Sports: Soccer: Major League Soccer (USA and Canada) cup final - a tweet and retweet

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@ArashMarkaziArash Markazi 

MLS CUP FINAL: Galaxy 1, Dynamo 0. The L.A. Galaxy win the 2011 MLS Cup.

3 hours ago via web 

Retweeted by vmeloni1232 and 100+ others

Sports:Soccer: US Women's National Team (1) vs Sweden (1)

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Women's teams tie in international match in Phoenix, Arizona USA, where the US National Women's Team in soccer faced the Swedish NWT.  In the photo, 3 on the US squad celebrate the tie which helps their qualifying for competition in the 2012 FIFA Women's World Cup. Heath scored the US goal.  Landstrom scored the goal for Sweden.

The game was live-streamed exclusively on ussoccer.com.
In the photo caption, "Second-half subs Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath combined for the equalizing score late in the game to close out 2011.  The US will have a camp in December before heading to Vancouver for the CONCACAF women's Olympic qualifying tournament."

— Reposted here with comment by Sportikos

Sports: Soccer: Philadelphia; Soccer team studs refuse to wear 'Bimbo' label

Philadelphia soccer fans protest sponsorship deal
Fans of the Philadelphia Union soccer team are up in arms over a sponsorship deal under which players will take the field in shirts emblazoned with the word "Bimbo." The club bagged $12 million in a four-year deal with Bimbo Bakeries USA, an offshoot of a Mexican baked-goods giant, but fans say the pile of cash isn't worth the jeers they'll suffer. "We're going to be [the] laughingstock of the league," complained one Union supporter. The Philadelphia Inquirer (1/12) 


-- Sportikos posting Leadership SmartBrief item, email newsletter [jan13,2k11]

Sports: Toronto FC: Soccer fans in an uproar, coach is 'issed off

Toronto the Good's continent-level professional soccer team, Toronto Football Club (TFC, but that's not some new brand of Fried Chicken), is having its troubles again this year. James Christie, "Toronto FC responds to angry fans" (Oct22,2k10). Daniel Girard, "TFC moves to quell supporters' revolt" (Oct13,2l10)

TFC is a grand idea, but fan support for a still-new franchise requires some victorious season's to grow and maintain interest, draw in new fans, etc.

...[T]he chief operating officer of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment is “pissed off” about the poor performance of Toronto FC this season, which will see the team miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. He also admits the club “screwed up royally” with its season-ticket renewals.

And he vows to “get this fixed real quick” by re-jigging season ticket packages and hiring the right general manager to improve on-field results.

“We don’t feel good about the fact that we are where we are because the objective this year was the playoffs and we missed it,” Anselmi said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s bothering me.

“I feel a personal obligation to our fans to deliver and so far we haven’t.”

TFC, which has been a box-office sensation since it joined Major League Soccer as an expansion team in 2007, was officially eliminated from the playoff race last Saturday just prior to a 3-0 loss to Chivas USA.

With two games to go, the Reds (8-13-7) sit in 11th place among 16 teams.

The owners of TFC are Maple Leaf Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the chief executive officer of which is Tom Anselmi. He now wants to "reach out to fans with town hall-style meetings and scale back season ticket packages." The head coach and his top echelon colleagues have been dismissed.

-- Sportikos

Soccer / football: Amazing goal: You have to see this one! [corrected]

I've seen some long kicks in my day, some very long kicks of the soccer ball by goalkeepers; but I've never seen a goalie kick that ball to the far other end of the field to the opposite goal posts ... and score!  Wow!

I have to dig up  info on the goalie's name, his time, the date of the game and its location and the opposing team's name.  It's in my Safari Cache app, somewhere. [Later: I searched and searched and coudn't find what I thawt I had, and lo and behold, I got the my vids mixed up and can't find what  I thawt I had, or did I just dream that one?] I want[ed] to get Technowlb to wr+t up the Safari Cache Explorer app, and I retrieve more info on this fabulous [imaginary?] game, and the team and world's star goalie.  That's the way the media game works, a kick like that on viraling video imagery and you go from an interesting player on an interesting team to a target of cameras and publicity and celebrity worldwide.  A person becomes the empty core of a vast whirlwind, as in the case of Cristiano Robino (more another day or so).


So, enjoy the soccer vid posted.

(In any case, I'm truly grateful too that YouTube (here's the vid's URL) exists and I have the equipment to view these soccer video gems occasionally!)

Sports: Soccer World Cup: Portugal breakthru, NorKor flushed out, Spain rescues itself, Hondorus bites the dust

Shirley S. Klapper has it for Washington Post, "Portugal beats North Korea in 7-0 rout" (Jun212l,2k10): Portugal put on the most dominant performance of the World Cup on Monday, knocking in a flurry of second-half goals and routing North Korea 7-0, a win that puts Portugal on the brink of advancing to the round of 16 and means the Koreans won't make it out of group play.

Washington Post's Steven Goff (Jun22,2k10):

On Monday night at Ellis Park, a team desperate to remain in the Group H race and resurrect its championship aspirations performed with style and grace but lacked a finishing touch against badly overmatched Honduras.

Though David Villa scored twice in the 2-0 victory, Spain squandered a cavalcade of chances -- shortcomings that could prove costly if the group's round-of-16 berths are decided by goal differential.

"We had glorious opportunities, many opportunities, we should have won this game by more goals," Coach Vicente Del Bosque said. "I am not entirely satisfied."

Spain (1-1) is three points behind front-running Chile (2-0), the Spaniards' opponent Friday in Pretoria. A victory by the European champions would move them ahead of the Chileans on goal difference, but Switzerland (1-1) is also in contention heading into its finale against eliminated Honduras (0-2).

The reward for finishing first is avoiding the top team from Group G -- probably tournament favorite Brazil.

Sports: Soccer: Kicked in the arse or the nuts?, perpetrator fakes it

Failblog, December 23, 2k9

I had trouble posting my text the first time around, but seems I've got a second chance.  And with this chance, I find I have to revise my take on the YouTube pix.  Seems the original victim was the arse-kicker who got it in the leg as the ball was stolen from him.   In revenge it now seems to me, he got in one good one, then fell to the ground in pain.  Er, um, how do you read this sports video?

Sports, by Sportikos

I found myself laffing del+tdly and then feeling guilty for taking pleasure in someone else's pain.  But, heck, the sportscasters were guffawing heartedly, did you notice?

Sports: English Football: Ashton Villa wallops 3-0 Sheffield United in Barclays' Premier League game

Most of the game saw Sheffield struggle to hold the Villans down, as the tide just swept these Ashtonauts forward, while Sheffield gradually fell apart. They kept their faces brave thru-out the disaster in Barclay's English Premier League, in a game which I viewed live across the Pond in Toronto on Saturday afternoon our time. The crowd kept roaring thru-out, so the lads had all the encouragement they could use.

Sports / UK Football, by Sportikos

As the stats show, Ashton Villa is no paragon of football excellency, yet it soars 5 slots above Sheffield United in the standings. On the other hand, the Villa itself has to look 10 strata above itself to discern the august Machester United team at the top of Barclay's Premiership, with Chelsea breathing down their necks.

Sports: Soccer: Do goalies cause direction of penalty kickers?

Cognitive Daily one of several ScienceBlogs carries an interesting sports item by Dave Munger, "Can soccer goalkeepers influence penalty kicks?" (Apr24,2k7).

Penalty kicks are nearly universally reviled among soccer fans, yet they remain an important part of the game. The sport is so exhausting that extending it beyond 30 minutes of extra time in a playoff game could be dangerous for the players. Typically in playoff or championship matches, tie games get decided by a penalty kick competition.

But penalty kicks offer such an advantage to the shooter that it often seems like dumb luck when a goalkeeper manages to make a save. The usual strategy is simply to dive randomly to the left or right, and hope you guessed right. Why not just flip a coin to decide who wins the match? Chris at Mixing Memory ["The Science of Goalkeeping" (Apr20,2k7) who/which in turn glosses: Masters, S.W., van der Kamp, J., & Jackson, R.C. (2007). Imperceptibly off-center: Goalkeepers influence penalty-kick direction in soccer. Psychological Science, 18(3), 222-223.] has found a study suggesting that the position of the goalkeeper just before the shot can indeed affect the shooter:

Sports > Soccer, by Sportikos

They found that in almost all instances (96%), the goalkeeper stood just slightly (and I mean just slightly) off center, creating a difference between the distance of the goalie from the two goal posts of about 9.95 centimeters, which amounts to a difference between the areas to the right and left of the goal keeper of about 2.9% of the total area of the goal. The side to which the goalie stood did not, however, influence the side to which the goalie dove as the ball was kicked. So goalies didn't seem to be aware of their position. However, when they looked at whether penalty takers were aware of the position of the goal keeper, they found that 103 out of 174 (I'm not sure what happened to the other 26 kicks) were to the side of the goal keeper with more space. So the position of the goal keeper does appear to affect the direction of the kick on a (statistically) significant percentage of penalty kicks. Penalty takers are, then, aware of the goalie's position.

I underscored the bit about goalies not seeming to be aware of their position sl+tly to one side, but if we follow the Ways of Knowing theory of Herman Dooyeweerd (philosophy) and Douglas Blomberg (educational research), and supplemented by Howard Gardner (cognition and education), we mite say there is a human pre-analytic way of knowing that is kinematic in its orientation to space and movement/s thru it. Dancers and many athletes are gifted in this regard, and spend a career in h+tening it. Gardner says it is a special kind of intelligence, among 6 or 7 others.

Sports: Soccer: Italy denied next Euro Football Tournament allegedly because of violence

A blog-entry at Eursoc shares info about the internal politics of soccer (called "football" in Europe). At stake are the location of the 1012 all-Europe games (Apr18,2k7):

Euro 2012 For Poland

Football: Italy may be world champions, but the country's recent history of crowd violence and match-fixing seems to have damaged its standing with European soccer's governing body, UEFA.

Today it was announced that Poland and Ukraine will jointly host the Euro 2012 football championship, not Italy, which was previously a firm favourite for the tournament.

Sports > Soccer/Football, by Sportikos

The head of Poland's football association Michal Listkiewicz said he "couldn't believe" UEFA's decision.

EURSOC can't really believe it either: Italy isn't the only nation facing a match fixing scandal. In Poland, over 80 people have been arrested in an enquiry into match fixing. The government suspended the entire football board, but was forced to back down following pressure from world football body FIFA.

Italy played host to the 1990 World Cup Finals.

This will be the first time since 1976 that a former Iron Curtain nation has hosted a major football tournament. Back then, Yugoslavia hosted the competition, which was won by Czechoslovakia.

The current champion of Europe is Greece. Next year sees the 2008 tournament, held in Austria and Switzerland.

In any case, not counting match fixes, the violence in Italian "futball" has been horrendous, like North American hockey.