Reuters Soccer Blog

from Mark Meadows:

NFL Week 15 Lineman picks

By Steve Keating

'Tebow Time' runs out this week when the Broncos host the Patriots but the Lineman's time has come. We've been close to a perfect week a few occasions this season but with time ticking down Week 15  looks like a promising bet.

Ok, the Eagles are at home, have Michael Vick back under centre and beat the Miami Dolphins last week to snap a two game losing skid and have never lost to the Jets (8-0).

But this is also an under-achieving team with a mopping star running back, a fragile quarterback and an erratic defence going up against a Jets team that is flying high on the wings of a three game winning streak.

Buffalo, Washington, and Kansas City may not exactly be the cream of the NFL but Rex Ryan's boys, unlike the Eagles, have delivered when they had to remain in the AFC wildcard chase.

The Jets offence and their quarterback Mark Sanchez remain an enigma.

They rank near the top of league in scoring (6th) averaging 25.2 points per game but near the bottom (25th) in total offence averaging 311-yards per game.

Five other NFL players who could make it in soccer

With the NFL entering a lockout due to a dispute between players and owners over a new collective contract, Cincinnati Bengals wide-receiver Chad Ochocinco is to join Major League Soccer’s Sporting Kansas City on a four day trial next week.

With that news in mind, here are five other NFL players who could have the attributes to switch codes and some light-hearted suggestions on where in MLS they might play:

ADRIAN PETERSON (Minnesota Vikings, running-back)

There aren’t too many positions in a gridiron team that lend themselves to the kind of physical abilities you need in soccer. Forget the hefty linemen with their heavy guts for starters. But a running-back, with that explosive pace and strength needed to burst through a defensive line, is the kind of athlete who could certainly make the transition to soccer. It is hard to think of a better example than Peterson who has electric pace combined with great footwork. Had Peterson been born in almost anywhere else in the world he would be using that pace to get round the back of an opposition defence and whip in a cross for a striker.

Suggested MLS move: David Beckham is 36 in May and really should be used in a deeper, central role rather than slogging his guts out on the flank. L.A Galaxy could use Peterson’s injection of pace and energy on the right wing.

AARON RODGERS (Green Bay Packers, Quarterback)

from Left field:

Can European soccer learn from NFL on team parity?

The NFL prides itself on ‘parity’, on the competitive balance between different clubs being close, ensuring that games are tightly-fought contests and that as many teams as possible start the season with some sort of chance of making the Super Bowl.

Looking at the start to this season, with surprise results and with unfancied teams such as Houston and Tampa making bright starts, the balance is very healthy.

There are a number of mechanisms in place in the NFL to ensure that an elite group of winners and a desperate group of losers do not form. The salary cap which makes sure that cash doesn’t talk too much and the draft, which gives the lowest ranked team the first pick of the best college talent, are the two most obvious means by which the NFL ensures that things stay interesting.

On the surface at least, it seems a remarkably socialist system for a profit-orientated American sports league to have in place. Money and talent is spread around equally to ensure that there is a healthy equality. It hardly seems appropriate for a society that prides itself, in theory at least, on being a free-market capitalist system, with choice and opportunity prioritized above fairness and equality.

Not only does the NFL limit the ability of owners to spend their way to success, it also saves teams from failure. Unlike in most sports leagues in the world, there is no relegation for weak teams --- no punishment for being bad. Indeed the draft system is almost a little welfare-state style form of assistance.

In contrast, Premier League soccer in England (or Serie A in Italy or La Liga in Spain for that matter) operates the most laissez-faire style of capitalism you could imagine. If you are a young Russian billionaire or a Saudi businessman with cash to spare (or an American NFL owner for that matter) you can buy a team and assemble the best players and coaches that your money can buy. No-one will tell you how much you can pay your staff or how much you can blow on transfer fees.

The result of allowing that disparity has been that since Blackburn Rovers won the English title in 1995 only three clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United have finished champions. In that same period 12 teams, over a third of the NFL, have won the Lombardi Trophy.

Premier League season needs a grand finale

The English Premier League has always reminded me of eating out at McDonalds. I always hope for something new but then end up getting the same as last time.

The new season hasn’t even kicked off yet, but if the experts are right, it’s already as good as over for nearly all the teams.

In the past 14 seasons, only three clubs have won the title with Manchester United, the Big Mac of English soccer, claiming nine championships, leaving Arsenal (three) and Chelsea (two) as the Quarter Pounder and Cheeseburger.

In the last four seasons, those same three clubs plus Liverpool, have filled the top four places to qualify for the lucrative European Champions League, leaving the remaining 16 teams* just hoping to avoid relegation.

While the matches themselves are anything but dull, there’s no escaping the growing realisation that the championship is too predictable.

Manchester City loom as the team most likely to challenge the big four this season after opening their purse strings yet are still listed at odds of 15-1 to win the championship.

British bookmakers Ladbrokes are offering odds in excess of 150-1 for any other side winning with more than half the 20 teams at odds of more than 1000-1 and three clubs listed at 10,000-1, about 10 times longer than the odds on Elvis being found alive.

‘A Rose Bowl by any other name would smell as sweet’

The Miami Dolphins used to play at Dolphin Stadium. It was not, it has to be said, a particularly imaginative moniker for the venue but nonetheless it carried a certain logic. But the days of Dolphin Stadium are over: when the Fins kick off the new NFL season in August, they will be performing at Land Shark Stadium.

Land Shark is a not particularly well-known beer marketed by Jimmy Buffett, a singer-songwriter and Dolphins fan who is the owner of the Margaritaville chain of bars and restaurants.

While the idea of the Dolphins playing among sharks has caused some mirth among Miami fans, they should perhaps be relieved that Buffett didn’t choose to name the venue after one of his restaurant chains, (also one of his songs) “Cheeseburger in Paradise“.

Mind you, if you think ‘Cheeseburger in Paradise Park’ would be a, erm, rather cheesy name for a sports venue, then spare a thought for the fans of the Cleveland City Stars soccer team, whose USL side actually play at the Middlefield Cheese Stadium.

Or what about FC Dallas of Major League Soccer who play at Pizza Hut Park? Or Dick’s Sporting Goods Park – home to the Colorado Rapids. The list goes on. Current Super Bowl champions, the Pittsburgh Steelers play at Heinz Field but there are many more than 57 varieties of sponsored stadium names in U.S sport.

There is, refreshingly but incongruously, no jersey sponsorship in the NFL, the NBA or Major League Baseball, but when it comes to venue-naming, there is no such purity.

One of the few exceptions at the moment is the new home to the Dallas Cowboys, which will debut next season and which at the moment has the gloriously unimaginative name Dallas Cowboys New Stadium. I bet that doesn’t last long.