Gold Cup

I know this gets confusing for people who don't follow this crap regularly but there's another soccer tournament going on right now. It's called the Gold Cup and its the championship of North America, Central America and the Caribbean. However, due to the lack of quality national teams in this region, it's a tough tournament to get excited about until it gets down to the semifinals. That's why I've held off on posting about it until now.

Unlike the U-20 World Cup that I've been posting about, this tournament is for the full men's team and the US is one of the two favorites to win it (with Mexico). On Thursday, the US will play Canada, who has looked surprisingly good, in one semi while Mexico will face the tiny French territory of Guadeloupe in the other. Just the fact that Guadeloupe has made the semis should be an embarrassment to all the departed teams from the tournament. Hell, the place is only about the size of Oklahoma City in terms of area and population.

The US v Canada match will be on Fox Soccer Channel at 7pm EST on Thursday while the Mexico v Guadeloupe match will be on GolTV at 10pm EST. The finals will be on Sunday in Chicago at 3pm EST on Fox Soccer Channel. Hopefully, it'll be a US v Mexico final.

Also, here's a few amusing soccer-related articles:

• The Guardian, which is typically brutal in its comments on US soccer, has an interesting article about the Brits propensity to mock US soccer. Steve Wells argues that the mockery says more about the Brits faltering superiority complex than anything based on reality.

• The Guardian also has an interview with former US star and current GM for LA Galaxy, Alexi Lalas. The thing I like about Lalas is that he's blunt; not always right but blunt. In the interview, Lalas tells the reporter that the English leagues are an inferior product wrapped in a grand marketing strategy. Oh, that'll play well in the British tabloids.

• jds sent over this article from Slate on the constantly changing and often ugly US uniforms. To be fair, I think most countries change their uniforms regularly and soccer uniforms can be pretty hideous, in general. Unfortunately, we can't all be as cool as Holland.

Lastly, here's the Week 11 MLS Goals (courtesy of Climbing the Ladder):


And since we're just a few weeks from Beckham's arrival, here's Ali G interviewing Beckham and Posh Spice: