The glory of winning on European soil

OK, so Gooch isn't doing too bad these days...

Welcome Back

We will be up and running again soon, in time for the prep for South Africa 2010

Why the U.S. is poised for soccer success

As measured by FIFA points, the U.S. seems to come fairly close to satisfying the criteria needed.

This is from a paper by Eva Marikova Leeds and Michael A. Leeds, given at the Eastern Economics Association Conference, February 2007, New York, NY.

Using OLS and Poisson regressions, we corroborate previous studies and find that success increases with income, population, and having hosted a World Cup competition. We also find that a country’s political institutions and colonial heritage affect its soccer performance. In particular, being a wealthy democracy adds greatly to soccer performance. We also find that the success of a country’s club teams is a good predictor of the national team’s success. We conclude that club success reflects a nation’s willingness and ability to finance soccer success.

The full link can be found here:
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/economics/RePEc/spe/Leeds_Soccer.pdf

Claudio Who?

Let's officially do an about-face on Landon Donovan. His goals, all three of them, were superb.
We had our doubts, especially after an anemic World Cup in Germany, that he could change a game.

On Sunday, he wasn't wandering around mopping up for the midfield so much as he went and grabbed that game to call his own. Has to make one feel better about the future of the U.S. Men's team scoring ability. Landon, You're L.A. and all, but you're the top player on the squad, and we will say it.


GOOD: Attacking midfield, Landon Donovan. Beasley and Dempsey actually moved the ball forward. That's been too rare of late, unfortunately.

GOOD: Feilhaber and Bradley. Good play all around.

BAD: TV coverage. The state of replay on ESPN2. How about a shot of whether the Ecuador strikers (or the U.S. ones in the first half) were offside? And Dave O'Brien. C'mon man, baseball starts soon, go there and get your kicks.

BAD: Those blue jerseys with white pin stripes looked like the cheapest ones in the Adidas' catalog. And this a Nike team!

Ratings for the U.S. win over Mexico

From U.S. Soccer:

ESPN2's broadcast was the most-watched U.S. game in the team's history, outside of the World Cup and World Cup qualifiers. The network earned a 0.7 household rating, which translates to 1.1 million viewers and comes on the heels of the network’s impressive 2006 World Cup ratings. Even more impressively, the game averaged a 1.0 rating during the final 15 minutes as the USA iced the victory.

On Univision, the match also set records with more than 6 million total viewers. The U.S. victory was the No. 2 most-watched Spanish-language sports cast in history, beating every Super Bowl among Hispanic Adults 18-49, Men 18-49 and Total Viewers.

Roster announced for the US-Mexico game Feb 7

GOALKEEPERS (4) – Joe Cannon (Los Angeles Galaxy), Matt Pickens (Chicago Fire), Troy Perkins (D.C. United), Matt Reis (New England Revolution)

DEFENDERS (9) – Chris Albright (Los Angeles Galaxy), Bobby Boswell (D.C. United), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Jimmy Conrad (Kansas City Wizards), Todd Dunivant (New York Red Bulls), Bryan Namoff (D.C. United), Michael Parkhurst (New England Revolution), Dasan Robinson (Chicago Fire) Eddie Robinson (Houston Dynamo)

MIDFIELDERS (7) – Kyle Beckerman (Colorado Rapids), Brian Carroll (D.C. United), Ricardo Clark (Houston Dynamo), Joshua Gros (D.C. United), Sacha Kljestan (Chivas USA), Justin Mapp (Chicago Fire), Pablo Mastroeni (Colorado Rapids)

FORWARDS (6) – Kenny Cooper (FC Dallas), Landon Donovan (Los Angeles Galaxy), Eddie Johnson (Kansas Cit y Wizards), Nate Jaqua (Los Angeles Galaxy), Chris Rolfe (Chicago Fire), Taylor Twellman (New England Revolution)