Still not much of immediate note taking place in the football world. The Italians are apparently giving the players and fans a chance to enjoy the Cup before dragging the unpleasantness of the match fixing verdicts back out. Needs to happen very soon, though. It’s expected that Juventus will be slammed, but the other parties, even Fiorentina, will just get a slap.

Real Madrid continues their never ending quest to make as many big money busts as possible. Rumored to have been courting one of the most worthless high profile coaches in the world in Sven Goren Erickson, now they’re leading the race to land a worthless high profile striker as well. Ruud van Nistlerooy appears set to go to Spain. Man U would love to dump him. Especially since they seem to want to keep weepy Ronaldo now, and Ruud always hurts his feelings. Looks like Barcelona in a walk this year. Real is becoming a laughing stock. All that money–and nothing to show for it but a circus act. Take note Chelski.

Speaking of hurt feelings, the word is FIFA is now looking into Materazzi to see what he did to provoke Zidane. What are they going to do? Ban players from talking to each other? I don’t care what he said to him, Zidane has to know better. It’s the bloody World Cup final, you imbicile. Kick his ass later. You’d think a French player would know what to do in that situation. He should have taken a page out of the Monty Python book and just ran away from the insidious taunting, whether his mother wears the combat boots or not.

Ipswich’s first loss of the season is only about 3 weeks away already. The Championship Division is about to start first week of August. The Premier League will only be a couple weeks behind. Actually, I hear the MSL is suposedly playing now. The Red Bulls have been looking to pull a Cosmos move and land some aging superstar. Zidane was mentioned, but I bet he’s off the radar now–still technically under contract anyway, whether he retires or not. Beckham. Ronaldo-grande. Whomever they land it won’t be a Pele, and it won’t make a difference. There’s no shortcuts. Make the league competitive and slowly increase the talent level across the board. It’s a poor standard right now. Give me a reason to want to watch it and I’ll start. Until then I’ll keep looking to Europe. If you can’t hook me, you have no chance.