Weekend TV Preview: 3 - 5 October

(All times UK)

Friday 3 October

19.30 Arminia Bielefeld v Karlsruhe SC, Bundesliga, Setanta Sports 1
Karlsruhe have got through a sticky patch and seem to be back on winning ways. Bielefeld are a bit of a bogey team for them - they haven't beaten them in almost ten years.

Saturday 4 October

07.00 FC Tokyo v Shimizu S Pulse, J-League, British Eurosport 2
After looking like they'd chucked their title chances away a few weeks ago, Tokyo are making a surprising late run having won five games on the spin. Shimizu are comfortably mid-table.

12.45 Birmingham City v QPR, Championship, Sky Sports 1 & HD1
Since QPR got their ticket price-hike rejected by the League, their form has taken a well-deserved dip. Let's hope it continues here.

17.20 Coventry City v Southampton, Championship, Sky Sports 2 & HD2
Two teams who, until recently, just hung around in the top flight for ages without doing much. Now they look like doing the same thing in the Championship.

17.30 Blackburn Rovers v Manchester United, Premier League, Setanta Sports 1
Rooney is now only doubtful for this game after the worst was feared when he limped off midweek. Blackburn have won three in a row after losing heavily at home to Arsenal.

21.00 Barcelona v Atletico Madrid, La Liga, Sky Sports 2
Shaktar players must have felt mugged after losing their Champions League match to Barcelona midweek. Barca are starting to get their act together this season while Atlectico struggle to maintain form.

Sunday 5 October

13.30 West Ham United v Bolton Wanderers, Premier League, Sky Sports 1 & HD1
Two games, two wins for Zola. Difficult to see him not getting a third.

14.00 St. Mirren v Rangers, Scottish Premier League, Setanta Sports 1
Setanta may have chosen this fixture thinking Rangers might be a bit tired having struggled to get through a tough UEFA Cup tie. As it is, they had a nice long rest this week and will romp straight past the bottom-of-the-table home team.

15.30 SC Heerenveen v Ajax, Eredivisie, Setanta Sports 2
Ajax are still looking for their first away win and having won all of the last six games against their opponents will fancy their chances here.

16.00 Everton v Newcastle United, Premier League, Sky Sports 1 & HD1
A game for all you fans of schadenfreude: Everton can't get a point at home, Newcastle can't get a point full stop. Joe Kinnear starts his brief time in charge of Newcastle in the stands, finally serving a four-year-old touchline ban.

19.00 Valladolid v Valencia, La Liga, Sky Sports 1 (2nd half only)
It's Valladolid's turn to try and stop David Villa from scoring. The star of Euro 2008 has already chalked up 6 goals in 5 games helping his team to top spot.

20.00 Real Madrid v Espanyol, La Liga, Sky Sports 1
Real have put that opening day defeat behind them and have won every game since then. Espanyol have got just one point from this fixture over the last 10 years or so.

20.00 Nancy v PSG, Ligue 1, Setanta Sports 2
Both sides are struggling to find form and goals. Everything on paper says a tight, low-scoring affair.

League Of The Week: USA & Canada / MLS

By popular demand (sort of) League Of The Week travels to the US and Canada to check out the runners and riders in Major League Soccer.

If you don’t know anything about MLS then the first thing to explain is that the League is divided into two conferences as opposed to a single league ladder. Each conference is made up of seven teams. The top three from each conference goes into a play-off tournament along with two wildcards. The post season determines the Final, which will be played on 23rd November.

This year the Final will be held at the Home Depot Centre, a soccer specific stadium in Los Angeles and home to MLS sides Chivas USA and David Beckham’s LA Galaxy. A cynic might tell you that the choice of venue was informed by the fact that this was the first full season with the England legend and metro-sexual icon playing in MLS. What finer way then to spend all that hard-earned cash on the great man than by having him lift the Cup in front of thousands of adoring home fans. If there is any truth in this scurrilous accusation then it could backfire pretty awfully since Galaxy look unlikely to make the play-offs.

Galaxy started the season under new head coach Ruud Gullit. Unfortunately for them and despite the good work of Beckham and Donovan, “La-la land”, as they are less than affectionately known, have had a rotten season. The considered opinion by people who know a lot more about it than I do is that the whopping salaries paid to Becks and Landycakes has left very little from the salary cap to spend on other, better, players. The result is an unbalanced squad, which is languishing near the bottom of the Western Conference just above expansion team San Jose. Gullit plus the man who hired him, General Manager Alexei Lalas were both sacked and former US National Team coach Bruce Arena was hired to take on both roles.

The outcome has been pretty negligible frankly. Galaxy are still joint bottom of the table with San Jose Earthquakes who themselves pulled off a masterstroke in the transfer market by recruiting Darren Huckerby from Norwich City. The archetypal second tier flat track bully has scored a hat full of goals since his arrival and helped the Quakes go on a nine game unbeaten run which only ended last week against Kansas City.

Top of the Western Conference are the franchise that used to be San Jose Clash before they moved, Houston Dynamo. The current MLS champions are four points ahead of Chivas USA who in turn are ahead of Colorado Rapids, Real Salt Lake (who are about to move into their brand new stadium) and FC Dallas.

In the Eastern Conference, it’s been a disappointing season for Toronto FC. The League’s only Canadian club and second year expansion team have a great stadium in BMO Field and vociferous support. Yet their team are bottom of the pile with 28 points. Just above them are Kansas City Wizards who are a franchise in transition. They moved away from the cavernous Arrowhead Stadium to the Community America Ballpark Stadium. Being a baseball ground it looks a bit strange but the reduced capacity makes for a decent atmosphere and at least they don’t have to endure those hideous gridlines unlike teams who play on American Football pitches. A new stadium is under construction in Kansas and Some People Are On The Pitch tips them to be the team of the future.

Not for now, though, as this season belongs to Columbus Crew who are top on fifty points. This has already made them the first team guaranteed a play-off birth but also puts them in very good shape for the Supporter’s Shield, which is the award for the team that gains the most points over the regular season out of the two conferences. The winner gets an automatic spot in the CONCACAF Champions League along with the MLS Cup winners.

Immediately behind Columbus are the perennial losing MLS Cup finalists New England Revolution. Head Coach Steve Nicol has guided his team to three successive finals, losing to Galaxy, and Houston twice. In fact the Revs have been to four finals and never won. Third in the table are Chicago Fire who are six points above Red Bull New York and eight ahead of DC United.

There are four rounds left in the regular season. In the UK, there are no live games available on TV to the best of my knowledge although that may change for the post-season however highlights of ESPN’s televised Thursday games are screened in the wee small hours on Five. You can also watch selected games on the Bet 365 website for free and the MLS’ official site offers an online streaming service for around a fiver for the rest of the season. Otherwise, stayed tuned to Some People Are On The Pitch for further updates.

That concludes this week’s League Of The Week. Which league would you like to see featured in the weeks to come? Why not leave a comment and let us know...

SPAOTP is grateful to Dave at Football Watcher for the additional live coverage information. Cheers Dave.

Bundesbag Week 6: A Tale of two Lehmanns

"F**k off Hoffenheim!" said Tobias as he swayed against the rhythm of the ICE train to Dortmund, his equilibrium hindered by an excess of alcohol. There were six of us standing in the train bar minding our own business when Sp3ktor went to order some beers and "befriended" Tobias, a Stuttgart fan on his way to the same game as we were. He took it upon himself to join us, verbally abuse us and demand to know what we were doing in Germany. We shrugged our shoulders and smiled politely muttering something about the beer, the company and the cheap ticket prices. Meanwhile Tobias abused his new friend's BVB shirt and seemed to make a number of physical gestures inviting him to have sex with his bottom. This may have been an insult (a most peculiar one if it was) but since none of us accepted his kind offer and started to look askance at him, he decided to head back to his travelling companions at the other end of the bar who didn't look too pleased to see him return.

While there was very little to be gleaned from the exchange, it did reflect a genuine antipathy towards Hoffenheim. Since the village club's promotion to the Bundesliga, the owner and software billionaire Dietmar Hopp has suffered verbal abuse and physical threats. The week before, he decided to prosecute a Dortmund fan for unfurling a banner threatening to kill him. Last Saturday another banner was unfurled in the giant kop end of the Westfalon. Not being able to read German I did not know what is said but the word "Hopp" was prominently displayed. The banner was packed away in good order as the game progressed in front of 71,194 people and 6 Englishman drinking beer and soaking up the atmosphere.

The last time we came to Dortmund we were treated to a 4-0 home win. We weren't disappointed this time either as BVB beat Stuttgart 3-0 thanks to a screamer from Tamas Hajnal (scoring his first goal for his new club) and a great header from substitute Alex Frei. The two strikes were split by a fortunate goal by Felipe Santana who fouled Stuttgart keeper Jens Lehmann, much to our amusement.

Hajnal was man of the match but Kuba must have run him close with an excellent display of wing work.

While the shenanigans at the Westfalon took place, there was more nonsense occurring elsewhere. In Bremen, 40,000 watched the home side go 4-1 up against the hated Hoffenheim. Incredibly, the newbies fought back to 4-4 after 71 minutes. Then, with Werder down to ten men thanks to a red card for Per Mertesacker, they scored the winner. Mesut Ozil rounded off a fantastic performance and is proving to be a player rediscovering himself under Thomas Schaaf.

It was a weekend of upsets in the Bundesliga. When we arrived in Cologne on Friday night to begin our festivities, we bumped into some FC Koln supporters flushed with success after a fantastic (and deserved) 1-0 win over Schalke. The surprises continued on Sunday as Karlsruhe turned over the in-form Wolfsburg 2-1 at the Wildparkstadion. Cotbuss surprised everyone by not only scoring another goal but by not letting any in either. Hertha were the unwilling recipients of Energie's first win of the season.

However the biggest shock of the round was Bayern. The champions travelled to the injury-ravaged Hannover looking to atone for their mauling at the hands of Bremen last week only to lose again, 1-0, thanks to a brilliant strike from Huszti. I waxed lyrical about Bayern last week so there is not much more to say. At least, for Klinsie's sake his team stayed unbeaten in the Champions League this week, which should keep the pressure off.

While Schalke and Bayern donned the inconsistency pants, Hamburg and Leverkusen were running free in the park. The northerners' 1-0 win over the hapless 'Gladbach sounded more convincing than the scoreline suggests. Meanwhile Leverkusen has adopted the Bremen approach of out-scoring the opposition. Patrick Helmes was on the mark yet again as Bayer edged Bochum out of a 3-2 thriller.

On Sunday, Frankfurt and Bielefeld played out a 1-1 draw with Bielefeld. Artur Wichniarek scoring yet again for Arminia. We missed the game on the telly because we were on our way back to Cologne from Aachen.

We had made our way to the former Charlemagne capital (which was very pretty by the way) to visit the Tivoli Stadium and watch the home side play Freiburg. For 10 euros, we stood behind the goals and in front of a whooping great speaker. It was a different atmosphere than the grandeur of the Westfallon, however it did provide us with the second Lehmann of the weekend in the shape of Aachen captain Matthias. In truth, he spent the first 20 minutes looking like he'd won a fan competition to be a player for the day. However, he soon shaped up and the game was won by a goal from his team-mate Daun in the 83rd minute. I didn't get his first name. It was a good goal though.

That's it. Results and tables here.

Obscure Kits From British Football History #8

Tottenham Hotspur (away)
1977 - 1980

As the title suggests, this occasional series plucks the most obscure football kit designs from the history of the sport and puts them under the microscope for all to see (and indeed laugh at).

One trend we've noticed since we started this series is that many of these long-forgotten obscurities were originally made by Admiral. This seemingly harmless company based in Leicester were responsible for some of the most peculiar and outlandish designs seen throughout the 1970's and 80's, and today's offering is no different.

For part 8 of our 'Obscure British Kits' series, we give you the Tottenham away strip from 1977 to 1980.

What's the first thing you notice about it? Come to think about it, what's the only thing you'll notice about it? That's right - it's that strange over-the-shoulder thing going on either side of the big flappy collar.

Be honest, have you ever seen a feature like that on a football kit before or since? We'll take it as read that your answer was 'No'.

What would be an otherwise perfectly harmless pale yellow and navy blue strip is somewhat overshadowed by that odd band hanging over the shoulders.

It's neither a stripe or a panel - it's just a thing. Did Admiral apply it to anyone else's kit, we wonder? If you know, please get in touch with us in the usual fashion.

Meantime, all we can do is stand back and admire it (if indeed 'admire' is the word we're looking for) and to rack our brains as to where we've seen something similar in the past.

Wait a minute - perhaps this is the answer...



(Our thanks go to John Devlin at True Colours Football Kits for giving us kind permission to use the above kit design image.)