3.15.13
ASN Morning Read: Onesies Take Over the World
The Stoke City duo gets some new duds; Tottenham loses massively, yet somehow escapes and finds out its next Europa League opponent; Fabian Johnson is down but maybe not out.
BY
Jesse Yomtov
Posted
March 15, 2013
8:31 AM
Tottenham will play Basel in the quarterfinal round of the Europa League. You know how it got there? Well, Brad Friedel played the full 120 as Tottenham advanced with 4-1 loss to Inter Milan. (There's a sentence you don't read every day.) Spurs blew a 3-0 lead from the first leg, but a tally in extra time sank Inter 4-4 on away goals. Clint Dempsey should be back in the mix for the quarters, which begin April 4.
U.S. Soccer officially announced a friendly vs. Belgium in Cleveland on May 29. The countries squared off in Sept. 2011, 1 -0 loss early in Klinsmann’s tenure, and the young Belgians have drawn quite a bit of attention since then. See Hazard, Eden (and the plethora of other guys tearing up the Premier League). There are rumblings that in addition to the Belgium and yet-to-be-official Germany friendlies, there could be one more. Guess we didn’t learn from last year, eh?
Bruce Arena doesn’t like dual-citizens on the national team.
That's, um, an interesting statement. There has to be more behind it, right? Right?
Fabian Johnson is unlikely to play this weekend for Hoffenheim. We’ll have to wait and see what that means for his status with the national team this month.
Tom Marshall makes an interesting point that the U.S. didn’t use a single Mexico-based player in the loss at Honduras (though nobody from Liga MX played in the January draw vs. Canada either). With Herculez Gomez, Jose Torres, DaMarcus Beasley, and others playing well, we should probably expect some south-of-the-border flare for the upcoming qualifiers.
MLS chief marketing officer Howard Handler did a Reddit AMA Thursday that drew plenty of smart questions from fans. A former NFL marketing executive, Handler said of the MLS in the digital sphere: “We punch well above our weight in how we try to engage with our fans.” Handler certainly isn’t wrong. You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody who would disagree that the MLS can’t go toe-to-toe with say, Major League Baseball, which still refuses to allow its highlights on YouTube.
Finally, Brek Shea is wearing a Stoke City onsesie for some reason:
See also: Geoff Cameron. Happy Friday, world.
