Back From Owen World And On A Soapbox

Reason #5000 why I love the bbc.co.uk web site. They published a complete list in yesterday's transfers involving English and Scottish teams. But instead of just an ordinary ticking off of "Solano goes back to Newcastle United" they did it in chronological form.

Guess the people who ordinarily do the ticker were bored. :)

Not that there wasn't more "Owen Goes To Tyneside" mania to report about yesterday. The reason that I didn't post anything yesterday was if I typed the words Michael and Owen yesterday, I might have exploded in a fit of rage from the media overload on the story.

Though there was some silliness in the fact that people in Newcastle revealed they're all loonies. I'm not sure if it's sadder that 15,000-25,000 (jeez, the difference in the reporting of the numbers is like a march on Washington) people turned up to cheer on the news conference officially announcing the striker's move to St. James Park or that it outdrew most MLS games.

Discuss. :)

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There seemed to be no transfers involving any of the European based players from the United States (though I didn't search every wire) but there is one American story from England that I want to mention - the new Actim Index.

The top 10 players in the index (that tries to measure objectively which players have made the most contribution to their team's success during the season) include a lot of the usual suspects - #2 is Frank Lampard and #5 is Jermaine Defoe, for example.

This week's #1 is a shocker, however.

It's "Captain America", Claudio Reyna.

While as a Manchester City fan, I can clearly say that he's not been the best player this year, Joey Barton has been by leaps and bounds this is great news for American footcer in general. Also in more realistic rankings, Bobby Convey shows up at #6 in the Colaship rankings.

It's surprising that he wasn't looked at more closely by Premiership teams with how he's starting out this season for Reading.

By the way, it's all fine and good to worship Claudio Reyna as he's captaining the United States to one of, if not the most successful runs in their history, but dressing up as Captain America in his honor, that goes a little too far.

What are you? Toon fans?

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Though there is going too far the other direction to so congratulats Bruce Arena on telling us American footcer fans to "put up or shut up."

Seriously, all I've heard is griping that the match is going to be on ESPN Classic. So how's about we all make the United States/Mexico game the #1 viewed thing the channel has ever shown.

That shouldn't be too hard since the channel only shows live games once in a blue moon. Still, if it ends out outdrawing the crap college football game on ESPN2, what are ESPN going to do but rethink their priorities (they can't reschedule one stinking pre-conference season game?).

If not, than we have nothing to complain about.