The first ESPN2 match of the season turned out to be a rainy affair from Jeld-Wen Field in Portland, as the Timbers overcame an early second half deficit to put away the Philadelphia Union, 3-1. The hosts began in a compact 4-4-2 diamond formation. New signing Kris Boyd paired up top with Jorge Perlaza. The […]

La Liga Talk is reporting that Al Jazeera Sports Network has won the US TV rights to La Liga, beginning with the 2012-13 season, according to a source. The shocking news means that GolTV's flagship league will no longer be shown on the Miami-based network. Al Jazeera Sports Network's acquisition of La Liga rights comes […]

EXCLUSIVE: Al Jazeera Sports Network has won the US TV rights to La Liga, beginning with the 2012-13 season, according to a source. The shocking news means that GolTV's flagship league will no longer be shown on the Miami-based network. Al Jazeera Sports Network's acquisition of La Liga rights comes hot on the heels of […]

There are always two sides to every story – in this case, with the knockout stages of the CONCACAF Champions League, there are two stories inside both legs. And in the case of two of Major League Soccer's perennial strongest finishers, there were no storybook endings. Seattle 3-7 Santos Laguna After a solid 2-1 first […]

BBC Radio 4's programme World At One today reported it has received confidential documents from the Hillsborough Disaster. The leaked papers reveal that top ranks of Merseyside Police misinformed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that drunken Liverpool supporters caused the Hillsborough Disaster. The Taylor Report ruled that the main reason for the disaster was the failure of […]

Despite an embarrassingly low viewing audience of just 82,000 Sunday for MLS's debut on NBC Sports, MLS got a boost Monday with a much more respectable viewing audience of 337,000 for ESPN2's live coverage of Portland Timbers against Philadelphia Union, which was slightly higher than the viewing audience for Monday's 4pm ET game between Arsenal […]

What is Roberto Di Matteo doing at Chelsea that Andre Villas-Boas wasn’t doing? The pundits can analyze it until they’re blue in the face but the answer is quite simple. Di Matteo is using common sense. While AVB tinkered and toyed, the established veterans became unsettled, which ultimately disrupted any sort of continuity at the […]

Chelsea won in a blaze of glory Wednesday night to become the EPL’s only representative in the last eight of the UEFA Champions League. That is a shocking state of affairs for a global sporting brand that considers itself to be the biggest and best show in town. Can we really say that the Premier […]

In the past few years, FOX Soccer has been accumulating an ever-growing number of TV rights deals to bring most of the best soccer leagues in the world to a US audience. FOX Sports winning the bids to broadcast the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments was a crowning achievement. But it's quite possible […]

FOX today announced that its FOX Soccer Plus network has won the US and Caribbean TV rights to the Scottish Premier League through 2013-14. The agreement with SPORTFIVE International secures the SPL TV rights for the remainder of the 2011-12 season through the end of the 2013-14 campaign. The first Scottish Premier League game on […]

Different fans have different takes on the greatest Premier League XI of all time. Since its inception in 1992/93, the English Premier League has gone from strength to strength, establishing it as one of the best leagues in the world. Many top players from all around the world have graced the league over the years […]

NBC Sports kicked off its first season of MLS TV coverage Sunday with only 82,000 viewers and a 0.07 rating. Embarrassingly, there were nine outdoors (fishing and hunting) TV shows that day that had larger viewing audiences, according to TV Sports Ratings. It was a case of good news and bad news for NBC Sports. […]

Watching the video of the Timbers Army sing the National Anthem again and how much attention that gets in mainstream sports media made me think about what an opportunity MLS has to wedge into the American sports mainstream. People flinch at the stereotypical soccer hooligans but one of the things that I have heard from colleagues that […]

I was born in Chicago, the youngest of three, and a son of German parents. My father was a diplomat and stationed at the German consulate in the Windy City. As was the case with his career, we moved to a new city in the world every three to five years. These cities included countries […]

Playing Fantasy Premier League each week, you begin to look at the actual games in different ways. Here are some of my findings from this past weekend's action: 1. Nikita Jelavic- It's always risky to praise a player after just one game, but Jelavic's Goodison Park debut warrants immediate excitement. He scored the only goal in a slightly […]