Monday, October 27, 2008

Cleaning Out the Notebook

Well, it was a crazy week last week at work and so the updating of this space had to make way for dispositive motions practice (lawyers will understand). It was a week that fairly screamed for blogging activity, particularly in the soccer world, but that is life as a part time blogger.

Here are the stories that I missed:

Major League Soccer (or as I call it Mickey League Soccer) is looking at expansion, with seven cities submitting bids for 2011 and 2012 expansion. Ives Galarcep looks at the candidate cities. My preferences would be St. Louis and Atlanta. A Barcelona backed bid in Miami will attract attention, but I don't want one there because everyone will say that Barca got them going and MLS needs to get the business going themselves.

The Offside has two views on teh whole David Beckham to AC Milan story. In the end, I don't think Beckham will come back, making the first time he has ever broken a contract. If Beckham wants to continue playing high level football, the L.A. Galaxy (the worst team in MLS this past year) is not the place to do it, and that is obvious. Honestly, aside from Becks promise to help raise the game in America, I have to say he should go. The L.A. Galaxy need to get rid of Becks and Landon Donovan. I will have a piece on this a little later.

The Barclay's Premier League has a financial problem and at least writer makes a case for why the Premier League might lose supporters. The fans they lose in England will be made up for in fans worldwide. Fine and all, but clubs make a significant penny and pound on matchday. The problem is that transfer fees and payroll is eating up budgets and the Premier League would do well to look at the lessons of the causes and events leading up to the National Hockey League lockout. I am not sure what the percentage of club budgets are eaten up by payroll, but it has to be approaching the 76 percent ration of NHL clubs. Not a good sign.

I will spend more time cleaning the notebook later.

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