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Soccer Sunday: Your Running Commentary

  TigresSantos (Getty)

Santos Laguna and Tigres enter today's Mexican Apertura Final second leg with championship aspirations and 90 minutes to try and lift a trophy.

Tigres posted a 1-0 victory in Torreon in the first leg, and will be favored to hold that lead at home, but Santos Laguna does boast the firepower to reverse that scoreline.

That isn't the only trophy on the line today, as North Carolina and Charlotte do battle in the NCAA College Cup Final. The Tar Heels enter as the heavy favorites, but Charlotte has already knocked off a who's-who of college powers and aren't likely to be intimidated.

In Europe, Brad Friedel will return to action following his controversial comments about Landon Donovan as he leads Tottenham against Stoke City, while Michael Bradley and Chievo take on Udinese in Serie A action.

If you will be watching today's action, or if you would like to discuss action from late last night and this morning, 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

8:30 a.m. - Fox Soccer Plus/FoxSoccer.tv - Sunderland vs. Blackburn

9 a.m. - Fox Soccer Channel - Bologna vs. AC Milan

9 a.m. - ESPN3.com - Udinese vs. Chievo

9:30 a.m. - ESPN3.com - Borussia Dortmund vs. Kaiserslautern

10 a.m. - ESPN3.com/ESPN Deportes - Villarreal vs. Real Sociedad

11 a.m. - Fox Soccer Channel - Stoke City vs. Tottenham

11 a.m. - FoxSoccer.tv - Lille vs. Dijon

11:30 a.m. - GOLTV - VfB Stuttgart vs. Bayern Munich

12 p.m. - DirecTV - Real Zaragoza vs. Mallorca

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

1:45 p.m. - GOLTV - Athletic Bilbao vs. Racing Santander

2:45 p.m. - Fox Soccer Channel - Novara vs. Napoli

3 p.m. - Fox Soccer Plus/FoxSoccer.tv - Lorient vs. Lyon

4 p.m. - ESPNU/ESPN3.com - UNC vs. Charlotte (College Cup Final)

3:30 p.m. - ESPN3.com/ESPN Deportes - Espanyol vs. Atletico Madrid

5:10 p.m. - GOLTV - Boca Juniors vs. All Boys

6:30 p.m. - Telemundo - Tigres UANL vs. Santos Laguna (Mexican League Final)

7:15 p.m. - GOLTV - River Plate vs. Patronato

 

Comments

  1. Marco Rodriguez is crazy. He has always been crazy and he will always be crazy. Because of that, I thought the double yellow thing was pretty funny, but I’m not a fan of either team and I wasn’t invested in the result.

    I agree about Sanchez; penalty, yes, but I didn’t think it needed a red. I thought Baloy’s red was understandable. There wasn’t a lot of contact, but the “idea” of the tackle was bad enough that I thought the red was deserved. He left both feet and went sliding in with his one foot thigh-high. I don’t care if the ball is up there, that’s not a good way to try and play it.

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  2. The ref killed that game. He actually carried two yellow cards and presented them at the same time. The tackle that got Santos Oswaldo Sanchez a red card was not a good call. It was a foul in the zone, but not enough for a red. That killed the game since Darwin Quintero had to leave the game so early. Baloy’s red was also a bad call, but by that time Santos was dead. Tigres are the champs.

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  3. No comments about Tigres/Santos? Man that game was entertaining. Tigres won 3-1 on the night, 4-1 on aggregate. Their first league title in 29 years.

    Marco “Dracula” Rodriquez sent off 3 players, all straight reds; Oswaldo Sanchez in the 11th minute, the sub goalkeeper came on and saved the ensuing penalty. Then 10-man Santos scored to level the aggregate. Tigres stormed back though and scored three times. Felipe Baloy got sent off for a way reckless tackle that then sparked a bit of a fight which resulted in Tigre’s Martinez also being given his marching orders. Crazy stuff. Entertaining for a neutral, not so much if you’re a Santos fan.

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  4. The strategy for the match today seemed to be lots of long balls, so I would tend to concur with the assessment that the manager appears somewhat lacking in creativity.

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  5. he definitely meant per week and that number is not surprising to me, there are players that make similar money out there.. Aguero makes 250k a week

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  6. The game is available as a replay on ESPN3 – take a watch. My view is MB is one of the best on the frustrating Chievo squad. They didn’t look bad, they just can do nothing in the final third – almost no shots on goal. MB passes and defends well, rarely makes a mistake, but seems constrained in his role. They would do well to let him roam more freely, press the attack. He looked frustrated today, I think he had more (frustration induced) shots than any other donkey.

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  7. The La Gazzetta dello Sport seems to be a fan, he is consistently rated among the top Chievo players, for whatever that is worth.

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  8. MB’s performance today did not look solid to me. He looked out of sorts, slow and tentative. And worst of all, he did not do a good job of covering on both of Udinese’s goals. Both were head shots and I am starting think head-play is a weakness of MB. In previous games he had been playing more of an offensive role, but today he was playing back as a defensive mid, although in the second half he moved forward a few times, even took a couple of weak shots. It could be that being moved back to defensive mid threw him off balance a bit. He had looked extremely confident in previous games, but today looked uncomfortable.

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  9. but would he warm the bench or only get a chance in League Cup games?

    Are Sevilla, Villarreal, PSG, Lyon, Schalke still interested in him? If I were Dempsey I’d be ready to bust out come June.

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  10. Very good contest between Stoke and Spurs. Stoke should have been playing with ten, as Shawcross committed two red card offenses in the box that weren’t called. It cost Spurs points. I would like to see officials treated like players with bad games and made to sit out.

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  11. No he doesn’t he needs to leave. Look how much Liverpool spent on Henderson. Dempsey is ten times better than Henderson right now dude needs a new team.

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  12. apparently Bobby Zamora is leaving Fulham in January and so might AJ. Looks like Dempsey will have to put on Superman’s cape again to save Fulham from possible relegation

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  13. Thanks for linking the Cchievo site. Always interested in hearing the opinions of those most consistently watching a player.

    Also, you kind of generalized in your comment (when you said “some say” implying multiple sources, it would be have been clearer in my opinion if you wrote “the most recent comment related to Bradley noted …”, implying one source). I don’t blame you though, was trying to read more Bradley related comments, however, Google translate is failing to translate the whole page to English. Any recommendations how to get Google translate to function properly?

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  14. So Gomez is heading to another Mexican club. It will be his 4th club in 2 years. 22 goals scored during 2010/11 in Mexico. Not bad. Call him up JK

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  15. My brother in law lives in Avesa, another Frazioni in Verona (where Chievo is located), and the general feeling about MB is very similar to what you’ve read.

    Common thought among supporters is that he covers a lot of ground defensively but lacks the technical abilities to compete and does not fit well into the passing schemes.

    They don’t hate him, in fact a lot of them think he’s an alright guy, but they believe he’d be better suited for the second division where technical competencies may not be as stringent.

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  16. Nice reporting, thanks. Good that MB getting involved in the offense. But the continued losing is making Chievo fans restless – fans are blaming the coach for no ideas and constraining player roles. Some say some players (including MB) are limited technically and bring nothing dangerous or inventive. What Chievo needs are some wins.

    http://www.chievoverona.it/it/content/muro

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  17. Honestly, I don’t know how you stomach watching italian football… for me it’s a laborious drag, or more simply it f’ing sucks

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  18. MB with a solid game in losing effort. He was blamed by the announcer for keeping Udinese onside for the first goal, but I didn’t see it that was at all on the replay. He seemed exactly in step with his teammates, but I’d have to see it again. The real culprit on that goal was the keeper who ran partially out of his goal to yell at the referee instead of getting in proper position.

    MB made one special play to come from far behind the play to get into the play and, when the Chievo defenders inexplicably all flocked to the same man, he switched his run to the other side of the field to rush the shot of the erstwhile wide open attacker. He covered a spectacular amount of ground all day.

    He also looked to handle the ball much more than I’ve seen him do in Serie A, even running at defenders on several occasions. One time he definitely overhandled instead of kicking it to the open wing, but in general he looked extremely effective. The only poor aspect of his game today was his heading. On 3 separate occasions, he had open headers, only to spray it straight to a defender. He is very inaccurate on headed balls. He needs to work on that.

    Drame made one of the best tackles I’ve ever seen, stealing the cookie straight from DiNatale’s mouth with a sliding tackle from behind to cleanly nick the ball ON THE GOAL LINE as the Udinese striker was about to score. Paradoxically, he also failed to mark his man at all on Udinese’s second goal.

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