It would be great to see Hearts win this, Rangers are a bit of a beast in the SPL this year.

My understanding is that after Rangers and Celtic, Hearts have won  4 titles in Scotland, perhaps Hibernians and Aberdeen have too from the webpages I found, I got out the wikipedia article on them, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_
of_Midlothian_F.C. Four Four Two had an informative article on them once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o
f_Scottish_football_champions 

I'm looking at the starting selection, everyone is from the "home islands" or home nations, oh, an Irish coach but everyone is from over there, 11 of 11 starters, 1 Wales, 1 Scotland, 2 Ireland, the rest English. Blackpool had a lot of British/home nations, I don't know if they ever had every single starter homebased.

http://www.soccerway.com/matches/20
11/10/22/england/premier-league/wol
verhampton-wanderers-fc/swansea-cit
y-afc/1117128/

For the record, Swansea has close to the same chemistry of lineup here in this early game, Vorm, the Goalkeeper is a Dutchman, 1 Spaniard, 3 Welsh, the rest have the England flag.

Penalty or Freekick in the 33rd minute, Freekick the replay shows....Wolverhampton still might score. Nice try.

Good game, Wolves have been knocking on the door, Vorm has made at least 3 good saves.

----------

Last week, I made some 2-2 draws, this week I'm thinking in making predictions, I have too many teams not even scoring 1 goal, meaning zero goals....I think that is probably wrong, I'll bet in this Wolves game, Wolverhampton will get a goal but Swansea might end up getting another too. Maybe the score is lopsided, I think it's been entertaining. Poor Mick McCarthy.

Utd.City early tomorrow morning should I be able to see it. QPR/CFC later on.

This was breaking, I know I've blogged a lot today but if anyone knew what being up against Racism was, it was Jamaican John Barnes when he played in Liverpool. I believe he even wrote a book about it, "out of my skin" or something similar. The interview makes you wonder about what Evra said about Suarez?

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2896
/premier-league/2011/10/21/2720110/
liverpool-must-protect-luis-suarez-
as-they-cant-win-without

“Luis Suarez is fantastic but I wish it was not all about Gerrard and Suarez. Liverpol need a better squad so there is not too much focus on them because if Suarez suddenly gets injured and can’t play you have got a problem and Liverpool can’t win," Barnes told Goal.com.

Suarez is very important to the Reds as they are a bit lean with the big names and Gerrard has just returned.

Juergen Klinsmann is a great German footballer, nothing will ever change that but he's always reflected being a free spirited kind of player and gosh, I guess a diver as well, which he kidded about. Still, Klinsy has been involved with charity, went to Israel on some sort of "goodwill mission", married a Chinese American, moved to America, moved to California and even in his playing days at least at the 1994 World Cup USA came off not totally unlike a rock star, I still have the video of Germany being eliminated in that tournament by Hristo Stoichkov and Bulgaria.

That's our Manager there: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KEBtPmz0D
aY/TPPdmanUBQI/AAAAAAAAACs/lsG2mZvB
LVM/s1600/J%25C3%25BCrgen-Klinsmann
-Bayern-Munich-001.jpg Must have been a cold day playing for Samdoria there, I doubt if he's wearing goalkeeper's gloves, I wanted to say Samdoria but that is a Bayern Munchen jersey isn't it,  one of a number of clubs he played for which of course, included a stint, perhaps 2 stints actually with the Spurs. It rarely surprises me that though he must love Germany, the Deutscheland, he sortof wanted to get out of there. I'm sure in the long run, things will work out for the USA under his reins and tutelage.

A free spirit and a free thinker, one time I ran into some German tourists here, we went to the Edelweiss German restuarant but they were a ball. One time, I bought something on German Ebay, I could not get the bank to wire the money over there for at least a low cost and the guy sent me the stuff from Germany still, an Addidas t-shirt, Beckenbauer, before the next day was over, I sent the $$ discreetly hidden in an envelope.

But that old German team from '86-+'94, an interesting team, maybe too much emphasis on winning and winning at all costs. Competitive nonetheless. How things have changed, prior to the 2006 World Cup, t-shirts were sold reading "Make way for the bad guys" in regards to the German team but that was a thing from the past, from the spitting incident between Riijkgaard and Voeller in 1990 to all of the many incidences the German team or more properly, the West German team had been involved in since becoming competitive but whose to judge it?? That Germany is certainly gone in the past. What did we see France do to make the World Cup in South Africa? Thierry Henry's handball against Ireland and then France went and were one of the worst teams there? The pressure is on the players. Though we aren't perfect in US Soccer, in no time soon are we going to see flying elbows that have got to be intentional or dives, at least on a grand scale, to advance or other like acts.

With USA International Player at times and previously at West Ham, Johnathan Spector, PL relegated and Championship club Birmingham defeated Club Brugge Belgium in the 90th + 10 minutes of Extratime, there must have been some hold up in the game with 10 minutes of additional time. This result really goes to show how strong the English pro leagues must be.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/foo
tball/15285207.stm

But the game was marred by a head injury to Birmingham's Pablo Ibanez, who was stretchered off with his team-mate Guirane N'daw in tears.

So there was indeed something more to this game, the Blues may have risen more to the occasion.

Let's hope Pablo Ibanez, the Spaniard is alright, not to be confused with a Raul Ibanez, apparently playing in the MLB World Series.

With Stoke City quashing Maccabi Tel Aviv 3-0 it is given to reflection the performances of these teams along with Tottenham's win and Fulham's close loss.

The BBC stats are telling here.

Club Brugge defeated every English team previously in Belgium, West Brom, Chelsea twice, Ipswich, Nottingham and Tottenham except for one draw with Liverpool in 1976, 7 games altogether. So they were undefeated before yesterday's match. I wonder if one may read into this any kind of decline in Belgium as a footballing power? I'd think the National Team will return to it's former glory, lots of Belgian players on teams in England let alone Germany and France, Fellaini of Everton of course, is probably one of the most famous..

Update: After Sidney Crosby can we ever think a concussion is not that bad?? Well, it does seem Ibanez did not suffer a serious injury thank goodness and get well soon Pablo!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/foo
tball/15397084.stm

Manager Chris Hughton said: "Pablo was a real concern for us so we're happy it was just concussion and he's OK."

We know now who will be in the playoffs. We do not know how the fixtures will go per the wildcard teams. I kind of hope Philadelphia can be nosed out of the seeded positions. Using this as a worksheet, here are the clubs in post season play.

Western Conference:

• LA Galaxy (67 points) Play Houston
• Seattle Supersounders (60 points) Play Chivas
• Real Salt Lake (52 points) Play Portland Timbers

Eastern Conference:

• Sporting KC (48 points) Play DC Utd.
• Phila. Union (48 points) No more games
• Columbus Crew (47 points) Play Chicago Fire

Wildcards as of now:

• FC Dallas (52 points) Play San Jose Earthquakes
• Colo. Rapids (46 points) Play the Vanc. Whitecaps
• NY RedBulls (46 points) No more games
• Houston Dynamo (46 points) Sunday vs. LA Galaxy

Maybe we will see some juggling in the standings yet. Philadelphia can be placed in a wild card position but that would seem to depend on Houston defeating LA Galaxy. At home, I guess it is a possibility. Would the Gals rest their stars? They just played that Champions League game in Honduras, that's a lot of travel and play.

Of all the countries that have tried to hire Diego Maradona as their coach? I wonder if Iran ever has??

From soccerway this morning:

Iran international Amou Lashgarian Hassan has been arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle 690 grams of cocaine into Italy.

But imagine that! Not before it went through the UK and Netherlands and then to Italy.

Sad, sad, some of the things from that part of the world as this blog takes a bit of a look into more worldly affairs. I think some countries like Egypt and their former ruler Mubarak were not that bad, in fact, I have a good Egyptian Moslem friend, he has no problems with Israelis or Christians. God protect us from the scourge of Extremists. This International player may well be hung if he ever returns to Iran from what I know. And if this Hassan is a talent, he certainly has hurt himself in that area as well. I'm sure smuggling cocaine is going to carry a prison sentence.

1st off: Please David, please do not pull this "we don't shave as long as we win" trick that the Gals, that is the LA Galaxy did last year. I know you did it with Landon Donovan but in the end, the Galaxy did not win it. This businesslike attitude is great. Also, in not being too much of a publicity seeker in this possible deal with Paris St. Germaine.

Down to business, the CONCACAF Champions League game was rather intriguing last night broadcast from Tegucigalpa, those poor parts of Latin America now that currently suffer but when you got the pelota, the ball, the women went wild.  I'm even reading Beck's is going to Indonesia with one Dennis Rodham sometime in the future.

Congrats to the Galaxy. I kindof hope they can win it this year in that they deserve it. Read about it here: http://www.mlssoccer.com/ccl/news/a
rticle/2011/10/21/ccl-recap-la-clai
m-quarterfinals-spot-1-0-win-motagu
a