Photo by ISIphotos.com
You can add Ricardo Clark to the list of U.S. national team starters dealing with injuries.
The Eintracht Frankfurt midfielder will be sidelined three to four weeks after picking up a calf strain in training on Tuesday.
Clark has yet to make his debut for the German club since moving to Frankfurt on a free transfer, and now he will have to wait even longer. Clark is also likely to miss the U.S. team's friendly vs. the Netherlands on March 3.
Here are some other stories to get your Wednesday started:
LIVERPOOL OWNERS FACE FINANCIAL CRISIS
Beleaguered Liverpool owners Tom Hicks and George Gillet could be forced to sell their stake in Liverpool if they cannot come up with £100million ($159 million) in new investment by July.
Liverpool is believed to be £237 million in debt, with Hicks and Gillet facing mounting opposition from fans who blame the American duo for the team's struggles.
SOUTH AFRICAN AIRLINES ACCUSED OF PRICE FIXING
If you are planning to attend the World Cup you could face some exorbitant flight prices to get around South Africa.
Six airlines operating in South Africa are being accused of price fixing ahead of the World Cup. A commission set up to investigate price hikes in flight prices has uncovered what appears to be a plan to raise ticket prices during the World Cup. No, this isn't that much of a surprise, but soccer fan around the world can only hope the South African government can keep the practice of price fixing from getting out of control.
USA MAINTAINS WORLD RANKING
The U.S. national team held on to the No. 14 world ranking in the latest FIFA rankings, released on Wednesday.
Egypt was the big mover, jumping up to No. 10 after winning its third straight African Cup of Nations. Cameroon dropped to No. 20 after a disappointing finish at the tournament.
Spain held on to the No. 1 spot, with the top nine going unchanged.
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What do you think of these developments? Disappointed that Clark will have to wait to make his Frankfurt debut? Hoping Hicks and Gillet will be forced to sell their stake in Liverpool? Starting to wonder if you can afford to go to the World Cup?
Share your thoughts below.
I just don’t get FIFA. All joking aside, I would not be surprised to find out the next place to get a world cup might be Haiti. And that’s not a cheap shot…FIFA is composed of morons, it’s like they want fans to get scammed and/or kidnapped and/or killed, between South Africa and Brazil.
The injury situation is very frustrating. At least we will be relatively rested by the W.C. (damnit)
Do you know for sure he showed up out of shape? Can’t this be written off as s**t happens?
I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re saying.
AHM,
Wall Street, Bush era good ol’ boys?! Stench not containable to domestic business? Oh how comments like this crack me up. Where are you getting your information, have you been hanging out with Lyndon LaRoush? If Hicks and Glazers were Wall Street CEOs they would have never been dumb enough to apply the LBO model to a soccer team. The only gains they could get from such a move are leveraging returns and maybe some tax savings, no governance or operational improvements are possible with a transaction like this. Anyone with a rudimentary background in finance that doesn’t get all of their info from the Huffington Post could have told you that. But no, lets compare this completely unrelated issue with the problems were facing domestically, that totally makes sense. How about you stick to soccer comments, because your grasp of financial concepts is obviously lacking.
Goodness gracious. Such hate. Rico is the one that showed up out of shape after he told everyone, including Dynamo, that he was not re-signing with MLS. Rico knew that if he was going to move, it would be in January. Rico was also the one in charge of his training at that point and had two months to keep his fitness up, and did not. And now Rico has a calf strain when he starts training at a club, a very, very typical injury for someone who is out of shape.
He did this to himself and is to blame for this. This isn’t some sort of freak accident here. We’ll see how we he performs for Entracht, assuming he even makes the 18 in the final few months of the the Bundesliga season, when Eintracht is well and truly out of the race.
I live in Dallas where the Hicks call home and where they have two other mismanaged sports teams that the fans hope and pray the Hicks family unload. They just are garbage sports owners. Also having a brat son on the board telling fans to suck his d*ck, like he did at Liverpool, doesn’t help.
Corporate raiders are going to exist no doubt, but that is still no excuse because these guys were raiders above all raiders.
The animosity is more regionalism. It’s not just anti-foreigner because I recall when Londoners bought Newcastle, the Newcastle supporters were chanting ‘Cockney mafia out!’. Considering the antics of some of these owners, I think the suspicions are overall genuine. Where is Newcastle now?
You boil it all down, a crap owner is going to get flak. It’s not because they are Americans. You have a Russian at Chelsea and Arabs at Man City who could commit murder and the fans would look the other way because they have the money they put in and at least show some level of interest for the club outside of being an investment in the portfolio.
So much for the legendary fitness of the national team. What the hell is going on!
They are getting hit with an Anti Trust lawsuit.
Africa = corruption on all levels – it was a bad decision bringing the World Cup to the continent.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/story/_/id/735902/ce/uk/?cc=5901&ver=us
I think this totally misses the point that if it wasn’t the Glazers or Hicks, it would be some OTHER corporate raider. And debt financing is the way that sports ownership at the highest levels is done now. The Glazers and Gillettes have run sports franchises for a long time…successfully.
It’s the debt levels that give the fans an excuse to express their deep-seated anti-foreigner sentiments. Besides, it’s fashionable to be anti-corporate these days. That pendulum will swing back in time.
i thought aristotle was smart??
i associate glazer/hicks with the greedy wall street CEO’s that have been exposed the past few years. they’re a throwback to the “good ole boys” from Bush’s presidency and sadly the stench wasn’t containable to just domestic business
We have a very good chance of losing to Algeria in the world cup as well as Slovenia.
They will both bunker down and we don’t know how to break down defenses at all. Plus Algeria has some skill on the ball and that typically means our backline will crumble o under the passing pressure.
The reason we beat Spain is because they crossed the ball in so much and didn’t play their true game. We could go 1-1-1.
dude you read gary busey’s mind, good work
Exactly. That’s why there is no point in questioning Egypt’s place at number 10.
Stupid Airlines jacking up prices when I have tickets to England v. US….. $2,000 is a lot to fly there.. If I start paddling now in my canoe can I make it in time??
I will be called all manner of things for saying this but I believe a big part of the problem is the lack of respect American players get around the world. Not just from coaches and players, but from officials. If you watch U.S. games there is quite often a visible contempt for American players by officials. American players get fouled a lot with no call, whereas the fouls that are not called for them get called for the opposition for much less of an infringement. Opposing players pick up on this and tackle harder and more recklessly knowing they can get away with a lot more in that situation. In training you may even have resentment from fellow teammates who want to “welcome” you by letting you know this isn’t America.
The issues are when we go to the Confed Cup with an “A” team than play another tournament right after and use our “B” team, playing against “A” squads. Just as Ghana brought a very young side and got beat but it prepared the younger guys for SA which is in everyone’s book the bigger prize.
The African Cup of Nations also benefits those teams who have a lot of home grown players – see Egypt. Whereas the others with superstars have a bigger risk with injuries and fatigue.
We’re fine where we are in the rankings. Egypt won their continent by playing teams a lot harder than us, missed out on the World Cup by a single game, and have had a lot of success in recent years, consecutively.
A team like Australia should be higher up in the rankings as the representative of Asia, as should Japan.
There’s no real way beyond gut feeling to indicate who is the best.
The Hicks and Glazer families both have done nothing but run up bills for both clubs. When Manchester United sold Ronaldo, Glazer took the money and applied it to the debt his family was responsible for as opposed to the $1 billion + debt Manchester U currently has. The Glazer family has run Man U into the ground, and with it’s aging players, they’ll be lucky if the crushing debt doesn’t deliver them a similiar fate to Leeds United.
Hicks is not fairing much better. He pulled the same stunt he is pulling on Liverpool with Corinthans in Brazil. Before Hicks, the club was high-flying, and then Hicks came in with a promise of a new stadium (which never came), and after he was through Corinthans was deep in debt and relegated.
A lot of British fans may not know the complete realities, but Glazer and Hicks are either complete and total capitalist blood suckers or incompetent businessmen. As far as American owners in top flight we are 1 for 3 (the one being the partial owner of Sunderland) and that is a crap record that doesn’t reflect well on our pro-business economic philosphy we tout to everyone in the world.
I don’t blame either the Liverpool or Man U fans in wanting them out. I’d tar and feather them for good measure.
And that, good sir, is a zing. Well done.
Debt is fine – when you release your financials and there are millions of dollars taken out of the club for personal reasons, Gil having a 60% salary increase since 06′, talk of selling your training facility to the owners who would have to go further in debt to buy the facility and service that debt by making United now pay a renters fee for using it, the list goes on and on. Glazers are a shady lot to say the least…
Hicks and Co are just morons who don’t understand soccer and their fans as twice as bad! It’s the fat Spanish waiter who screwed over the team and the only reason he hasn’t left is because of his Champions League success… Living on a prayer the lot of them!
fair enough. 😉
or blind to financials, hard to claim any of them are smart investments… when you are rich enough that a yacht doesnt provide a big enough play toy/money pit, you buy a football team…
14 is right where we should be. Anywhere from 14-20 is about right.
The U.S. #14? They lost at home to Honduras! Maybe Egypt being at #10 won’t seem so strange when the U.S. loses to Algeria in the World Cup.
I’m 33 and injury free. Eventually Bob has to call me in, right?
Fifa has done it again. Neither Portugal nor France were seeded in the WC draw as one of the top teams, but now Portugal is ranked #5 and France #7. What has Portugal done since the WC draw to move up to top 5 in Fifa’s rankings? Nothing against Portugal or France, but I am just wondering about Fifa’s rankings. As for Egypt’s leap to No. 10 spot, I personally think that a team that failed to qualify for the WC should not be ranked as a top 10 team in the world, but at least I can see some rational basis in moving them up as a reward for winning their continental championship.
3-4 weeks does seem like a VERY long time for a calf strain… So unfortunate that he can’t immediately come in and show Frankfurt he can do his thing. I’ll be very disappointed if he misses the friendly in March :
Seriously, the injury thing is getting ridiculous. At first it was just bizarre, but now I am really getting pissed. These injuries are happening at the worst possible time–when players are on the cusp of gaining substantial playing time with their club teams or when they will be fighting for that playing time. Obviously, it is all coincidence, but I think we are due for some good luck.
What’s weak is your grasp on the English language.
One of the more idiotic posts I’ve ever read here…do you REALLY think that???
You know, once you put it that way I would have to agree with you. The US probably splits most of those games home and away.
But the beauty of this game is that any team can win on any given day.
I disagree. After the top 10 or 12 teams — which everyone can agree are pretty good and should be up there — there are loads of mediocre contenders, the USA being one. Who behind the USA should go ahead in the rankings? Nigeria, Chile, Mexico, Switzerland? I dunno. I it’s debatable, but I think 14 for us is about right, and could even be a bit higher than that.
WHY IS EVERYONE GETTING INJURED??!
Spot on, Omar. They do protest the Glazers. Many (not all) English supporters don’t seem to grasp the financial realities of the sports world. Things have changed and to run a successful world power club, you need to be as much a finance expert as an enthusiast. The hatred for Yank owners (or even our favorite Russian or the sheiks) is just provincialism by the Brits.
Cheers,
It just goes to show how bad the FIFA rankings are. I don’t even think the US should be 14.
African teams are going to be woeful at the World Cup, just you wait and see. No discipline in their teams, corruption everywhere, too many distractions.
South Africa will probably make the second round though – a referee will make sure of it.
United fans protest the Glazers just as much.
Ha! My thoughts exactly Erik.
Egypt moved up to 10? I dunno. The ACN field looked WOEFUL, even Ivory Coast. Egypt barely beat Essien-less Ghana.
Oh well. Makes our 3-0 rout of them look pretty nice. Hope they enjoy watching the WC in HD.
Egypt ranked #10 in the world?
Not in the World Cup, got spanked by the US in the Confed’s Cup, and won the typically lame African Cup of nations again…
Wow.
Is it a calf strain or just the ‘far-from-home’ blues?
yer nutz
I just love how the Scouser fans hate Hicks/Gillette. All they’ve done is what other Prem owners of top clubs have done….provide bucketsful of transfer money for five years (more than Chelsea netted in the last 4 years) and give the team a chance to win. Yeah, they’re in debt. So are Chelsea, Man U, Real Madrid, the Milans, etc. In this economy, there is almost no way to do the buying sprees without big debt.
Come on Rico, calf strain? That’s week. Seems like a long prognosis for a rather soft injury.
GODDAMMIT USA!
You know, I am beginning to think that Rico Clark does not have what it takes to succeed on a stage larger than MLS.
Showing up out of shape was stupid enough, and then picking up a calf strain. Who couldn’t see that coming?
What was the guy doing between the end of the MLS season in mid-November and signing for Frankfurt in mid-January? Why did he let his fitness lapse to the point that signing for a cold-weather club and working out in the cold after showing up out of shape led to the oh-so-predictable injury?
This is his fault, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Eintracht may be having second thoughts about signing him right about now.
It does, but be careful, because some Scouser might start threatening Ives’s family if he keeps that up.
It is time for the injury bug to move on. I don’t remember us sending him an invitation but he has most certainly worn out his welcome.
Maybe the SA government should investigate what is going on with US playes. Injuries, firebombs, etc it’s getting out of hand…
Hahahaha! “Hoping Hicks and Gillet will be forced to sell their stake in Liverpoo?”
That pretty much hits the nail right on the head when it comes to the state of the club!