastern Conference Final last season. This goal to open the scoring was pretty nice:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1383583085749362692

Joel Goodson · Apr 18, 2021

IlliniFaninHoosierLand said:
2021 MLS season started this weekend. Fire hosted New England tonight at Soldier Field with the match ending in a 2:2 draw.

I'm okay with the Fire getting a point against New England, especially with the Revolution coming off a trip to the Eastern Conference Final last season. This goal to open the scoring was pretty nice:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1383583085749362692

Set piece disaster and yet another Calvo back breaking gaffe. Ugh. Should have been a win.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 18, 2021

Joel Goodson said:
Set piece disaster and yet another Calvo back breaking gaffe. Ugh. Should have been a win.

Both teams had chances late, especially with the red card the Revolution got on that foul just outside the 18 yard box, right as injury time in the 2nd half was beginning.

IlliniSaluki · Apr 19, 2021

Forgot to post this up when I first saw it.. a nice timelapse of the St. Louis CITY SC construction at Market street building the tunnel that will connect the Stadium (north side) to the Pavilion (cafe, team store),Training Facility & Practice fields (south side).

St. Louis CITY SC Stadium Construction Timelapse | 🚨 TIMELAPSE ALERT Down goes an overpass, up comes a unique tunnel system beneath a new Market Street, paving the way to four sides of beautiful stadium... | By St. Louis CITY SCFacebook

🚨 TIMELAPSE ALERT Down goes an overpass, up comes a unique tunnel system beneath a new Market Street, paving the way to four sides of beautiful stadium...

www.facebook.com

Illinoise · Apr 19, 2021

Random post, slow news day I guess. Why is the US so bad at soccer? It seems like so many kids have been raised playing soccer for so long now and we seem to be going backward? I am not much into soccer but watching the national team play is something I usually do, until they get beat by some country with 5% of our population? Confused.

IlliniSaluki · Apr 19, 2021

Illinoise said:
Random post, slow news day I guess. Why is the US so bad at soccer? It seems like so many kids have been raised playing soccer for so long now and we seem to be going backward? I am not much into soccer but watching the national team play is something I usually do, until they get beat by some country with 5% of our population? Confused.

Sure kids grow up playing soccer. It's the #1 sport for kids before High school but until recently their wasn't a viable option to have a dream of playing one day in a pro league. Most kids transition to American Football, Basketball and Baseball once they reach High school. I would say the sport as a whole in the US is growing and will continue to grow.

So it all boils down to kids and their dreams. No top league in the US until 1996 means no kids sticking with the sport for the most part past grade school. Even with MLS being around since 1996 nobody knew if it would be able to last. Now that it has lasted and shows growth along with the sport as a whole in the US more kids are sticking with it. As to why does it seem like we are going backwards? I would put most of the blame on poor management at the top levels.

Soccer as a whole will get their eventually. The sport will overtake the NHL and NBA in our lifetime, it's already knocking on their doors. I would say MLB is possible but you can only go by average attendance because of the sheer number of games each team plays in baseball. The NFL is a beast of it's own that we may never see over taken by soccer here.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 19, 2021

Another factor with soccer in this country is that it's still, to a certain extent, a rich kid's game. With all the equipment needed to play plus the prohibitive cost of travel teams, it's gonna be tough to get the best athletes, especially in the inner cities, to play.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 21, 2021

Dublin, Munich, and Bilbao may lose matches in the Euro 2020 tournament due to the sites not being able to guarantee they would be able to host matches in front of fans: https://www.espn.com/soccer/uefa-eu...020-sites-dublinbilbaomunich-may-lose-matches

Dublin seems almost certain to withdraw with matches scheduled to be played there reportedly to be moved to Scotland, England, or Russia. Bilbao, which is dealing with covid issues much of northern Spain is dealing with, would likely be replaced by Seville, in southern Spain. Munich would be the biggest loss for UEFA, as that site was set to host 3 matches involving the German side including fixtures against France and Portugal, as the covid regulations in Germany do not allow any fans in stadiums and the German government has given UEFA no assurances that those protocols will change by the time the Euros start later this year.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 22, 2021

CONCACAF announced the cities that will host Gold Cup matches this summer, most of which are in Texas. 3 of the sites are in the Dallas Metroplex (Cotton Bowl, AT&T Stadium, and Toyota Stadium), 2 are in Houston (NRG Stadium and BBVA Stadium), and the other sites are in Glendale, AZ, Orlando, Austin, TX, and Kansas City.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · Apr 25, 2021

IlliniFaninHoosierLand said:
Dublin, Munich, and Bilbao may lose matches in the Euro 2020 tournament due to the sites not being able to guarantee they would be able to host matches in front of fans: https://www.espn.com/soccer/uefa-eu...020-sites-dublinbilbaomunich-may-lose-matches

Dublin seems almost certain to withdraw with matches scheduled to be played there reportedly to be moved to Scotland, England, or Russia. Bilbao, which is dealing with covid issues much of northern Spain is dealing with, would likely be replaced by Seville, in southern Spain. Munich would be the biggest loss for UEFA, as that site was set to host 3 matches involving the German side including fixtures against France and Portugal, as the covid regulations in Germany do not allow any fans in stadiums and the German government has given UEFA no assurances that those protocols will change by the time the Euros start later this year.

So it ended up only the games from Dublin and Bilbao got moved. The group stage games scheduled for Dublin will now be played in St. Petersburg with the round-of-16 match moved to Wembley. Spain's three group stage games and a round of 16 tie will be moved from Bilbao to Seville. Munich will be allowed to host games now as German authorities gave the Allianz Arena authorization to open at 25% capacity.

With these changes to the venues, there is a potential scenario where England could win Group D and the Euro tournament as a whole, and only have one match played away from Wembley, a potential quarterfinal match in Rome.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 4, 2021

Mourinho got hired as the new coach at AS Roma starting next season. This led to some quality responses online but this may be my favorite:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1389578620319019013

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 7, 2021

The Wilf family, who owns the Minnesota Vikings, are on the verge of buying Orlando City and all the related assets (which includes the NWSL Orlando Pride, Exploria Stadium and the team's academy) in a deal that's expected to come in between $400 million and $450 million. The Wilf's had previously bid to become owners of Minnesota United when that franchise was established but it was awarded instead to Bill McGuire, a former chief executive of UnitedHealth, who promised the construction of a soccer-specific stadium. The Wilfs have had a minority stake in Nashville SC since 2017 but would be required to sell that stake if the deal goes through.

Just to show how much the value of the team has increased, Orlando City, who is now in its 11th year as an organization, had an expansion fee to launch of $70 million. Exploria Stadium is currently valued at around $180 million.

IlliniSaluki · May 9, 2021

Some more progress on the Saint Louis CITY SC stadium.. working on the frame for the canopy now.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1390780231192129544

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 9, 2021

Columbus Crew to drop the Crew portion of their name and go by Columbus SC as part of a rebrand that could be announced as early as this week: https://www.espn.com/soccer/columbu...bus-to-drop-crew-from-name-in-rebrand-sources

The rebrand will also include an overhaul to the team's logo though they will keep the team's black and gold colors.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 10, 2021

New Columbus logo:

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 10, 2021

Champions League final to be moved from Istanbul to either London or Lisbon due to worsening covid numbers in Turkey. UEFA would prefer to have it at Wembley but the UK government has failed to relax their regulations which require arrivals into the country to quarantine for 10 days, which may make it impossible to be in London since there's about 2,000 staff and sponsors plus international broadcast rights holders that need to be at the game. Though if they were able to play it at Wembley than they would be able to have 25,000 fans of Chelsea and Manchester City at the match.

Lisbon is basically a back-up plan as the teams would not have to quarantine upon arriving in Portugal and the country hosted the final last year between PSG and Bayern Munich after it was also moved from Istanbul.

the juiceman cometh · May 10, 2021

IlliniFaninHoosierLand said:
New Columbus logo:

Meh. In this rush to name every American soccer team in various European styles, it's funny to me that everyone seems to have forgotten some European clubs actually do have their nicknames in their official name. See e.g Bolton Wanderers FC and Queens Park Rangers FC. So I don't see the point of this rebranding, especially with Columbus having a relatively rich history as the Crew, but whatever. At least it's not Real Columbus (looking at you Salt Lake City).

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 12, 2021

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1392508816994996232

illiniguy · May 12, 2021

the juiceman cometh said:
Meh. In this rush to name every American soccer team in various European styles, it's funny to me that everyone seems to have forgotten some European clubs actually do have their nicknames in their official name. See e.g Bolton Wanderers FC and Queens Park Rangers FC. So I don't see the point of this rebranding, especially with Columbus having a relatively rich history as the Crew, but whatever. At least it's not Real Columbus (looking at you Salt Lake City).

At least it's not the Red Bulls or another corporate name

Major League Soccer What GIF by New York Red Bulls

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 16, 2021

Gold Cup schedule was announced earlier this week. Each of the U.S. group stage matches will be played at Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City. Each of Mexico's group stage matches will played at the Cotton Bowl.

If the U.S. wins Group B, then their road to the final would have games at AT&T Stadium in the quarterfinals against the Group C runner-up with the semifinal match being played in either Austin or Houston.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 18, 2021

USMNT and New York Red Bulls defender Aaron Long will miss the remainder of the MLS season and the upcoming Nations League finals as well as the start of World Cup qualifying for the U.S. after he ruptured his right Achilles tendon on Saturday.

IlliniFaninHoosierLand · May 20, 2021

Colombia will no longer be co-host of this year's Copa America after CONMEBOL decided to move games away from the country due to recent civil unrest. The tournament was to be jointly held by Colombia and Argentina, and the latter is having their own issues with an increase in covid cases right now.