Philadelphia Union
The Union host LA Galaxy tonight at 7 pm (TCN, MLS Live).
It’s a big one.
Previews at PSP, Philadelphia Union (print, video, know your opponent, game notes), Philly.com (preview, story), Delco Times, CSN Philly, Philly Soccer News, Brotherly Game, Vavel, Pattison Ave, Philly Sports Network, MLSsoccer.com LA Galaxy (preview, Insider), Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, LAG Confidential, Corner of the Galaxy, Stoppage Time, MLSGB, League Lane, Sports Chat Place and the AP.
LAG Confidential on why it is so hard to play Bruce Arena’s Galaxy.
Ray Gaddis has a Spotify playlist to prep for tonight’s game. Brotherly Game on Fabinho versus Ray Gaddis.
At Pattison Ave, Jay Davenport looks ahead to the Union’s busy schedule of six games in the next 22 days.
Prost Amerika talks to Warren Creavalle.
In the latest power rankings at MLSsoccer.com, the Union remain at No. 4: “A potential six-point week presents a huge test for the team that leads the Eastern Conference in points per game. The Union have shown better than expected depth thus far, which will help.”
Looking ahead, at Philly Voice, Kevin Kinkead reports 19-year-old Deportivo Cali forward Mateo Casierra “is on the Union radar and rated highly.”
US Open Cup
Two area clubs, Reading United and West Chester United, are in first round US Open Cup play tonight.
West Chester are on the road to Virginia to face Fredericksburg FC at 5:30 pm. More on West Chester at PSP and TheCup.us.
Reading hosts Atlanta Silverbacks at 7 pm (click here for YouTube stream). Dirty South Soccer and uslpdl.com have previews. Brotherly Game has more on the team’s meet and greet on Monday.
Ocean City Nor’easters
Ocean City Nor’easters have announced the signing of 10 players for their 2016 roster.
Local
Taylor Racioppi (Duke; Ocean Township, N.J.), as well as five Penn State players, have been called up for the US U-20 WNT camp that will take place in Papua New Guinea, May 21-June 1. Papua New Guinea will host the U-20 Women’s World Cup, Nov. 13-Dec. 3.
A video capturing an incident in last weekend’s Harrisburg-Charleston game which a Battery player kicked an advertising board in frustration, only for his foot to get stuck, has apparently gone viral.
MLS
In addition to the Union-Galaxy game, four other MLS games are being played tonight: Colorado-Kansas City and Dallas-Portland at 9 pm; Vancouver-Chicago at 10 pm; and San Jose-Houston at 10:30 pm. All of the games are available on MLS Live.
The fallout from the on-field argument between Kei Kamara and Federico Higuain over who would take a penalty kick, and subsequent comments from Kamara continues with Columbus Crew head coach Gregg Berhalter benching Kamara for this weekend’s game against Colorado. Reports also suggest Columbus is looking to trade Kamara before the close of the primary transfer window later tonight. More at MLSsoccer.com, ESPN, Goal.com, and Massive Report. Section 215 wonders if Kamara would fit with the Union.
Orlando City head Adrian Heath has been suspended for one game and fined “for violating the League’s policy regarding Entering Field of Play.”
Montreal midfielder Ignacio Piatti has been named MLSsoccer.com’s Player of the Week.
ESPN on the “excellent influence” Jermaine Jones is having on Colorado Rapids.
Former Union man Jordan Harvey will set a club record for appearances with Vancouver Whitecaps with his next appearance.
The biggest of Minnesota United FC’s three requests for state assistance to help build a privately-financed $150 million stadium in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood will have a key Senate floor vote Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Senate Tax Committee passed a tax-related measure, including property tax exemptions for the pro soccer team’s proposed stadium at the intersection of Interstate 94 and Snelling Avenue.
US
At ASN, Brian Sciaretta on the question of whether fringe USMNT players will get a chance to make their case in next week’s friendly against Puerto Rico.
CNBC reports, “Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the U.S. women’s soccer team, told CNBC she’s still concerned about the mosquito-born Zika virus, but she’s decided to “begrudgingly” participate in this year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.” Solo said, “I strongly believe that no athlete should be put into this position — to decide between your Olympic dreams and your own health.”
At Health, a Q&A with Alex Morgan.
Fox has announced its broadcasting team for the Copa America. Union announcer JP Dellacamera is part of the team.
Elsewhere
FIFA unveiled the timetable of its delayed bidding process for the 2026 World Cup on Tuesday, with president Gianni Infantino’s plans for a 40-team tournament to be decided upon by October and a final decision on the hosts to be made in May 2020.
Soccer’s world governing body said it would consider giving the green light to joint bids and review a rule which currently allows a continent to stage the tournament every eight years.
A FIFA source said they had considered increasing this wait period to 12 years or more and that there had been no discussions about allowing a continent to host successive World Cups.
Click here to read FIFA’s announcement on the bidding process.
FIFA has restored some $10 million in funds it has been withholding from CONCACAF in the wake of various corruption scandals after the confederation’s adoption of reform measures. FIFA said on Tuesday, “The Audit and Compliance committee has acknowledged the measures taken by CONCACAF and has agreed to lift the suspension on the frozen funds. However, the release of the funds is still subject to the fulfilment of the requirements cited in the FIFA development regulations.” More from the AP.
The AP reports, “Brazil soccer great Rivaldo is telling tourists to stay away from the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because of the danger of endemic violence…’Things are getting uglier here every day,’ Rivaldo wrote. ‘I advise everyone with plans to visit Brazil for the Olympics in Rio — to stay home. You’ll be putting your life at risk here. This is without even speaking about the state of public hospitals and all the Brazilian political mess. Only God can change the situation in our Brazil.'”
Looks like some West Ham supporters have a new theme song, “I’m Forever Throwing Bottles“.
Before anyone gets excited about Kei Kamara’s reported availability today prior to 11:59:59 pm CDT (Chicago), please read the Kevin Kinkead piece on Philly Voice that is linked directly above in the last sentence/paragraph of the very first section of this Daily News Roundup. Kinkead paints a credible picture of the Union’s current roster financial situation.
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Remember that earlier this winter Kamara held out to become a designated Player. We know from our experience with Chaco Maidana that the title does not necessarily mean a huge salary, so we cannot assume that Kamara costs c. $487,000 against the salary cap, which is the maximum the league will pay for a DP. When Maidana was a DP, his salary was under 200K slightly, I think I remember. I do not recall ever seeing what the minimum salary is to be classified as a designated player.
I don’t think there is a minimum salary. The salary is what it is, the team can use the almighty allocation (or tam) now to buy down the cap hit, which is what we did for a lot of players.
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I agree Kei is not coming here though.
I thought Maidana’s issue was the Union paid a transfer fee and that is amortized over the contract length or something along those lines. I thought if someone is a DP, they are always counted $487K against the cap (or whatever the current DP amount is). The league releases player salary information, but that doesn’t mean anything with regards to cap hits and the black hole that is MLS roster rules. I could be wrong, but that was my understanding of the rules. This is why it’s so tough to get a clear picture of the salary cap situation for a team and that doesn’t even account for the unknown GAM or TAM that clubs have at any given time.
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And I also agree that Kei is not coming here, just wanted to throw out my thoughts on the MLS salary cap.
Does anyone want Kamara here if he is going to disrupt the locker room like in Columbus? CJ is probably the best judge of that.
If he scores 26 gols you bet.
Yup, same here.
Let us explore my never ending fascination with US Soccer.
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I am curious if someone in the know or a good hypothesizer can riddle me this.
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Why are the Timbers U23, NYRB U23 and Sounders U23 able to play in the US Open Cup but BSFC is not. Now on the surface I know why… as we have discussed a bit before but on a deeper level, why are there not certain parameters a USL team (that is a farm team for the first club just like the U23 playing tonight) must abide by, which would in turn allow them to compete.
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So—there is not one member of the Timbers, Sounders, NYRB U23 teams getting called up to first team games? Obviously they are not getting called up for the first team Cup games… but do they get to play in a regular season game?
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Aren’t Timbers U23 and BSFC essentially the same thing even though technically they are, I guess, playing in different levels of the pyramid.
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With all due respect, I’d exchange CJ for Kei in a lub-dub ventricular escape beat…. guy scored 26 gols last year on service from his OB mostly.
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Lastly, and just because::: US Soccer had a chance to do things differently, but it didn’t…it went franchise model and funny how the whole talk about being given a franchise seems to come down to stadiums, which incidentally- are already after only 20 years or so left with many many open seats unless it is a club that already had a deep deep supporters group previously to being Given an MLS franshice… Hell its already happening with the Union…
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Okay have a nice day.
I think it purely comes down to an amateur/professional distinction. The U23 teams are PDL (amateur) teams whereas BSFC (and similarly NYRBII, S2, and T2) are USL (professional) teams.
Here’s a guess…
The rule change in 2015 that USSF passed specifies that “any Outdoor Professional League Team that is majority owned by a higher-level Outdoor Professional League Team shall be ineligible to participate in the Open Cup”. I believe that the U-23 teams (New York, Portland, Seattle) are considered to be amateur (or perhaps semi-pro?), which is why they’re presumably allowed entry. That seems like a silly, and somewhat arbitrary, distinction to make but that’s my guess.
Thou art forgetting thine 14th Union commandment passed from Soccer Jesus (or SoJesus) to the emperor Garberod…
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Thou shalt screw the Union in new and creative ways as thy heart beats. Thine Union grows an arm, thou shalt fashion a noose of arbitrary bureaucracy to tie round the arm until the life is stricken from it.
Rivaldo’s comments are troubling. I cannot contextualize them since I know nothing of the man himself, since I only watched him via television as a player on the pitch, and any comment on anything from anybody anywhere without such knowledge has less force.
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Nonetheless, a sobering point of view. He reminds me that when I was a teenager – yes, T Rex was still rampaging the earth then! – Brazil was run by a military dictatorship.
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The political stability to stage international sporting competitions is not necessarily always safe to assume. As I recall ancient Hellas declared a truce, and observed it, during its version of the Olympics, since the games were most fundamentally a religious celebration in their,purpose.
I tend to think and trust the world is a much smaller place than its ever been and everybody is watching all the time and everybody has a POV and a means to spread it and now we have instantaneous news all day every day all over the world and it is frightening, but I do not think, ultimately the world is any less stabile than it’s always been… the world is always balancing stability and instability it just so happens now a famous footballer is able to let us all know… to tell us to stay away when he used to only be able to maybe tell his grandmother by phone to not visit.
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I try to keep this in mind when I have moments of panic the world is going to end tomorrow or next week… hell just yesterday I was having an instant text message conversation with a buddy of mine as he swam in the South Atlantic off the coast of Fortaleza, Brazil. This communication is amazing to me. It is frightening as well. This world…..
So if they expand the WC to 40 teams, that would mean a minimum of 80 games (10 groups of 4, 20 teams make KO’s with 10 group winners plus 2 second place teams getting byes to the round of 16). They are not going to determine the host(s) until 2020. Is there any other country besides the US which could get the infrastructure ready in time?
I recall that Mexico and Canada are both interested.
The re-institution of joint bids is all you need to know for 2026. It will be 40 teams and it will be a North American tournament with Canada,US and Mexico all co-hosting. That’s my 5 star stone cold lock of the week!
Doing it for the euros too… great great article in 8by8 Mag about France being the last great European championship.
Really psyched for tonight. Hope the Union come out firing and the weather holds up. Should be fun.
Credit to the Union front office staff. This “Game Guide” at the bottom of the page is pretty sweet!
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http://www.philadelphiaunion.com/post/2016/05/10/game-notes-union-vs-la-galaxy-may-11