Is it a case of too little too late?

The assumption had been that Tevez was talented enough to net a transfer anywhere. The drawback? His demands would have been far too high for a player prone to mood swings and language-specific Amnesia. He was said to have snubbed some offers and asked for too much elsewhere. All whilst he played no football.

It is fantastic that he has finally –finally –admitted he was wrong, but one feels that his mind was made up for him by his advisors. Remember, these are the same advisors that own shares in Tevez and net a percentage of his transfer fee. If he is not likely to move and not even likely to play those advisors are potentially out of pocket.

“Be the bigger man, Carlos!” you can almost hear them saying.

The thing that Manchester City fans must take solace in is how manager Roberto Mancini stood his ground. The Tevez incident, where the attacker reportedly refused to play and then denied any wrong-doing, then fled Manchester, had been ring-fenced by Mancini. He declared his stance then made sure he would not be drawn back into it. It was a move that suggested that he wanted to put a buffer between the want-away Argentine and the rest of his squad.

Since then the team have worked hard, overcoming European set-backs and league blips, to hold onto top spot in the English Premier League.

The problem now is that Mancini must keep putting his team first. If Tevez came back in how would the likes of Dzeko, Balotelli and Aguero feel? Indeed, even if the tactics were changed so that Tevez could retake his role as terrier between the striker and midfield then a Balotelli or Dzeko or Aguero could remain happy, but a Johnson, Milner, Toure, Silva or Nasri would have to be left out.

Mancini surely couldn’t be that foolish.

Of course the fact remains that Tevez is incredibly talented. Before even considering throwing him back into the mix he must prove that he, and he alone, chose to put humble pie on the menu. Then he has to work hard in training. Then he has to cut it in a few reserve games. Then he has to be willing to sit on the bench and come on against lesser opposition. Then he has to come into the starting line-up when Mancini is good and ready. Then he has to be prepared to be subbed off.

Sound like Tevez?

Oh…just in… Aguero has just scored this season’s fastest ever goal against Porto. After 19s. Good luck replacing that, Carlos…

Nowhere, it seems, is this assessment more true than on soccer blogs.

I took the liberty of pulling five of my favorite gems from various soccer-related comment sections* around the interwebs, hoping they would gel into some kind of cohesive and insightful narrative. But, in the end, they didn’t:

1. “Now I enjoy a reference to Stig-Inge Bjorneby as much as the next Liverpool fan, but you may be forgetting a certain Norwegian ginger haired player at Fulham from your list of ‘fan favourite left backs at Liverpool’. I still have sexually-confusing dreams about that free kick against Manchester United.”

2. “Quite astonishing dramaturgy considering that Wernbloom is a long time devoted Real Madrid fan – and this is his competetive debute for CSKA.”

3. “Im going to lock myself in a dark room and cry in a corner. Why can’t Luiz play like a normal defender for once and just clear the ball?”

4. “Zune’s are awesome, I have 3. Zune software is 10x better than itunes. Your suggested fonts are horrible.”

5. “Wow, who p****d on your cornflakes this morning John? I’ve been calling for Arsene to go for about 2 years now as it’s been clear he’s either unable or unwilling to change the things that need changing and it is the cowadice of the board that is to blame. Cowadice or profit.”

As you can plainly see, this list has everything: wet dreams, misspellings, poop references, someone very upset about font choices, and the use of the word “dramaturgy” (I believe the commenter in question is Swedish).

I also enjoy any reference to crying in a corner, as I don’t think this has ever literally been done, at least in modern times. Why would one cry in a corner when the couch is right there?

Don’t like my list? Well maybe you should comment…

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*sources: Football365, The Daily Mail, Pitch Invasion, Vital Football

On the field they have suffered losses to the teams they hate the most. The defeat at the hands of Feyenoord, in particular, will have created rancor amongst the fans. Last season they won the league. At the moment they are sitting 6th.

More importantly than this, though, the advisory board in charge of all major soccer decisions offered its resignation 10 or so days ago.

The board, made up of former players and advisors like Edgar Davids and Steven Ten Have, came in last July. They brought with them famed forward and three-time winner of the Ballon D’Or, Johan Cruyff.

Cruyff has proven to be a divisive figure.

In November Ten Have roundly accused Cruyff of racist remarks towards Edgar Davids. The former Barcelona star was alleged to have told Davids “You are only on the supervisory board because you are black.”

Since then Cruyff had been publicly criticized for trying to reshape Ajax’s coaching structures, bringing in a number of former players and personalities that seem to favor Cruyff’s soccer philosophy rather than adhering to the long-established principles of one of the world’s most lauded soccer academies. Understandably the board tried to block such moves.

The board did more than this, though. They colluded to bring in another figure to rally the group. Louis Van Gaal (pictured), a man famously at odds with Cruyff, was proposed as a Chairman. The crevasse within the board room widened.

As of the 9th of February a court ruled than Van Gaal could not be appointed because Cruyff was not involved in the decision making process. Those that came in with Van Gaal left and Danny Blind, former captain and Champions League winner in ’95, also felt compelled to vacate his management position.

The advisory board are now hanging around, waiting for successors to be named. The club is trying to move on. Disruption has reigned and Ten Hate has allegedly been receiving death threats since he first fell out with Cruyff.

No doubt such internal animosity can only make things more difficult for the team. They are trying to get on with their work in the league and they have the monumental task of facing Manchester United away, trailing 0-2 on aggregate, in the Europa League. They will slip out of the competition if they do not win.  

 No wonder tempers are running high. Even after winning 4-1 manager Frank De Boer told Voetbal International: “I am not satisfied. We started the match impressively. But we played poorly and gave away too many chances in the second-half.”

Can the delicate Dutch giants, who have won 30 domestic leagues and 4 Champions League titles, save face or have de Amsterdammers done too much irreparable damage to themselves?

This is the same Napoli side that beat Manchester City in Italy and drew with them at the Etihad Stadium during the Champions League group stages.

The problem for Chelsea is that they have looked this season like a patchwork quilt. They are loosely knitted together and there is no cohesion, no clarity of vision. From the back to the front there is no way of linking these players together.

Petr Cech shows in fits and starts the quality that once made him Europe’s great goalkeeper, but he now looks tentative and sluggish. In front of him he knows that John Terry, although visibly slowing, will do the basics.When he is fit. He does not look like he will be fit tonight. Aside from the basics? Centre-backs are consistently partnered with David Luiz, a man who is laboriously described as a defender. He is fond of wandering, dribbling, darting forward and generally getting caught well out of position.

Chelsea do not have the dominant defensive midfielder that Makélelé or a fit Michael Essien used to give them.  They have the supremely talented Juan Manuel Mata skipping around and laying off passes, but what use is that when the rest of his midfield looks uncertain and Frank Lampard sulks on the bench because he and Andres Villas-Boas are not seeing eye to eye?

The problem is one of leadership, some experts would have you believe. Drogba gave the half-time team talk instead of the coach during Chelsea’s poor display against Birmingham in the Cup. The coach is certainly struggling to get big performances out of his players, consistently. Is he doing enough to help Fernando Torres out of his goalless nightmare?

On top of this the Portuguese –mainly criticized for his poor handling of games whilst they are live, hence the need for a senior player like Drogba to step in –has already made an indelible mark on the Blues.

He has spent over £84m on players in his short stint. With the exception of Mata none of them have been hugely impressive. Will the notoriously impatient Roman Abramovich give AVB time to see his vision through?

A lot depends on how the team do against Napoli in San Paolo.

Napoli are an industrious team that constantly probe and poke. They are not punching above expectations in Serie A, but they are task oriented in the CL.

Edinson Cavani, their highly talented Uruguayan striker, is playing well and is backed up by tightly-packed ‘midfield’. Players of guile like Hamsik, Inler and Lavezzi are able to pass short and move quickly, looking for a basketball-style quick counter.

They have a back three in defense –a tactic that is very fashionable again in Italy, right now –and they can sit in the hole and supply this short-passing thicket of players between them and Cavani.

Chelsea will have to be patient and they will need to hold their shape. Napoli will be noisy. Their crowd will expect. Chelsea need to pretend like they are confident. If they do not… they may get pulled into stretched movements and suffer the same fate as Manchester City…

For many Central- and South-American immigrants, Charm City is a home away from home; with cultural institutions like libraries and art centers, authentic eateries, and either a church or a bar on every corner, recent residents are finding their place alongside the older guard of Italian, Ukranian, German, and Polish enclaves. Nowhere is this new cultural influx more apparent than in the emergence of soccer. On almost any given non-winter day in Southeast Baltimore’s Patterson Park, one will find people of all ages playing, in both impromptu pickup games and more formal, organized leagues.

In fact, the only time I ever went to M&T Bank stadium was to watch a friendly between Manchester City and Inter Milan, which was close to sold out. But besides the attendance inside, the tailgate itself—which included several ad-hoc goals made out of tipped-over trash cans, parades of waving flags, and jerseys, jerseys, everywhere—attested to the popularity of the sport among many sectors of the population.

It’s only natural, then, that Baltimore have a professional soccer team. Yes, the Baltimore Blast have covered the indoor game for some time, but it was about time for an outdoor team to showcase what Baltimore has to offer. Meet the Baltimore Bohemians, the newest team to emerge from Harm City.

The team will be sponsored by your favorite beer and mine, National Bohemian, whose logo is already somewhat of an unofficial mascot of the city itself. As this Baltimore Business Journal report puts nicely: “The Baltimore Bohemians minor league soccer club has gotten a friendly face to be the marquee sponsor for its inaugural season.”

For those of you unfamiliar with National Bohemian, more commonly referred to as “Natty Boh,” or simply “Boh,” the logo is an old-timey Pringles-man-looking dude who is depicted as winking (or as having just one giant eye, since the winking eye is omitted). The neon version atop the old brewery in Bawlmer Hon actually winks, which is how I first figured out that the man is indeed winking and not, as I had previously thought, a strange hipster cyclops.

I, for one, think this is great for the city. I cannot wait to get my hands on a jersey. Go Bohs!

One manager loses their job and there is a list of high profile candidates at hand. The same characters are always talked about. One steps in to the breach, the replaced manager joins the ride, bobbing and circling with the rest of the eager coaches.

The more high profile the club: the shorter and more exclusive the list of prospective replacements. Those specific Merry-go-rounds are roped off. VIP fair rides owned by billionaires and run by some, frankly, scary men.

In the World’s most high profile soccer competition, the English Premier League, some jobs come with greater pressures than others. That’s the money and the rich owners and the fans and the heritage that create that pressure. At the traditional top four –Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool –the jobs have always been the most exclusive and the most dangerous. Now you could probably add the jobs at Man City and Tottenham to the list of elite management positions.

What is the job security like at those teams, though?

Well, if you are Sir Alex Ferguson you have a job for life. Only a stick of dynamite or huge shares in a chewing gum conglomerate could persuade Fergie to even consider leaving his post. But of course no one wants him to anyway.

Apart from him I can honestly say no one else looks safe. Arsene Wenger would normally have been considered untouchable, but his team are crashing at the moment, a shadow of the Arsenal sides that challenged for league titles, and the Frenchman could not look more miserable.

We had come to expect more fight and verve from him, but as Arsenal slumped to their second defeat in four days, this time dropping out of the FA cup due to a 2-0 loss to Sunderland, the manager reeled off a list of excuses before taking his leave from a press conference.

They are now set for year seven without any silverware. The schedule and away games on the bounce may be Wenger’s outwards excuses but the underlying problem may well be that he has let a team get away from him. He is a man who had history of building teams up and molding them in his image. Now he has Robin Van Persie, Jack Wilshere and a couple of promising midfielders and very little else. One struggles to see what this man, fabled for planning meticulously and approaching soccer empirically, can now do. Is it time he and Arsenal parted ways?

With the pressure cooker of top end EPL soccer never cooling can anyone else share Wenger’s pain?

Andres Villas-Boas (a man whose name is impossible to say out loud without affecting Sean Connery’s accent) is another manager who is feeling the pinch. The difference here is of course that Villas-Boas is in his first season and is struggling.

The manager, considered incredibly young for such a high-profile position, does not enjoy the full support of the playing staff at Chelsea. Or at least that is what he is hinting at. He appears to be moving from one gaffe to the next.

When his team were struggling to secure back to back results close to Christmas there were rumors that he asked the players to run over and celebrate with him on the touchline, as a sign of unity for those outside of the club to see. He has also tried to pick fights with officials and draw attention to himself rather than the team, much like another famous ex-manager of Chelsea does. Many feel that Villas-Boas is just a cheap Mourinho, and the problem is that the Chelsea boss keeps pushing harder, inevitably drawing more comparisons.

As Arsenal were losing to Sunderland, Chelsea were drawing with Championship side Birmingham. They were losing 1-0 at one point and an element of the crowd were clearly heard to be chanting Mourinho’s name. A story was leaked that Drogba gave his half-time talk for him…

Both of these men are caught in the shadows of other managers: Villas-Boas is caught in Mourinho’s shadow; Wenger is caught in the shadow of himself, when he was a bold and commanding leader.

Something may give soon. At Chelsea it is no secret that the owner is willing to release the head coach from a hefty contract if he thinks they are doing poorly. Villas-Boas is not impressing. At Arsenal there needs to be drastic change and Wenger is almost a limp shrug away from showing he no longer has the stomach for the fight.

On top of this Harry Redknapp is constantly linked with the vacant England coaching job. This would mean he would most likely have to leave Tottenham.

By season 2012/13 could half of the protracted top 6 be led by new managers? Actually… hold on… is Mancini as safe as Sir Alex and King Kenny? Ach, who even knows anymore. Modern soccer is anything but a predictable business.

China’s former deputy of soccer has been sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison for corruption and match-fixing. Yang Yimin, convicted of taking $200,000 in bribes, was one of 39 people sentenced in a single session by the court in the Northeastern city of Tieling.

Others receiving sentences included former head of the referees’ committee Zhang Jianqiang, who received a 12-year sentence for taking bribes totaling $433,000. The club officials received sentences up to eight years for bribery, gambling, and other offenses related to fixing matches.

Other people were sentenced to 5 1/2-years for bribing, embezzlement, holding people against their will, and disrupting public services. There was more news to go with this story, clubs were fined for taking part. The club Qingdao Hailifeng for bribery in the amount of $318,000, and Chengdu Blades was fined for $ 9,525 for the same offense.  The Chengdu Blades are an English based club.

On Thursday, the same court sentenced referee Lu Jun, who officiated two games at the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, to 5½ years in jail for taking nearly $130,000 to fix seven league matches.

Three other referees, five organizations, and soccer association officials were fined or sentenced up to seven years for match fixing.

China launched the current crackdown on match-fixing in 2009, hoping to root out gambling, bribery, and other forms of corruption that are blamed for sapping the competitiveness of Chinese soccer.

As a soccer fan, you often wonder if there was “funny business” going on behind the scenes. Now that these reports have surfaced and these men have been sentenced, it may open up the world to see more cases like this. Even in High School games this concern can surface. Being a Varsity soccer coach myself, I know I have often wondered.

In America we don’t see these cases as often because we are so focused on our major sports like football and basketball. So we can’t fully apperciate these findings. The fact that some of these acts happened during the World Cup is just unfortunate.

One final note…….cheaters never prosper.

Follow me on Twitter @cbatch27

Call me lugubrious or misanthropic (or just plain bitter), but am I the only one questioning this seemingly unending parade of panegyrics? The Messi-fest is getting quite a bit annoying, if you ask me, and it’s not just that I am a Madrid partisan. Sure, he’s one of the best players around on any given day. And sure, he can, as Maradona said, dribble the ball in a crowd while watching TV. Yet, he plays on the best club team in the world (and that’s saying a lot, considering my bias towards Spain’s capital), which comes with perks, and let’s just say that La Liga is not full of powerhouses this year.

His capacity for weaving through defenses is incredible, especially considering his stature, but the showering of trophies upon him is quickly becoming a lot like the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama; one might rightly infer that the prize is given not for actualized performance but rather simply for potential.

As Tim Vickery (gushingly) explains in his BBC blog post Messi: The best is yet to come: “As the little man himself would say, he has only just started. He should have at least two World Cups ahead of him to silence the doubters. Plus a decade more in the Champions League. The first seven years have been the aperitif. I can hardly wait for the main course.”

Gag.

It’s becoming sort of an automatic and thus trite entrée for people who have never watched nor played a game of soccer in their life to declare, when entering a pub where supporters are already sitting, that Messi is the best player in the world. No need for evidence nor even mentioning any other player currently active in any league. Perhaps I just roll my eyes at any faddish assertion that demands no backing-up, but this one seems especially pernicious, or at least downright silly. The only criterion ever offered is goals, but not only does he trail in that category, but it alone would be insufficient to merit such a perennial coronation.

I’m aware that Messi acts humbly at receiving such awards (perhaps he’s tired of them, too?), and I’m also aware that on any given day Messi can play like the best player in the world. That much is easily granted. Given the right circumstances, he can make the difference between a win and a loss, and that’s why he’s so dangerous to opponents. He can explode with both speed and accuracy like few players have ever been able to.

But Ronaldo has more goals than Messi in less games, Beckham can lead teams with much less talent than Barcelona to consistently laudable performances (and while using a British accent), and even Wayne Rooney (sigh) exhibits just as good a vision as Messi, at the same time taking much more brutal physical (and media-related) punishment. In fact, many of Messi’s own Barcelona teammates are more consistent than he is, which is one reason why Spain dominates the international game and Argentina flounders (although they’re also burdened, clearly, by the weight of Maradona’s rosaries).

Messi may well one day break all the records imaginable and be discussed as the best player to ever play the beautiful game. But his future potential does not warrant current trophies. Or maybe I’m just missing something.

In a fixture that was eerily similar to Arsenal’s 8-2 thrashing at Old Trafford against Manchester United, the Gunners would display an equally uninspired, sloppy and unmotivated form at the San Siro, as they would look listless, lethargic un-Gunner-like display during their 4-0 Champions League defeat at the hands of AC Milan.

This would also be the last game for long time Gunner—and legend—Theirry Henry as his brief stint with the Gunners would end due to him being on loan from the MLS New York City Red Bulls.

Thanks to AC Milan’s Brazilian striker Robinho and his two goals (38’ 49’), Arsenal’s chances of advancing to the round of eight in the Champions League are done, and unless Arsenal can someone score five goals versus a world-class team such as the Rossineri—and hold them to a clean sheet in north London—Arsenal’s dreams for European glory are over.

With that in mind, Arsenal should—and need to turn their attention to winning the FA Cup—and specially, Sunderland.

The Gunners would defeat Sunderland, 2-1 on a dramatic goal by striker Theirry Henry in stoppage time, which would vault Arsenal to fourth on the Premiership table.

Whether it is Manchester United, AC Milan or even Championship side Middlesborough, Arsenal needs to play—and show more consistency in it’s form.

It is one thing to lose 3-2 to the likes of recently promoted Swansea City, and then come back and thrash Blackburn 7-1, but to play as un-inspired and lifeless in a away leg in the Champions League is another thing entirely.

For a such a silverware-starved side as Arsenal, it is no wonder that Dutch captain Robin van Persie is counting the days till he can sign be reunited with former Gunner, Cesc Fabragas in Barcelona.

When you have to scrape out wins over relegation zone teams such as Aston Villa and Sunderland, the problem is not the opposing side, but in the current manager—Arsene Wenger.

While Wenger has done a lot during his tenure at Arsenal, his inflexibility, questionable substitutions and stubbornness make you wonder if his time in North London may be coming to an end.

If Arsenal does not either advance thru and win the FA Cup, produce a good showing vs. AC Milan in London, or finish in the top four of the Premiership table, do not be surprised if the calls for Wenger’s ouster grow louder.

Bottom line is that The Gunners need to display more consistent form here on out, and that starts with Sunderland, and while no team has ever come back from a 4-0 away defeat to reach the next round of the Champions League, the time is not on whether Gooners everywhere really believe in the popular slogan, “In Arsene We Trust?”

Follow me on Twitter, @RobertCobb_76 and @TheBoxScore

The American forward signed with MLS and was selected by Montreal on Friday with the top pick in the league’s allocation process. The expansion Impact then traded Johnson to Seattle for forward Mike Fucito and midfielder Lamar Neagle.

Johnson, who turns 28 next month, played in MLS for Dallas and Kansas City before signing in England with Fulham. He was little used by the Cottagers, making just 18 appearances and getting loaned to Cardiff City, Preston North End and Greece’s Aris.

Johnson almost went to a Mexican club, but they claimed he failed a physical. A member of the 2006 U.S. World Cup team, Johnson has 12 goals in 42 international appearances.

Eddie Johnson is a solid forward that MLS fans can relate to. He is a going to be an excellent addition to the already growing Major League Soccer.

As the season get closer, the excitement rises!

Follow me on Twitter @cbacth27