Photo: Earl Gardner
Philadelphia Union
Kerith Gabriel reports at the Daily News that Roger Torres will be out “for 8 to 10 weeks.”
Peter Nowak says of the injury, “It doesn’t look good. His knee went completely to the side. I knew from the beginning there was something wrong. They will try and determine today and tomorrow what’s going to be the procedure from this but the MCL sprain is pretty bad. He’s going to specialists and getting everything checked out, but Roger will be without us for quite some time. It appears his injury is a lot more serious than we imagined.”
Nowak said further, “It doesn’t look good. I’m not the doctor. I’m trying to find the way right now to see that it’s not only MCL. It could also be the meniscus. It could be a couple of things. If we were to decide to clean this up, not going one thing and trying to see if the other thing will work, it could be that it’s a combination of things that we need to clean up in his knee, and that the therapy would be even longer. I don’t want to predict any timetable for Roger, but it doesn’t look good.”
Nick Sakiewicz says hosting the All-Star Game isn’t about making money. “I’m not sure it’s a revenue-generating opportunity. These things aren’t cheap to host. This isn’t money-making venture. It was very expensive to get into and bid for. We wanted to do it for our fans.” He added, “Make no mistake, this is about servicing our sponsors and giving a payback to our fans. If we make a little bit of money off of this, I’ll be surprised.”
Sakiewicz says hosting the All-Star Game will help the club’s stadium expansion plans. “We’re studying it right now because it’s a consideration for next year in terms of expanding the stadium by a couple-thousand seats if we can. The All-Star Game is a great opportunity to test that because we’re running out of seats and, it’s a great value to have a season ticket, so you better hold onto it. The All-Star Game will provide us a laboratory for how additional seating would work in here.”
It’s official, the Union have the youngest roster in MLS.
The top five Union players in the Castrol Index are Lionerd Pajoy (48), Sheanon Williams (63), Gabriel Gomez (72), Carlos Valdes (103) and Brian Carroll (104).
Cosmopolitan has a list of 19 “Hot Soccer Players We Can’t Resist,” one for each MLS team. From the Union, Freddy Adu “has morphed into a super-cute man.” Lancaster, Pa.-native and “sexy Montreal forward” Andrew Wenger is also on the list.
Freddy Adu, Danny Mwanga, Chris Albright, Danny Califf and Zac MacMath were at the Mitchell & Ness spring fashion event. Slamonline.com says it was “Freddy Adu, Sheanon Williams and pretty much the entire roster,” along with USWNT star Lauren Cheney.
Philly Sports Week explains “WTF” a free kick is with the usual unnecessary “just to vex sports fans on this side of the pond” added in.
The what it means to be a Union fan discussion continues at Philly Union Talk.
Columbus Watch
Here’s NBC Sports’ preview of Saturday’s game:
Coming off of a 4–1 shellacking at home at the hands of New York, Crew coach Robert Warzycha has signaled that some lineup shuffling may be in order when the Crew come to PPL Park on Saturday.
The scouting report on the Union on the Columbus Crew website is little more than a litany of off-field Union controversies, ranging from the departures of Mondragon and Le Toux, to the Califf injury controversy, and the departure of Williams to the US Olympic team. The report does note that MacMath has saved only 56 percent of the shots taken, the worst save percentage in the league.
Prime Timing Sports previews Saturday’s game. Kind of.
MLS
Peter Nowak says he’s honored to be selected to coach the All-Star Game. He was the coach of the MLS side that defeated Chelsea at Toyota Park in 2006.
Nowak says his approach in coaching the All-Stars will be more relaxed. “In Chicago, I probably gave a two-minute pep talk, put the names on [the lineup card] and gave general directions. They know their positions. I’m not going to put Thierry Henry as right back, right? I’ll just give them the opportunity to play and basic instructions. I don’t want to go overboard with anything else.”
Nowak understands he will have little influence over team selection, saying, “That’s between the fans and the league office.” He added, “The most important thing is to put on a good show and display good teamwork.”
The All-Star Game report at Sounder at Heart says,
Peter Nowak, he of driving off Sebastien Le Toux fame, will be the coach. It is also means that unlike other US sports where the All Star coaches are either in middle of great seasons or just had great seasons, in MLS the All Star coach has yet to win a game in the season he is announced. It is also quite likely that there will be a major campaign for Le Toux to make the ASG and there should probably be one for Danny Califf as well.
The press release on Chelsea’s website announcing their participation in the All-Star Game reads like it was written by a press release robot with a pole stuck up its you-know-what.
Sporting News looks at why MLS wants a foreign opponent for the All-Star Game.
Kyle Nakazawa made his first appearance for LA over the weekend, putting in 18 minutes in their 1–0 loss to Kansas City.
Soccer America says “Change is certainly the byword so far for the Western Conference.”
Business Insider says it would be disastrous for MLS to build a stadium for a second New York team on the West Side of Manhattan.
Could David Beckham’s slow start this season harm his chances of being selected for Britain’s Olympic team? Do you care?
Steve Davis explains why the critics of retroactive suspensions are missing the point.
Local
Two weeks remain to register for the Scoring Goals for Autism charity tournament at YSC Sports on April 29. For registration info, click here.
US
American’s abroad keep scoring. Yesterday, Jozy Altidore tallied two for AZ, where he is the season’s top scorer. Fabian Johnson scored one for Hoffenheim. Timothy Chandler got in on the fun with an assist for Nürnberg.
Elsewhere
UEFA has fined Manchester City £25,000 for taking the pitch a minute late in the second half of their Europa League match against Sporting Lisbon. By comparison, Porto was fined only £17,600 for its fans racist chants.
Nicholas Anelka has been named a coach at Shanghai Shenhua, the club he joined for great big bags of money in January. The team has won only one of its first five games.
In 2014 World Cup news, workers at the Castelao stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil have entered the second week of a strike. Workers at the Arena das Dunas stadium in Natal are defying a court order to return to work.
Great game yesterday: Wigan – ManU. Wigan showed how to beat ManU. While in the past you could not attack ManU since they were so strong on the counter-attack, now it seems it is possible; Wigan attacked big-time. Kudos to Wigan for showing how it is done! Hope Wigan stay up since they play some exciting football.
I wonder what crazy Nowakism we will be talking about sunday morning.
Whatever it is, I hope we’ll be able to say the U won in spite of it. We need this game.
Two good defenses. Two non-existent offenses. I’m calling a 0-0 draw (provided we start four in the back).
“In Chicago, I probably gave a two-minute pep talk, put the names on [the lineup card] and gave general directions. They know their positions. I’m not going to put Thierry Henry as right back, right? I’ll just give them the opportunity to play and basic instructions. I don’t want to go overboard with anything else.”
why can’t he do this every week?
preach