Top Stories

Soccer Sunday: Your Running Commentary

It isn't often that a college soccer game headlines a day's action during the weekend, but today's South Florida/West Virginia tilt has something for all.

Along with being two of the country's top teams, South Florida and West Virginia feature some of the best pro prospects in the nation, with South Florida goalkeeper Chris Blais and West Virginia centerback Eric Schoenle among the most highly-regarded prospects in college soccer.

On the European front, struggling Roma looks to change its luck against Parma, while big-spending Queens Park Rangers looks to knock off Aston Villa. In Mexico, DaMarcus Beasley looks to keep up his stellar form against Santos Laguna and familiar rival Osvaldo Sanchez.

There's just one game on the MLS slate today, and while Chicago and New England aren't really in the mix for the playoffs, the fire boast red-hot striker Dom Oduro as he looks to push himself into the Golden Boot conversation.

If you will be watching today's action, or if you want to discuss the earlier morning matches we missed, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.

Enjoy the action (Today's TV Schedule is after the jump):

TODAY'S SOCCER ON TV

11 a.m. - Fox Soccer Channel - Queens Park Rangers vs. Aston Villa

11 a.m. - FoxSoccer.tv - Brest vs. Ajaccio

11 a.m. - FoxSoccer.tv - Auxerre vs. Sochaux

11:30 a.m. - GOLTV - Werder Bremen vs. Hertha Berlin

12 p.m. - DirecTV - Granada vs. Osasuna

1 p.m. - Telemundo - Toluca vs. Morelia

1 p.m. - Azteca America/Fox Deportes - Puebla vs. Santos Laguna

2 p.m. - GOLTV - Sporting Gijon vs. Racing Santander

2:45 p.m. - Fox Soccer Channel - Parma vs. Roma

3 p.m. - Fox Soccer Plus/FoxSoccer.tv - Stade Rennes vs. St. Etienne

3:30 p.m. - CBS Sports Network - West Virginia vs. South Florida

4 p.m. - ESPN3.com/ESPN Deportes - Real Zaragoza vs. Malaga

4 p.m. - MLS Direct Kick/MatchDay Live - Chicago Fire vs. New England Revolution

5 p.m. - Univision - America vs. Tijuana

 

Comments

  1. Yeah, it’s interesting that Cheivo has 3 new summer midfielder additions who are in the first 11 – Badley, Përparim Hetemaj, and Rinaldo Cruzado. Fans on Cheivo forum seem to think Cruzado a skilled ballhandler and unpredictable, but not physical enough. They love Hetemaj who is ‘running, wrestling and receiving blows without ever stopping’. They like Bradley, like his conservative physical play and passing, but think he’s slow.

    But it looks like Bradley has won the R-Mid slot for now, so time will tell.

    Reply
  2. Only saw the last 30 minutes or so (after the red). MB with a fantastic corner. I’d never even seen him take a corner before. He hits them well. He sat deeper than his CM partner, playing the same, conservative passes the rest of the team plays, but occasionally trying to loft a deep ball. One of them was poor, switching fields and turnimg the ball over. The coach seemed to be upset as it would not have been dangerous even if it had been successful: classic high risk, low reward. He also had a beautifully weighted ball to the endline, though, leading to the second goal. It stopped perfectly for the winger to make the cross.

    If he can stay back, clean up defensively, distribute responsively, yet still be able to provide an extra incisive, long ball element to the offense, he can be very valuable to Chievo. This would also be a nice role with USMNT, freeing up Stu or whoever to get forward a bit more.

    Reply
  3. Hey, say what you will, but in his two starts, Chievo has two victories against teams ranked higher than them. Of course it is a team effort, but they were not getting the results before that. is it causal.. to be determined.

    Reply
  4. Thanks for the useful summary, Predicto. Couldn’t watch it myself. However, I did see that Bradley received a “7” rating from the Italian experts, tied for second-highest on his team. And, what the heck, he got another 90 for a team in the top half of SA!

    Reply
  5. I thought he had a reasonable number of bad passes, I just felt that they were typically ‘good ideas’ or were forced by the failure of safer plays to open up. But the feed I watched said ‘tiri fuori’ which google translate made sound like he was a weak link. In short, assist + hockey assist= not bad.

    Reply
  6. and a hockey assist on the winner. He made some bad passes, but I thought he looked okay compared to the rest of the team. Especially after his 2nd half contributions. And Chievo are joint top, apparently.

    I also enjoy that AZ are alone at the top after a game against Feijenoord where they dominated possession (Jozy didn’t get much service, but there was definitely an American flag with his picture on it…). Both games reminded me of Dortmunds 2 goal comeback from yesterday, and both games (i was watching simultaneously) had 2:1 final scores after an early deficit. Like the Dortmund game.

    Reply
  7. Cool, thanks for that update. This is the kind of brief summary it would be great to see SBI start including in their AA roundup, instead of just “MB went 90 MINUTES and had an ASSIST” which doesn’t tell you all that much.

    Reply
  8. Bradley looked solid & confident today and fit well into the conservative Cheivo game. Lots of good passes & very few bad. He took cheivo’s corners and free kicks – provided a nice corner for first header goal & had a foot in the 2nd goal. Compared to last game, he isn’t moving forward much. Maybe he’s been told to stay back and not get in the way of the attacking mids & forwards. Which is ok – he played well as the deep midfield distributor.

    Reply
  9. how is it that after all this crowing about how well Philly is doing and how poor NY is doing the NY Red bulls are only one point behind Philly?

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Dylan B T Cancel reply