(Get) A Sporting Life

The next three weeks will be a scramble each day to try to fit my work around the twice daily games, which start at 11:45 and 2:30 on ESPN2 (today's matches are on ESPN Classic). No Ireland, England, Scotland or Wales so this is very much a continental affair. The consensus is that Group C with Italy, France, Romania and the Dutch is the Group of Death. The Guardian has full previews up and they have decided to alter to their Football Weekly's twice weekly format to a Football Daily one for the next three weeks, with James Richardson and Barry Glendenning anchoring it from a pub in Vienna. Their daily 2006 World Cup were great and I look forward to more of the same. They have a brief introductory preview clip up today. Now if I can just rush Mrs. Southlandish's ass through the Saturday morning shopping (the number of stores we 'need' to go to grows by the fucking minute) and get my ass back here by 11:30, I'll be happy. Hope to be doing a little bit of bloggi...

Shaka Hislop has been given the nod to write a weekly MLS blog post for the Guardian. His first installment published last Friday. The MLS has been getting some attention on the Football Weekly podcast with the crew even going so far as to ring up Mike Cardillo, whose soccer dominated blog is That's On Point . Any MLS mention on Football Weekly usually elicits a wave of stupidity and pettiness in their blog comments. So I took a peek into the comments on Hislop's first MLS post, expecting the worst. To my astonishment, the comments thread was a long remarkably well-informed and serious back and forth that touched on the MLS/North American franchise draft model vs. European youth development model, comparisons between the MLS & Mexican League and general discussion of where the MLS stands. There was a fantastic mix of contributers who are Brit ex-pats in the US, Canadians, Americans and I'm guessing a few American ex-pats in the UK. Several of them are among the best o...